My brother's take on the moon landing made me stop and think

We were at a family cookout last weekend and he said, 'You know, the real conspiracy isn't if we went, it's why we never went back after 1972.' He pointed out that we went from zero to landing in under a decade, then just stopped for 50 years. He's not a flat earther, he's an engineer, so it hit different. It made me wonder if the debate is stuck on the wrong question. Has anyone else had a chat that flipped a common theory on its head like that?