I was unaware how expansive the Apollo program was, until I started digging around in the historical documents.
They had plans for about 120 Saturn V launches. Ultimately, there were only 12 or 13 built. Manned missions to Mars, a landing, right around 1984 - 1986.
Because of the great distances involved, there are certain launch windows or time periods where the energy expended or required to get there (and back) is much less. About 7 to 8 months to get there.
Supposedly the NASA budget was around 5 percent of the GNP at one point. The funding peaked about 1964 or so, after that it went down, and they were already cutting missions by the time Apollo 11 was successful. 18, 19, 20. It really was kind of a shame, since the money, the initial outlay was so large - and then they threw it all away, it looks like. The Shuttle ... was a joke. The flying brick. America had a clear lead in space exploration and technology, and provided hundreds of thousands of jobs, and cutting edge research at leading universities.
Remember the last Apollo launch? The media gave equal or more coverage to Raph Abernathy’s protest of it (i.e., Poor Peoples Caravan I think I remember the name right!) than the mission. Got pour that money down into the urban rathole, rather than actually accomplishment something great with it! The media, the cultural nabobs were all twittering about how no one was interested in space exploration anymore, spend money of “Earf” problems!
“Kind of a shame”? I’d call it an outrageous, scandalous disgrace. Even back in Apollo days, the democrat party was entirely beholden to the (black) race bigots and poverty pimps. Those foul folk had their panties in a twist, because the space program was 99 44/100% White, and because fedgov was spending money on rocket science instead of giving it to urban ne’er-do-wells.