
Why the SpaceX landing is Better than Apollo 11 - lochieferrier
http://lochief.com/2015/12/27/why-the-spacex-landing-is-better-than-apollo-11/
======
MPSimmons
> 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.

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.

Both are extremely important milestones, but landing on the Moon, in under a
decade, from near-zero, is more impressive. And I'm biased _toward_ SpaceX.

~~~
Tloewald
Agreed on all counts and, fundamentally, while the Bell X1 involved using a
whole lot of technology that did not exist in the Wright flyer (rocket engine,
metal airframe, rigid control surfaces), SpaceX essentially combined modern
computers with things Apollo already achieved (indeed, the Apollo program
involved landing rockets on the _moon_ just with a human pilot instead of a
computer).

~~~
nickff
To be fair to the computer, it did all of the hard work. The LEM was probably
not controllable by a human alone. Even when the commanders selected manual
mode (as they did on all but one landing), they were really just controlling
the outer loop of the LEM.

~~~
Tloewald
It did all the work the way computers do all the work on jet planes today, yet
pilots still made a big difference. Neil Armstrong saved Apollo 11 from
catastrophe, flying the LEM by the seat of his spacesuit.

------
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".

------
grondilu
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.

But let's not get too carried away, ok? Because with sentences like:

> Mars, asteroids, the Oort cloud and beyond, all with technology and physics
> we thoroughly know today.

and:

> The SpaceX future is completely open, currently only limited by the amount
> of atoms in the universe.

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?

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.

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.

~~~
imglorp
What's really encouraging is that Google is investing $1B in them. Musk has
the tech, the team, and the track record, and now the backing. It's entirely
possible he can get a Mars colony bootstrapped, if that's really the plan
here.

[http://www.wired.com/2015/01/google-spacex-
investment](http://www.wired.com/2015/01/google-spacex-investment)

~~~
grondilu
According to the article this money was more intended for the deployment of
communication satellites.

$1B seems short for a mars colony anyway.

~~~
taylored
The communication satellites are meant to become a revenue source to find the
Mars mission

------
ChuckMcM
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.

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.

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'."

~~~
atopal
Not sure what you are talking about. The SLS is in active development at the
moment. An unmanned Orion capsule is planned to orbit the moon in November
2018, followed by manned missions 3 years after that:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System)

~~~
ChuckMcM
There is a great discussion at the Kennedy Space center visitor's complex
about all of the Apollo knowledge they are re-learning and improving on with
the SLS. From trying to re-create the F1 engine (in the F1a) to spacecraft
management systems. There are tales (perhaps apocryphal) about going to senior
centers to talk to some of the original engineers. The narrative is very much
that this sort of ship/endeavour was a lost art which they are recreating from
artifacts, new research, and people who were there at the time.

I cannot judge how accurate that narrative is though.

------
infinotize
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).

What the Apollo missions pulled off is still mind boggling, today: _people
landed on the moon, walked and drove around, and came back safely_.

------
manigandham
These articles are really frustrating to read - there is no such thing as
"better" as this isn't a competition.

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.

------
johnchristopher
> _It’s never been about being the first to do something._ It’s about making
> it accessible to the masses.

Oh, boy.

Putting things in and out of context according to the story that needs to be
spun has a bright future as a literary genre.

~~~
sangnoir
> It’s never been about being the first to do something. It’s about making it
> accessible to the masses

I suspect the purpose of this statement is to conjure up the ghost of, and
likely draw parallels to another "revolutionary genius". This trope needs to
die: it undermines the effort put in by the giants upon whose shoulders these
alleged "ubermensch" stand.

------
jacquesm
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.

 _But_ the future isn't quite over yet and SpaceX has one advantage, they are
moving whereas Apollo 11 is frozen in time.

Calling SpaceX 'better than Apollo 11' indicates a poor understanding of the
situation back then. Apollo 11 was a milestone, reusable rockets is _also_ a
milestone, but a completely different one.

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?

------
jkot
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)...

[http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-16_Apollo_Program_...](http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-16_Apollo_Program_Budget_Appropriations.htm)

~~~
rst
You're misreading the chart -- a bit farther down, there are lines giving a
~$3.8 billion total cost for "command and service modules", and ~$2.2 billion
for "lunar module". And those figures don't include spacecraft systems which
have their own line items (e.g., "guidance and navigation"), or the cost of
the rockets that launched the spacecraft.

The "spacecraft development" line you're looking at includes only charges for
1962, while the program was still in its earliest phases, most likely before
mission mode (and the separation of command and lunar modules) had even been
decided.

And you can multiply all those figures by about 7 to correct for inflation and
give you the rough cost in today's dollars.

