The recent trip around the Moon did not arouse much interest in me at the time, it having been a case of been there ~ not personally you understand ~ done that as I recall being allowed to stay up late on a Sunday evening in 1969 so as to watch the red carpet event.
What is of note however is not so much the physics as the economics, this time. In 1969 it was the rush to prove the tech could improve on Soviet efforts, whilst now it is as much about conquest as anything else. Apparently a focus of attempts among a number of nations involved is the south pole of the Moon that may contain water, albeit in frozen form. This in turn might provide the means for a permanent station, from where to both mine mineral wealth beside stopping for a sandwich enroute to Mars.
So forget the thrust and consider the numbers. The Apollo program sucked up five percent of the federal budget, whereas now they get by with ten times less. Part of the cost-cutting involved includes the fact that Congress requires them to repurpose the original engines from the Space Shuttle, developed over fifty years ago: a little like planning to wheel the E-type out for a drive instead of the RV.
There are two aspects to this, the first being that much like your cappuccino stirrer these engines are single-use. The second is that all-in they cost between 100 million dollars and 140 million, whereas Elon Musk's reusable equivalent (pictured) costs a fractional half-million. You read that right, one individual and modern methods and means can reduce the price by a factor of some three hundred times.
It is interesting to note that even as regards space, the world is getting smaller in so far as we are making do in various arenas whether drones or satellites with large numbers of units taken effectively off the commercial shelf. With space-flight being the case that once you've developed an engine ~ no mean feat ~ the easiest way to scale is to simply fit more and more of them. The Artemis space-launch system uses four principal rocket motors, but I'll leave you to count how many Space-X use from the pic.
From our own point of view here in the UK, we can I think take pride in the fact that when polled a full half of the population said they would not wish to go to the Moon even if offered a free ride. In contrast we are the biggest users in Europe of mobility scooters, whose use has expanded by four times in the last five years.
It was PM Tony Blair who said prior invading Iraq that as a nation we look to the far horizons, though nowadays these stretch only so far as Gregg's for a bacon roll and Wetherspoons for a pint of lager to wash it down.
If you were confused like me by the fact the Artemis crew ventured further into the final frontier than ever, as we'd already been to the Moon, this is because they flew a further-flung orbit. I say 'we' because they also serve who only watch on TV over a bacon barm and a pint of lager.
