> The moon landing was certainly extremely inspirational, but it was never going to lead to anything as the rockets always ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.<p>The Apollo missions are literally the reason that any of us are able to do modern aerospace at the capacity we are. I appreciate the sentiment of the author, but in terms of progress, it's almost like saying that Chuck Yaeger's flight in the Bell X-1 was more important than the Wright Flyer.<p>Both are extremely important milestones, but landing on the Moon, in under a decade, from near-zero, is more impressive. And I'm biased <i>toward</i> SpaceX.
Unless I'm misremembering, Apollo 11 landed on the moon.<p>Let's repeat that so there is no misunderstanding. APOLLO 11 LANDED ON THE MOON.<p>Remember all those folks dismissing what Blue Origin did because what SpaceX did was so much harder? Well, what NASA did a half century ago was orders of magnitude harder.
I've been a long time skeptic of SpaceX's goal, and I have to admit that I'm reconsidering my assessment with that successful landing. Frankly I'm amazed they eventually managed to do that.<p>But let's not get too carried away, ok? Because with sentences like:<p>> Mars, asteroids, the Oort cloud and beyond, all with technology and physics we thoroughly know today.<p>and:<p>> The SpaceX future is completely open, currently only limited by the amount of atoms in the universe.<p>it really seems like this is way too optimistic. I mean it's not like SpaceX has cracked interstellar travel or anything. Mentioning the Oort cloud for instance is quite weird : we barely can send un-manned spacecrafts there. And even if we could, it's such a big place that bodies there are separated by astronomical units of emptiness. What exactly would men do there?<p>Also, even if we can bring the cost of space-flight to something comparable to the cost of an intercontinental airplane trip, I would remain skeptical about mars colonization. The fact remains that mars is a gigantic barren waste land, with a tenuous, oxygen-less atmosphere, barely any water, frigid temperatures and continuous radiations from the sky.<p>Imagine the worst place on Earth where to spend your holidays. If a travel agency tells me that prices for a plane ticket to this place have dropped by 99%, I'd still would not want to go there. I wouldn't even go for free.
I agree that the impact of reusing the space craft is overlooked by many people. I tried to explain to a person that we could not go back to the moon today if we wanted too. And their argument was "hey we did it before, we have all those old plans, we could just build another Saturn V/Apollo system and be back in however long that took. And having talked with folks at Kennedy Space center, and read the discussions in Air & Space hosted by the Smithsonian, I know that many of the key things we "knew" about operationally building a moon capable rocket we would have to "re-learn". The original folks are gone.<p>All we could do would be to speed up the learning a bit by throwing money at building multiple test case rockets without any means of creating a sustainable system.<p>So yes, SpaceX has made a huge step. It will be interesting to see how others approach the problem (and everyone who wants to be competitive in the launch space will have to have an answer at some point). And yes, not a lot of people have realized how big a step that is. But a few years from now when SpaceX goes public perhaps and their S-1 shows just how much of an advantage this gives them, I'm confident people will look back and say, "That was when we re-entered the space age for 'real'."
Would SpaceX and rocket technology in general be where it is today without the historical pioneers and stepping stones? The title premise is ridiculous. Apollo 11 was one of the major historical events of the modern era and probably inspired countless engineers and scientists to take up their craft. The reusable rocket development is certainly a keystone of the future of space exploration and SpaceX is on the leading edge of it, but no one is going to remember where they were in 30 years on the day the Falcon 9 landed itself (okay, maybe some of the team and a few others).<p>What the Apollo missions pulled off is still mind boggling, today: <i>people landed on the moon, walked and drove around, and came back safely</i>.
These articles are really frustrating to read - there is no such thing as "better" as this isn't a competition.<p>That being said, landing actual people on the moon decades ago with less technology and sheer determination is much "better" in my book. SpaceX is cool but let's not forget about the true pioneers.
> <i>It’s never been about being the first to do something.</i> It’s about making it accessible to the masses.<p>Oh, boy.<p>Putting things in and out of context according to the story that needs to be spun has a bright future as a literary genre.
Sorry, but it really isn't. Who knows what SpaceX will achieve in the next couple of years but let's not belittle the Apollo 11 achievement, given the time it was done in, the resources it took and the state of technology back then it was an absolutely amazing achievement, way ahead of what SpaceX has achieved to date.<p><i>But</i> the future isn't quite over yet and SpaceX has one advantage, they are moving whereas Apollo 11 is frozen in time.<p>Calling SpaceX 'better than Apollo 11' indicates a poor understanding of the situation back then. Apollo 11 was a milestone, reusable rockets is <i>also</i> a milestone, but a completely different one.<p>I'm wondering how the author would have looked at SpaceX had the situation been reversed, in case Apollo 11 would have been the mission that allowed NASA to launch a rocket to a good bit of orbital velocity and then to capture it for re-use and SpaceX would have put a man on the moon last week. Would they still feel that the SpaceX achievement was the smaller one?
