Hello Larry,

You have to remember that for the Apollo program the US barely had docking technologies in hand, and fuel transfer was not used. The result was that manned Moon missions required large boosters of the Saturn class.

You also have to remember that the motivation for Apollo was simply to beat the Soviet Union to the Moon. The result was that once this was accomplished, the program was cancelled.

Today, THE reason for manned Moon missions is the construction of astronomical facilities to find impactors before they hit. This is what is known as the "Impact Imperative", and it is both very real and completely unavoidable. The result of this imperative is that man tended lunar astronomy facilities will be built, and then tended for the rest of mankinds existence on the planet Earth.

The alternative to the "Impact Imperative" is "small" impacts roughly two and a half times as devastating as the Second World War, and mankind's complete extinction. Since no one likes the alternative, you can safely

Cheer up,
ed