NASA ADMITS WE NEVER WENT TO THE MOON_low.mp4

Radiation is a factor of energy and exposure time. Orbit is a lot different challenge than passing through as it involves a lot longer duration, as opposed to passing through. The US did a lot of nuclear tests with the navy, where sailors were deliberately exposed to radiation. I knew of one such sailor who died in his late 90s. It is very much possible to survive heavy amounts of radiation... however like the LD50 scale, just because some people can survive doesn't mean all will. People are looking to space travel as a regular thing like airplane flights, and so there is a much higher standard of safety for what we want, as opposed to Kennedy's time, where they just wanted to chuck people to the moon and back once in order to ensure we weren't losing the technological edge over the communists.

As far as why we aren't going to the moon often, JFK was the start of pretty much anti-American ideology among the left. Ever since, while Republicans have pushed for space research and exploration, democrats have constantly defunded or blocked missions either because they wanted the money to go to their laundering projects, or because they didn't want a republican president to get the glory. Heck, the only reason Tesla was launching that rocket was because we were stuck using foreign rockets, and the only reason we had to use Russian rockets was because Obama killed our shuttle program, cutting us off from accessing the international space station (which we largely funded and designed) as well as other maintenance and experimental missions.