Why We Can Get to the Moon and Still Won’t Go Back | Andrew Aurigema
Link to full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B65mFXwqJYA
Nobody has walked on the moon since 1972, and Andrew Aurigema’s answer for why has almost nothing to do with rockets being hard to build. Apollo ran on roughly 10 percent of the entire federal budget. NASA now works with about one tenth of one percent of it, and Charles Buhler puts the workforce at roughly a hundredth of what it was. Aurigema’s summary is blunt: we haven’t wanted to badly enough. The people want to go back to the moon, and that does not mean the governments want to go back to the moon.
Then he describes what the Apollo mission statement actually was. Go camp on the moon at all cost, and hope we get the astronauts back. He calls the men who flew it the bravest guys in the world for accepting those terms. The modern mission is a completely different animal, and he lists the new requirements one at a time: bring everybody home, don’t kill anyone on the ground crew either, get the rocket back, do it cost effectively, and be able to do it continuously. Those are not the same launch parameters. He compares it to being handed a pyramid: get an entire country interested and a pyramid gets built, then wait a thousand years and try to build the next one with one construction company and a fraction of the resources.
Aurigema spent 25 years on the space shuttle program and Buhler is a NASA Kennedy Space Center engineer, so the hardware side gets covered too. The shuttle main engine was far more efficient than the Saturn V upper stage, and today’s methane and oxygen engines run within about one percent of what chemistry can physically deliver. There is no headroom left, which is why a deep space trip needs dozens of launches just to stage the fuel, and why nine months of closed loop life support, carbon dioxide and all, is still unsolved.
That ceiling is the backdrop for the Musk turn in this conversation. He recently pulled back on his Mars ambitions to help the lunar program first, and said he doesn’t know whether Mars happens in his lifetime. Apollo landed six crews out of seven attempts on hardware tested ten thousand times, and as Danny points out, spaceflight is the one field of technology that appears to have gone backwards since.
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@DannyJonesClips
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
Link to full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B65mFXwqJYA
@paulrush9166
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
to say that money is the reason why we haven't gone back it's just stupid and ridiculous. we print the money for God's sake
@Digibeatle09
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
Can’t make up my mind about the Apollo missions – is it a case that there’s a “middle ground” – they managed to orbit the Moon – and get the guys back safely – but they didn’t manage an actual landing ? The technical crews – back in Mission Control – would have been occupied with – and sufficiently convinced by – the preceding phases of the particular mission – not to have “smelt something fishy” concerning the final phase – landing (and then the “lift-off” for the return home). The Rooskies’ jaws probably dropped once the Yanks managed to get within 300 miles of the lunar surface – and the little “unmanned probe” then sent by the Yanks down to the surface was enough to fool ‘em !
@laragarner7920
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
Every rocket scientist, engineer, chemical engineer, recent grad, plastics engineer…EVERYONE was employed to get us to the moon. My dad was also one of them. We lived in Florida near Cape Canaveral and watched the launches from the beach. This was a nation-wide effort to make this happen. There is not the same will to expend the money and effort now for a similar project. It is hard to understand just how big this effort was in the 60’s unless you were alive then. And the astronauts were amazing heros. Every young boy in the world dreamt of being an astronaut. Not only in the US…but in every country. They knew they were risking their lives.
@DanielSanchez-mi7be
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
GO BACK? WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT HERE? GTFOH
@rodgray4459
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
never went there EVER.
@michael30710
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
This guy is BS
@Rileysparadox
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
Never went
Never will.
Stop lying to people about how nasa is stealing money.
It's the biggest scam besides America being a country.
Watch…. it will be a future generation that looks back at America and will see everything that went wrong with its society and why it collapsed.
JUST STOP LYING AND STEALING AND WASTING THE TAX DOLLARS THATS MEANT FOR UNITED STATES CITIZENS ESPECIALLY IN TIMES AS FINANCIAL COLLAPSE.
@mikeenike13able
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
He said exactlyyyyyy what I’m saying, if tonsss of people are dedicated to the same thing, they’re going to achieve that thing. That simple.
@owenhaugh5439
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
Yes, less people working on these programs but there is more technology in our IPhone vs what was in the shuttle back then
@owenhaugh5439
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
These are Blatant Lies……Why are we still covering all this Up????
@RobertBradley-y4q
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
Maybe because we never went imagine that
@Kindsoul75
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
Omg professional liars. ..
@arkdark5554
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
Hey Danny, I’d be glad if you could answer the question below:
You have now interviewed quite a few guys on moon landing saga.
What’s your personal opinion on it? Do you think it really has happened? Or do you think, like many, it it’s the biggest hoax produced by humans?
@jasonbowers4388
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
So the tech is too good now to make it work? If the engines are soo efficient why do we need to refuel 11 times before we can land on the moon? Oh it needs More money…
@beaconterraoneonline
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
NASA budget during Apollo was 4.5% of budget, not 10%. Apollo was unique because space was new, and was driven by an enemy at the time who orbited a satellite in 1958. So it comes down to incentives. SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other private companies will do most of the work now given they were built on the shoulders of NASA, a government agency. No company could have done it at the time, but times are different now. But given Congress has no discipline at all in terms of spending money, and generally have done a poor job since Apollo, it's a good thing private companies (publicly owned or not) is the way forward. Physics drives everything. I hope this new technology can help get us to the next level, but of course we would need to see an actual demonstration with some much larger mass being tested. Hopefully they can get a cube sat into orbit or even on the way to the Moon to test this out.
@caesarsrevenge8945
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
I don't give a crap about any space exploration till we get rid of the monsters who insist on destroying our country and our planet
@Hail-Hydra-YT
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
I call it the Capricorn One moment !! Once Elon found out the technical limitation of actually leaving low earth orbit and perhaps learning of the Stanley Kubrick production of previous Moon Landings he pivoted towards the great NASA magic show. If you're not with them your against them. Future government funding for SpaceX is reliant on Musk falling into line. A bit like all of todays modern science – it will take longer than the life expedience of man to disprove all the lies. We will never see a moon base in our lifetime or our children's – And if we do its more likely to be on a Disney Set somewhere – very remote !!
@ruiveiga8380
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
NASA explained that they can’t go back due to the special circumstances of… strait of Hormuz! Did everyone forgot the previous excuse it was the radiation levels?! Nothing to do with aliens 👽 and moon bases 😂😂…
@newellbate
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
You dont launch off the moon. We make ships for space travel only. the moon is the base. there should be stations orbiting that do all the other stuff.
@bradmears763
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
Artemis went around the moon, and still didn't get an outside camera live for the world to see, wondering why not?
@Google_is_Evil_123
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
The moon landings were faked by the freemasons.
@tw0pers0nalities
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
It's sad these guys believe this ish….
@dago2
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
You cant even go crossing a fence at area 51, and you want to go to the moon 🤣 or are you suggesting that would be easier.
@kevinwortz8301
August 17, 2026 at 5:15 pm
There is no feasible reason to go back to the moon guys. Forget it. They did it, now no reason anymore. Mars??!! Total lunacy. Get your heads outside and think. What reason will anyone want to go to fkng Mars?
No reason. Elon craps on about it, but just think for a second. It is lunacy! Period!
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