That is just lie. Source says that entire "Spacecraft Development" for entire Apollo was just $52,000,000. I bet development and testing cost was merged into hardware cost. Plus many expensive parts were reusable (launch pads, testing facilities)...<p><a href="http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-16_Apollo_Program_Budget_Appropriations.htm" rel="nofollow">http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-16_Apollo_Program_...</a>
Just silly! Pioneers are more important than bringing the pioneering to the masses. We don't pioneer for perfection, we pioneer for discovery. Completely different purposes but without discovery, there is nothing to perfect.
The Space Shuttle was supposed to be reusable and cheap, too. Originally, there were supposed to be 100 flights per shuttle, or about 400 for the program. There were 135, and two shuttles blew up and were replaced. Turnaround time was supposed to be about two weeks; in practice it took months. Each launch ended up costing about $600 million.<p>Space-X says they hope to reuse maybe 75% of a booster. Boosters probably go back to the plant to be rebuilt, not to the pad to be launched again.<p>Rockets have been mass produced before. Thousands of ICBMs were produced on assembly lines.<p>The tyranny of the rocket equation still applies. Spacecraft are almost all fuel mass (85-95%), and can't be built with the robustness level of commercial aircraft, which are only 40% fuel at takeoff. Fuels can't get any better; liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen is as good as it gets. Unless and until we get fission or fusion propulsion, space launches will be a marginal technology.<p>The Apollo program originally included a nuclear-powered upper stage. It's too bad that never launched. Nuclear rocket engines have been built and ground tested, but they're rather messy.
While I get the point the article is trying to make, and I think Falcon 9's landing deserves more coverage, the premise is horse shit.<p>SpaceX couldn't do what it's doing without NASA's prior accomplishments in space flight, including Apollo 11.<p>Saying the Apollo mission "was never going to lead to anything sustainable" is absolute nonsense. It lead precisely to where we are today.
As impressive as the landing is, it won't yet make as dramatic a cost difference as people think. The problem is that there are a bunch of cost and performance multipliers that are easy to overlook.<p>1. Only a portion of the rocket is reusable, you still pay full price for the upper stage.<p>2. The part that is reusable has to be built better to survive multiple uses and needs to have extra equipment for recovery, so it's more expensive.<p>3. The performance of the reusable pieces is compromised due to the extra weight of the fuel and equipment for recovery.<p>4. There are still refurbishment costs after every flight, presumably we will know soon how significant these are.<p>5. You lose economies of scale in making the boosters since you make fewer of them.<p>Overall I would expect that with all of these together you'll see maybe a 30% total cost reduction. A lot of these same arguments were made about shuttle costs and reusability, and it didn't pan out. SpaceX certainly can and has learned from that failure, but many of the basic mathematical realities still apply.
Replace the X in SpaceX with Shuttle for 35 years worth of time travel. The SpaceX landing is an amazing technical achievement, but it will not bring more change than a radically cheaper manufacturing process for rocket engines would.
Apollo 11 was an event for all mankind, the realization of a dream. Cheap spaceflight is certainly a dream, but SpaceX isn't all mankind. It's a corporation. Even if one views Apollo as "owned" by a single country, SpaceX's achievements are owned by a single legal person, and in turn the shareholders. SpaceX has done something great, but is isn't like they are going to allow everyone else on the planet to start using their technology. This is a business.<p>Apollo and SpaceX, Apples and oranges.
Better?<p>For those of you scoring at home, SpaceX is 1 for 4 on soft landing with spectacular landing failures for CRS-5 and CRS-6. CRS-7 exploded on the pad at launch.<p>The Apollo program sent 8 missions TO THE MOON AND BACK with only one failure. Everyone returned from every one of those missions and nothing exploded.<p>If you were going into space, who's rocket would you rather be sitting on top of: NASA's 1969 Saturn 5 or Elon Musk's 2015 Falcon 9?
Does anyone has some interesting article on the SpaceX reusable vehicle, how do they do with the vibrations on the structure? How many times can they reuse it? What did they do differently because of reuse? How does the landing shock affect the reusability etc.
I can understand the benefits of reusable rockets, etc., but what exactly is the benefit of a controlled landing like this? Couldn't the same reusability benefits be obtained more simply and at less cost (and fuel) with say a big parachute?
Sorry, but no.<p>Landing a $60mil rocket is an achievement. Going to the _farking moon_ via 5 F5 engines strapped to your ass that were designed using slide rules and graph paper is impressive. You're comparing popcorn tins vs fruitcakes.