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[–] Apeabel ago 

Yes, inflation is a thing there. An Apollo-style mission couldn't be done with nowadays budget anyways (if they still want to do other projects, which they do). I also don't think NASA wastes most of their budget. They are working with unproven, new technology.

Now, the same can be said about SpaceX, however, they are working in an environment that has been familiar for decades (Low Earth Orbit). One of SpaceX's major goals is to reduce the costs of bringing cargo into orbit, that's where private contractors can shine - increasing efficiency. But if we're talking about a manned Mars mission then SpaceX won't be able to do shit for half as much. Even a billion dollar company can't deal with the costs and risks for something like that. Moon missions, that have been done before, will probably go private too but exploring the actual undiscovered frontier? You need a country behind a mission like that.

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[–] Dfens ago 

You're making excuses for NASA that NASA does not make for itself:

But when averaged over decadal or fifteen-year time scales, the nation’s civil space program has experienced no particularly noteworthy funding peaks. The highest historical funding period was actually in the decade (or 15-year interval) centered on the early 1990s, not during Apollo. Further, if we assume funding stability in constant dollars as shown in Fig. 2, the total in every subsequent decade will match that of the Apollo development decade, 1959-68. Expressed in a slightly different way, NASA could carry out a complete Apollo-scale effort every 15 years between the present day and the 100th anniversary of Sputnik. -- NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin (http://aviationweek.typepad.com/space/2007/03/human_space_exp.html))

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[–] Apeabel ago 

No excuses and I never claimed NASAs budget was lower or they're worse off than during their glory days. What I'm saying is still true. They can't pull of a moon mission with their current budget.

From 59-68 they had a few satellites, small space stations and the moon missions. That's it. Today? There are:

  • hundreds of active satellites
  • space debris that needs monitoring
  • data from satellites, rovers and probes that needs processing
  • the International Space Station
  • exploration missions like JUNO and New Horizons
  • exploration missions with landing crafts like Curiosity
  • Monitoring of the Earth (climate, the atmosphere, weather, magnetic fields, etc.)
  • R & D of new technologies and new spacecraft/launch platforms

and more, just so many thing we didn't know back then. There are too many constant expenses and expectations for there to be more moon landings. I think you might give NASA less credit than they deserve, they've done more than every other space agency in the world, as they should.