Apollo was _hugely_ expensive.

~~~
jkot
Original article states that 3/4 of Apollo budget went into 'non-recoverable
hardware'. It is very misleading.

------
nicerobot
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.

------
Animats
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.

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.

Rockets have been mass produced before. Thousands of ICBMs were produced on
assembly lines.

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.

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.

~~~
rielfowler
>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.

They plan to reuse the entire booster, only refuel will be is necessary.

~~~
manigandham
They only recover the first stage, which is about 3/5 of the rocket right now.
Maybe they'll work on recovering the 2nd stage but they currently abandoned
that due to viability and cost of recovery tech.

It's going to be very hard for anyone to create a perfectly usable rocket that
all comes back for reuse, possibly never based on how cargo is sent up there
in the first place.

------
ebbv
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.

SpaceX couldn't do what it's doing without NASA's prior accomplishments in
space flight, including Apollo 11.

Saying the Apollo mission "was never going to lead to anything sustainable" is
absolute nonsense. It lead precisely to where we are today.

------
rayiner
In other news: why the iPhone is better than the invention of the transistor.

------
cameldrv
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.

1\. Only a portion of the rocket is reusable, you still pay full price for the
upper stage.

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.

3\. The performance of the reusable pieces is compromised due to the extra
weight of the fuel and equipment for recovery.

4\. There are still refurbishment costs after every flight, presumably we will
know soon how significant these are.

5\. You lose economies of scale in making the boosters since you make fewer of
them.

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.

~~~
firebones
6\. Not enough data yet to determine rates of failure and associated costs.

------
JustSomeNobody
Yeah, silly astronauts and their moon landing. Puh!

/s

------
usrusr
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.

------
sandworm101
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.

Apollo and SpaceX, Apples and oranges.

~~~
grondilu
> but is isn't like they are going to allow everyone else on the planet to
> start using their technology

I don't understand. Did the Apollo program do that? Did it even intended to?
NASA is a government agency, so I guess you can tell that "people", and more
accurately american citizens, own it, but isn't it a bit abstract?

For the common Joe, NASA and SpaceX are two organizations that are just as
opaque and difficult to join or "own".

There really is not as much difference as you seem to think, and I don't get
why only Apollo 11 could be an "event for all mankind". Also SpaceX certainly
is the "realization of a dream", at the very least of Musk's dream.

~~~
sandworm101
Nasa is different. As a wing of the US government many of their innovations
were shared. From a public perspective, all the photos and such taken during
Apollo were public domain. Earthrise, arguably the most well-known image on
earth, went strait to public domain. (This might explain some of the lack of
coverage given that all the media feeds were SpaceX-owned and it wasn't clear
how they were to be shared.)

Engineers who worked at Apollo-era Nasa also went on to all sorts of things,
carrying lots of knowhow with them. Even those working for contractors
operated under a different regime than today. But the similar knowhow at
SpaceX is today proprietary. We won't see any SpaceX engineers walking over to
boeing to replicate the technology, not without lawsuits every which way.

I don't mean to criticize, just to illustrate that today's space-fairing
corporations are not interchangeable with Nasa.

------
reddog
Better?

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.

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.

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?

~~~
dingaling
Apollo also had an on-pad failure that killed three men.

------
JoeAltmaier
Well, Soyuz lands on rockets and has done so for what, 60 years? I guess this
new technique is flashier, using no parachutes, so that's cool.

~~~
zardo
The Soyuz capsule yeah, and according to passengers the landing is a bit like
being in a car wreck.

------
fma
Some college kid writes an article trying to downplay the accomplishments of
Apollo 11 and stir up sentiment... Clickbate and HN fell for it.

~~~
lochieferrier
I wrote the article, what you and everyone else has said is super true. I
liked the Apollo 11 missions as much as everyone else, and I think I am off
base. It's not a sport.

------
nraynaud
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.

------
xefer
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?

~~~
snaily
This counterpoint is edging towards meme status (just try googling). The usual
counter-counterpoints to parachutes:

* Parachute hardware adds non-useful weight

* Salt water landings increases refurbishing costs

* Active guidance ("hitting the X") allows for less logistics

* Parachute landing technology would not work on other solar system bodies, meaning less tech would transfer to Mars

------
exabrial
Sorry, but no.

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.

------
tacos
The whole game changes when there are people atop the rocket. Let's wait for
SpaceX to cross that bridge safely and repeatedly -- then reflect.

~~~
adrenalinelol
I really don't get the need to be a "better" achievement. SpaceX's immediate
objective is affordable transport into space, Apollo was solely focused on
human-manned space exploration... So we can agree that this is a case of
apples and oranges? Even if they were in the same domain, the pursuit of
science isn't a sport, it's a collaborative effort where one stands on the
shoulders of those who came before them and re-draws the boundaries of human
intellect. SpaceX owes a lot of what they can take for granted to the Apollo
program, as does Apollo to the physicist who preceded them.

