Trump 'cannot put another man on the moon', says Spanish space expert

“It's not viable, from many points of view, particularly economic and technological,” says Benjamín Montesinos Comino, 57.

“He would have to completely stop the space industry in the USA and all other projects in order to dedicate it solely to that, and I don't believe the circumstances are right at the moment.

“Although I wouldn't rule out that, long-term, we might be able to repeat the historic feat of 1969.”

Firstly, says Montesinos, NASA does not have its own vehicle for transporting astronauts to the moon – at present, those who travel to the International Space Station (ISS) reach it via Russian rockets.

And rockets, capsules and moon-landing vehicles would have to be developed 'from scratch', says the expert from Alcázar de San Juan (Ciudad Real province, Castilla-La Mancha).

“And that's just to get there. The second step which Trump proposes is to build a base on the moon,” Montesinos explains.

“I'm not too sure where all this is coming from – what he said about 'we're going to build a base on the moon as a platform to travel to Mars and other faraway worlds' is rather absurd, and sounds like something out of a sci-fi film.”

But Montesinos – who graduated and later researched his PhD at Madrid's Complutense University before working in the Faculty of Physics at Oxford for six years – admits that building bases on the moon is 'one of the conceptual projects' that various international space agencies have in mind, including the European one, the ESA.

“There's a division of the ESA working exclusively on research into the possibility that, in the future, in the medium or long term, we may be able to set up a permanent base on the moon – but it's something that has to be done very gradually, step by step,” the astrophysics specialist reveals.

“It is indeed possible to put a man on the moon again. The engineering is already prepared, but the entire programme has to be developed and, right now, the technology is not there because neither the plans nor the money have been put on the table.

“But obviously, a moon landing is indeed possible, as long as there's enough time and planning; although you can't just 'go and do it' on a whim.”

Many would ask why 1969 was the first and last time a man walked on the moon, but Montesinos clarifies that it happened in the first place because of a 'political bet' between the USA and the then Soviet Union.

The Russians wanted to launch the first artificial satellite in history into space, and were also behind the first human being sent up there, Yuri Gagarin.

From then on, the North Americans wanted to get ahead.

“The USA went up to the moon because of the huge amount of resources and people that the country invested in order to do so,” said Montesinos.

“But in fact, the country had no other space programme in place, other than its aeronautical system.

“And as they won the political wager and 'beat' the USSR in the 'space race', the moon no longer held any interest and the chapter was closed.

“Also, as they found there were no minerals on the moon that were rare or non-existent on Earth, both the USA and NASA ended up focusing on other types of manned missions at lower altitudes.

“Additionally, no other manned missions to the moon have been carried out because of the tremendous risks involved – nobody would want to dig the NASA Apollo maps out of the cobwebs again, because at the moment when there are human lives in space, all space agencies have to take extreme extra care.”

Dr Montesinos was asked if Trump's aspirations of putting another man on the moon were purely political.

“A lot of the time, it's really difficult to figure out what's going through this man's head; whether what he's saying about the moon has been agreed with NASA or is something that has just occurred to him, like lots of other things occur to him, such as building the wall across the Mexican border. He's very unpredictable,” Montesinos admitted.

Nowadays, though, space exploration is more focused on Mars than on the moon, he explains – 'not for astronomical reasons, but for astrobiological reasons'.

“They want to find out more about the possibility of whether there is, or has been, life on Mars, and all space agencies have plans to drill into Mars' surface.”

The final burning question, which has been asked in many quarters for the last 48 years – was the moon landing a set-up in a film studio, rather than the real thing? - is something Dr Benjamín Montesinos is able to answer very clearly.

“Definitely not. It was real and it really happened,” he concludes, firmly.

Photographs by NASA