r/askspace

If humans really landed on the Moon in 1969 with technology that was far less advanced than what we have today, why haven't we seen regular human missions since? Was it because it was too expensive, too risky, or simply unnecessary?

Or do you think it was Cold War propaganda to beat the USSR? Or maybe they discovered something on the Moon that changed everything. Something they weren't ready to reveal... or perhaps they were warned not to return.

The moon has essentially no atmosphere, but near the surface, there is an exosphere. What would it take for a drone to be able to fly there in the extremely sparse air molecules? If its not physically possible, what laws of physics would have to change in order for it to be?

Just saw a post asking how digestion works in space, with lots of good answers explaining how the body can still function without gravity helping it.

So my follow up question is whether scientists knew about any of that before sending the first living thing up there. Did anyone even try to figure out if we could survive in no gravity, or did we just observe that an animal could survive for a time, and only later ask why?

I mean easily of course, by the naked eye.