Regarding sending people to the moon, I don't believe we've changed how we calculate the value of human life in this scenario at all. Remember, astronauts volunteer to strap themselves to gigantic tanks of explosives, all for the chance to experience the universe personally in a way very few humans ever have.
Rather, I think the issues here are:
* America literally watched 14 people die on national TV.
* At the time of the Columbia disaster in 2003, the Space Shuttle was already a 30 year old vehicle (Columbia itself was 22 years old when it was lost), based on 40 year old designs.
* We realized we just don't need humans on the moon. Compared with robots, we're terribly fragile, inefficient, and largely superfluous on the surface of the Moon in a lunar exploration mission.
> We realized we just don't need humans on the moon. Compared with robots, we're terribly fragile, inefficient, and largely superfluous on the surface of the Moon in a lunar exploration mission.
Robots are inflexible. There's nothing like human eyes and hands.
Even if I agreed with you in this context (I don't -- hands inside space suits are clumsy, and eyes limited in what they can perceive compared to instruments), we can keep the people here on Earth operating the robots with ~1 second latency, and it will be fine. We even operate rovers on Mars with ~20 minute latency, and they've worked out well.
They've worked out well considering the extremely limited scope of what they can do. They can't, for example, brush the dust off their solar panels. Or even the simplest repair. Or dig a hole with a pickaxe.
Rather, I think the issues here are:
* America literally watched 14 people die on national TV.
* At the time of the Columbia disaster in 2003, the Space Shuttle was already a 30 year old vehicle (Columbia itself was 22 years old when it was lost), based on 40 year old designs.
* We realized we just don't need humans on the moon. Compared with robots, we're terribly fragile, inefficient, and largely superfluous on the surface of the Moon in a lunar exploration mission.