Why haven't astronauts been to the moon since 1972

It costs nearly 1 billion dollars to launch a space shuttle. But a Saturn V-like launch costs many times more than that... So, what do you plan to do for your close to 100 billion dollars to go to the Moon?

Keep in mind that the Republicans in congress are vehemently fighting to cut the federal budget, now how do you convince people that it's worth that kind of money for what? And don't say, "just to discover", because that isn't going to cut it.

What else is there to say?

Politics and money. The last three Apollo missions were funded by Congress, but were canceled by NASA because of increasing solar activity and the threat to the astronauts lives. The Apollo 16 astronauts took off more than two hours earlier than scheduled because of an approaching solar flare. The Cold war on the battleground of Moon had been won six times,but the hot flip side of the Cold War was still raging on Earth in southeast Asia at the time, and it was expanding. The money that would have supported Apollo missions 18, 19, and 20 was directed to the Defense Department for the Vietnam War.

http://sciencefocus.com/blog/how-apollo-…

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sci…

People seem to forget the huge expense and materials it would take to put man on the moon again. The U.S. was the worlds largest industrial giant in the late 60's and early 70's. Simply put, we had the money and most of all, the will power to put man on the moon. Also people do not realize that the space shuttle was the demise of the moon program. As powerful as we were back then we could not afford both programs. So the moon program had to go. In my opinion one of our biggest mistakes. We were told that the Shuttle was mans next big step in going to the moon. It would take us to a giant space station (that never materialized) and then a next generation moon lander would finish the trip to the moon and that never materialized as well. Not only did they stop making the powerful Saturn 5 moon launcher they also destroyed the dies that were used to make the worlds most powerful rocket. Money was the destroyer of all those dreams and in today's world crashing economy you can forget about any future trips for at least the next100 years, in my opinion.