A meaningful goal for NASA

[SteveDallas]

Originally posted by Mathu
Please tell me, in the nutshell: what were the political reasons for
discontinuing moon flights? I could search Google but it is
more fun asking you. Thank You, Mathu

I'll give you my opinion... for what it's worth, off the top of my head!

Some people will say that there is no justification for paying for space flight because there are so many important unsolved problems down here on earth. (war, poverty, etc.) This was no less true in the 60s than it is now. However, the funding for Apollo was obtained. Pardon me for not looking up the exact number, but it cost a lot. The reason all this cash was shaken loose was because we felt that we had to beat the Russians.. we had to make Sputnik irrelevant. This was partly for cold-war-ish PR reasons and partly because there was genuine concern (concern that may look silly in hindsight) about military advantages of having a foothold in space.

After we actually went a few times and it became clear that not only were the Russians not going to get there before us, they weren't going to go at all, there was no reason to continue.