[ecopoesis]

Unless I'm misremembering, Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

Let's repeat that so there is no misunderstanding. APOLLO 11 LANDED ON THE MOON.

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.

[oh_sigh]

Not only that, but Apollo 11 had 3 primates safely housed inside of it, and said primates managed to get out and go for a stroll on the moon. Then they hopped back in apollo 11, blasted on back to earth, and told everyone about it.

[dmd]

And then they went back, brought some CARS, and DROVE around on the moon, and came back again.

[therein]

Everyone should watch the documentary series "When We Left Earth".

[twic]

Well, two of them did. One of them gave the strolling a miss and chilled out.

[god_bless_texas]

> APOLLO 11 LANDED ON THE MOON

WITH THE TECHNOLOGY AVAILABLE IN THE 1960s.

SpaceX is cool - no doubt - but come on!!

[tajen]

> WITH THE TECHNOLOGY AVAILABLE IN THE 1960s

Exactly, in 1969, sir, they had to code everything WITH NEGATIVE TIMESTAMPS [1]. Apart from the joke, it underlines the prehistoric era of technology at the time.

http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2015/10/06/before-timestamp-0/

[maskedinvader]

care to elaborate ?

[god_bless_texas]

I don't agree that the SpaceX landing is better than Apollo 11. I don't measure something in "How available is the technology to me?". I measure in "How hard is that?". I'm not downplaying what SpaceX did to be controversial.

I'm just of the opinion that the challenges that NASA had to overcome 50 years ago to get to the moon involved alot more "unknown" information.

I think anyone who has wanted to do "something that's never been done before" can appreciate the trailblazers that had no other option than to make an educated guess because algorithms, processing power, failure modes did not exist.

[cdubzzz]

People seem so determined to undermine one achievement because of another, "better", one. I love what NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin and others are doing. Such silliness.

[dclowd9901]

I would say the original headline was a ridiculous shot fired, wouldn't you?

[marvin]

It's hyperbole. But the Falcon 9 first stage landing is still one of the most significant historical moments in spaceflight. Especially if you only consider things that have happened after 1973. I'll have to come back to this comment in 20 years to see if I was way off base when I said this, but it seems like a sound statement to me.

[gist]

"Let's repeat that so there is no misunderstanding. APOLLO 11 LANDED ON THE MOON."

Exactly. And did it when computing power and knowledge was vastly less than it is today(not to mention that what SpaceX did was standing on the shoulders of giants or whatever that saying is...)

[TrevorJ]

Agreed. I think it's exciting less for the technical achievement and more so for what it could mean for private space flight. For the first time, some real economies of scale may be able to be leveraged in space flight. The first internal combustion engine was a huge technical achievement but it wasn't until Ford figured out how to mass produce a car that things really started changing.

[riffraff]

being harder does not make it 'better' (itself a loaded word). The moon Lansing might nave been inspirational but had limited practical consequences, cheap rockets are a huge enabler for ton of things.

[pacala]

Earth is heavy. Lifting cargo in space from Earth is expensive due to gravity. Numbers:

Earth escape velocity: 11,000 m/s, energy to propel 1kg to escape velocity: 60MJ.

Moon escape velocity: 2,400 m/s, energy to propel 1kg to escape velocity: 3MJ.

Moon based interplanetary travel is 20 times more efficient than Earth based interplanetary travel. A robotized Moon base would make economic interplanetary travel a whole lot cheaper. Step 1 for a Moon base is landing on the Moon, so I wouldn't dismiss Apollo just yet. Perhaps they were 100 years ahead of the times, but their heart [and mind!] was in the right place.

[lochieferrier]

Hey man, I think you're off base here.

The problem is that the Moon does not have significant resources, so you can't really make anything on the Moon and then launch it from there. It may be possible to make some propellants, but not much else. As a refueling station, it could be a good idea. But for anything other than fuel, the Moon doesn't really work out as you have to lift it from LEO first. Entering Space by Robert Zubrin has more detailed technical arguments about this.

[TrevorJ]

It's my understanding that there are irons and titanium ores on the moon as well, though I do not know in what quantities.

[nickff]

Being early is the same as being wrong in aerospace just as it is for VC (i.e. Northrop YB-49, Boeing 2707, Lockheed D-21). While the Apollo program was an impressive flags and footsteps mission, it did not pave the way to a future lunar base. The Apollo astronauts were lucky to get back alive (, if you've ever looked at how many single points of failure there were on the LEM and CM, you know what I mean).

[secstate]

Exactly! The Burj Dubai is an impressive landmark to construction, and so are the Pyramids of Giza. But one took 40K manual laborers and decades of work, and the other took a crew of thousands and a couple of years. There are more things at play than whether something is possible. As the OP noted, what SpaceX is attempting is sustainability and that, as any investor knows, is the secret sauce in long term success.