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Comment by literalAardvark | Hacker News Reader

The fact that they're 50 years old? It's really hard to keep stuff maintained, and manufacturing methods have completely changed. The last people who could build that particular lander are retired or dead.

And they haven't made a new one.

So no, NASA hasn't had a human rated lunar lander for a very long time.

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The fact that those rockets are 50 years old makes no difference. It worked then, why wouldn't it work now?

You don't see 50 years old weapon systems stop working.

> You don't see 50 years old weapon systems stop working.

You mean simple firearms, that were carefully cleaned, prep'ed, and packed for long-term storage? Or something at least vaguely comparable to a moon rocket in size and complexity, like a B-52?

Talk to an old Air Force guy, who knows the maintenance routines for the older warbirds, and how many issues they have with "manufacturer went out of business" spare parts, etc.

The airforce is taking apart their older planes to create digital versions of them so they can make new parts

US Navi Ohio Nuclear submarine is almost 50 years old: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Ohio_(SSGN-726)

If people can maintain underwater nuclear-powered coffins armed with nukes for 50 years, why can't they maintain a (then) functional space rocket?

It's not like NASA is missing fuel, or that hull is damaged, or that engine is not working. At least, these things shouldn't happen if they put half effort into maintaining it.

You realize that submarine was only meant to last 20 years and instead they spent 3 years rebuilding it to serve a different role? It is also closer to 40 years than 50 and is decades younger than the rockets in question. I'd also hazard that the lifetime maintenance costs of that submarine far dwarf it's initial construction costs.

Part of the reason why the SLS took so long and cost so much is because they DID try to re-use all the old resources and technology rather than building from scratch.

Your "can maintain" for those old submarines amounts to "can maintain something which was originally designed to last for several decades, with a high-trained full-time crew, regular major maintenance, and a supply chain for spare parts...and all the billions of dollars which those non-trivial details cost".

Vs. those old rockets were designed to be one-shot expendable stuff. Plenty of them are on public display at museums - you could ask the museum staff about how many $$$/year they have available in their budgets, to keep the rockets in operational condition. (Hint: $0.)

Or, you might want to check out the YouTube channel for the USS New Jersey (historic WWII battleship, now a museum) -

https://www.youtube.com/battleshipnewjersey

- where their curator often talks in gritty detail about vast differences between "operational warship" and "keep afloat and open as a museum". Note that the something-million dollars which they are currently trying to fundraise - for some bare-minimum drydock maintenance - is small potatoes compared to the cost of a single new F-35 fighter.

They chose not to maintain it, instead to focus on the Shuttle.

I'm sure if the political will had been there to maintain the Saturn V/Apollo capability, they could have.

> If people can maintain underwater nuclear-powered coffins armed with nukes for 50 years, why can't they maintain a (then) functional space rocket?

Can? Sure you can. Absolutely.

Did they? No. There was no mandate, no requirement, no project, no budget.

Put that Ohio submarine into a dry dock, send everyone home. Tell them to find something new to do because the project has ended. Do you think you will be able to re-launch submarine in a year later if you changed your mind? How about ten years later? How about 51 years later? I wouldn't hold my breath.

The best way to maintain a capability is by regularly exercising it. The Ohio did that every year constantly, the Apollo program did not.

NASA would have to pull out the Saturn V blueprints and rebuild the manufacturing process from scratch. They would have to start hiring from 0 and reacquire all the institutional knowledge they lost over the past 50 years. They would have a real problem with supply chains: those are all gone, the tooling scrapped, the workers retired, and the business sectors offshored. They would have to redo all the testing so the process could reliably produce a working rocket from the designs. And the designs themselves are based on obsolete techniques, materials, and components.

Even if it was possible, there would be no point: the blueprints weren't the hard part, and the world has changed since they were drawn up.

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