You know what the irony might possibly be? The moon landing story that I guess some people still believe might actually be the conspiracy theory in itself - not that other way around. Awesome plot twist.
I actually believe NASA made a horrible mistake with the current Project Artemis they are running which centered around putting a permanent base on the moon and having the first woman and person of color step on the moon (you know, instead of just 12 white American males). Because before this, the best excuse as to why nobody else has been there - including the Americans since 1972 - is that it was expensive, had been done and there was no incentive to go back which I guess was a decent misdirect.
But now NASA created the incentive and most certainly are investing - 53 billion from 2021-2025 specifically. Yes this amount of money is not at the same level of the approx 180-200 billion they spent back in the 60's (inflation adjusted) but of course it shouldn't need to be right? Massive technological advancements and the fact that many, many things that were done back then that won't need to be done now because of the learnings already there from 6 successful missions, should surely mitigate costs which I am sure isn't the most important factor anyway.
Artemis/NASA has committed to a first crewed flight in September of 2025 and it would seem completely impossible that if it was done in the 60's beginning with zero knowledge of how to do it, it couldn't be done 55 years later with well, all the knowledge of how to do it. In fact I can't even possibly imagine what the excuse would be.
Its still really interesting to me why people are so invested in believing this happened all those decades ago. The reality is this - the only evidence we have this happened is the word of the entity that has the most to gain from us believing they did it, and some grainy black and white footage that again, they provided us. There is no diversity at all in the evidence. By that I mean think about say, Edmund Hillary climbing Everest in 1953. Imagine he claimed to have done this back then yet still to this day, despite other people trying (and yes the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians and the "Europeans" either tried or have been trying), he was the only person still have done it - this would seem hard to believe. It would be his and Tenzing Norgays word and really that's it. However that's not the case. The second successful expedition was only 3 years later and since then over 6000 different people have done it. I think we can be sure it's been done - it's hard to imagine all these people across generations and cultures, ethnicities, walks of life conspired to make that up. Less hard to imagine one singular government organization.
But hey, I'll hold out to 2025 and this crewed mission. Absolutely impossible to get away with saying you did it when you didn't in the year 2025. As for your question as to why we suck so much these days as compared to 55 years ago? I dunno - no real plausible answer to that I guess.
