“we lost the technology”

This is both a bunk excuse and an excuse with some amount of merit. The minds who created it are either gone or far out of the workforce, the factories that manufactured the technology are likely all gone and what remains is probably in China.

So it could go either way. If you no longer have the capability to manufacture or operate that technology, it may as well be lost.

I think the more interesting questions are: How did film survive the radiation of the belt, even through the weak parts, and how come we can't go back with newer, better, faster and more hardened technologies?

The ongoing excuse is that "there is no need or benefit to doing so and it is expensive" while we piss away trillions of dollars on nothing that helps us. Whereas, seeing physical materials and how they've changed in 60 years could hold answers when compared against the samples we supposedly have.

“we lost the technology”

This is both a bunk excuse and an excuse with some amount of merit. The minds who created it are either gone or far out of the workforce, the factories that manufactured the technology are likely all gone and what remains is probably in China.

So it could go either way. If you no longer have the capability to manufacture or operate that technology, it may as well not be lost.

I think the more interesting questions are: How did film survive the radiation of the belt, even through the weak parts, and how come we can't go back with newer, better, faster and more hardened technologies?

The ongoing excuse is that "there is no need or benefit to doing so and it is expensive" while we piss away trillions of dollars on nothing that helps us. Whereas, seeing physical materials and how they've changed in 60 years could hold answers when compared against the samples we supposedly have.