Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham discussed the challenges of securing additional funding from the government to expand lunar exploration efforts.
In 2015, he remarked, “Manned exploration stands as the most costly endeavor in space exploration, thus making it exceedingly challenging to garner political backing.”
“NASA’s budget falls significantly short of the resources required to accomplish all the objectives we’ve discussed.”
Furthermore, other astronauts have observed that commitments made by one president to increase the budget may not always materialize, as they can be superseded by a new administration that disregards the previous promises.
