The Apollo program is often viewed with mixed feelings by the Lunar activist community. In the words of Artemis Project and Moon Society founder Greg Bennett, “Apollo was glorious, but let’s not do that again.”

By operating with a race mentality, we made a number of sacrifices that doomed the program to be a mere prelude, not a true beginning. Plans that had existed long before were streamlined in ways that left no usable infrastructure in place, and the crushing burdens of the price that made sense during a cold wartime race were not politically sustainable, especially as a large percentage of the population lost all interest.

On the plus side it was a powerful proof of concept: we’ve already proven it can be done, we learned a number of things about Luna that we might not have known for a while without the incentive, we gained samples, and we have reflectors on the surface for precise measurements.

The price of our rush is still being paid today, however. The US followed up on Apollo 17 with absolutely nothing; The Soviets stopped in 1976; basically nothing at all happened in the 1980s. People interested in exploration turned their focus towards Mars, essentially forgetting that our moon even existed. A large percentage of the US population sees space as nothing but a waste of money.

Yes, Apollo was an unprecedented achievement, but in addition to the triumphs, we need to keep track of the object lessons of how not to go to Luna (or anywhere else, for that matter). We need to build infrastructure, have something to return to, and to paraphrase Niall Ferguson, pay special attention to the fact that the most important thing about the mission is what we do when we get there.

We have a lot of lost time to make up for. Fortunately, things are finally starting to heat back up. SpaceX has an interplanetary spacecraft in development; China and India may be able to avoid repeating the race-to-finish-and-then-ignore situation from the 20th Century; the US government has a new project with a target to finish before a subsequent presidential administration can throw the program away as not-invented-by-them; Bigelow has inflatable modules that can be used for surface settlements as well as orbital stations and hotels.

Here’s to hoping that the next 50 years of Human Lunar activity will be far more notable than the previous 50.