Nell Greenfield Boyce

I mean, there was a lot of enthusiasm around certain moments of the Apollo program.

Mm-hmm.

But, you know, support just kind of petered out.

Once the space race had been won, you know, they didn't want to spend all this money on it.

I mean, they were spending a lot more back then.

It was like 4% of the national budget compared to, you know, less than 1%, a fraction of a percent for NASA today.

I will say, though, there is a lot of bipartisan support in Congress.

And there's been support over multiple administrations for this moon program.

So we'll see.

Well, lots of people in the space community feel that Mars is the obvious destination, right?

And so NASA actually considers this its moon to Mars program.

But so far, there's been mostly moon and not really much to Mars.

Some people question whether the moon is really a stepping stone to Mars or whether we would kind of get bogged down in the moon.

But others say, well, you know, if you want to live on another planet, it's different than Mars.

long-term habitation in space in a space station like the International Space Station.

You know, on the moon, you've got to contend with stuff like lunar dust, and you've got to figure out, you know, all kinds of things related to getting stuff there.

Yeah, like getting water from the ice and stuff like that, right?

Yeah, they see it as a proving ground.

That's the idea.

And there are other nations who also want to go to the moon.