Making trips to the moon sustainable is pointless and nonsensical.
Edit0: good read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40410404
We can also, you know, not. We could put that money to something here on Earth instead of burning it up.
The technology developed for doing such a difficult task will inevitably benefit all of humanity. It did so for Apollo. It will again in the future.
https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-...
If the idea was not clearly conveyed then let me try again: the money is spent building things that are intended to be destroyed (in order to fulfill their function, but nevertheless), when it could be spent building things that are intended to last.
>The technology developed for doing such a difficult task will inevitably benefit all of humanity.
I've heard this refrain several times. Please name a technology that was developed for the space program and that would have otherwise not been developed.
No. We did it by throwing away ~98% of the vehicle on the way there.
> How come we need one now?
Because building a new gargantuan tower and tossing that majority of it into the ocean/deep space every time we need to go the moon is not sustainable.
> We're really seeing 15 starship launches per moon trip as reasonable, rather than just building a single trip program
Yes. Because again. The alternative (dictated by physics) is that we expend the whole thing.