It’s a longer episode but well worth the watch if you enjoy the channel and are excited about returning to the moon.
I think this kind of misses the point of the video, which was not about the technology of Apollo as much as it was the design principles that went into making the mission a success. Technology obviously is involved in that, but the argument for "do it like Apollo" is more a long form version of "keep it simple, stupid".
A good example of this is when Destin brought up the Apollo 1 capsule fire[1] which changed the speed and safety considerations at NASA. He cautions that now, before a catastrophic accident, is the time to make sure the best possible plan is being followed, simplify things that can be simplified, and get people to the moon and back safely. Something as simple as the choice to not use hypergolic fuels means there will need to be extra equipment to reignite the engines and redundant mechanisms for such a system.
Why did we design a system where Orion does not have enough delta-v to achieve a circularized low lunar orbit?
Is it because, for whatever reason, we didn't get the Exploration Upper Stage done?
Because Orion was not designed to go to the moon. It was designed, ostensibly, to go visit asteroids, or if you're being more cynical, it was designed to distribute tax dollars to as many districts as possible.
> Is it because, for whatever reason, we didn't get the Exploration Upper Stage done?
Reaching NRHO actually requires the Exploration Upper Stage, which is still happening.
While NASA Administrator, Michael Griffin wrote in 2007 that the shuttle program had been a colossal mistake and that Apollo-Saturn-Skylab should have continued <http://aviationweek.typepad.com/space/2007/03/human_space_ex...>:
>Let’s assume that we had kept flying with the systems we had at the time, that we had continued to execute two manned Apollo lunar missions every year, as was done in 1971-72. This would have cost about $4.8 billion annually in Fiscal 2000 dollars.
>Further, let us assume that we had established a continuing program of space station activities in Earth orbit, built on the Apollo CSM, Saturn I-B, and Skylab systems. Four crew rotation launches per year, plus a new Skylab cluster every five years to augment or replace existing modules, would have cost about $1.5 billion/year. This entire program of six manned flights per year, two of them to the Moon, would have cost about $6.3 billion annually in Fiscal 2000 dollars. The average annual NASA budget in the 15 difficult years from 1974-88 was $10.5 billion; with 60% of it allocated to human spaceflight, there would have been sufficient funding to continue a stable program of lunar exploration as well as the development of Earth orbital infrastructure. I suggest that this would have been a better strategic alternative than the choices that were in fact made, almost 40 years ago.