Thats the official excuse but I don't buy it for one minute. I'm sure China would go just for the prestige but they know it's not even possible. The idea is absurd it's like saying someone flew across the Atlantic in 1919 and no one ever tried since.
When it gets to 2069 and still no one has been to the moon do you think people will still accept the same excuse. All they are doing really is taking the mickey out of the general public.
Except that:
A: From memory China has said it wants to get man on the moon again, but they're not in a rush to do it (instead they're letting their space plans evolve at a rate that isn't going to make a huge dent in their finances)
and
B: The cost of crossing the Atlantic in an aircraft is tiny in comparison to the cost of getting to the moon, and you can reuse the aircraft almost in it's entirety apart from maintenance items, whilst a moon shot effectively involves throwing away everything (even bits that can be reused have to be rebuilt for every trip).
Let alone the commercial and military reasons to keep doing atlantic crossings in aircraft...(none of which are there for moon shots).
In the early days of air travel much of the work was also done by private individuals, or companies, something you can't really do with space travel to the moon (although we are at last reaching the point where commercial travel to orbit by private companies is becoming possible, largely due to new technologies that make it cheaper, and building on work from the government agencies).
I don't think anyone has claimed we didn't put men into orbit in the shuttles, and yet we don't have them any more, and are unlikely to get anything with their full versatility for years/decades for much the same reason we don't have manned missions to the moon.
The shuttles were extremely expensive to run, required massive overhauls between missions, and most of what they could do, can be done cheaper with other equipment now.
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