It might be a case of each generation thinking their achievements are somehow more noteworthy than those in years gone by. People have short memories. How much of what spaceX is doing actually builds on what was learned in the preceding decades at the cost of many lives and enormous sums of taxpayer money around the world.

If SpaceX is just building on existing knowledge that everyone else who cooperated with NASA has access to, then why is SpaceX so much better at rocketry than everyone else? NASA is spending 1.5-2 billion dollars per year for ~10 years to develop their expensive one-use super-heavy lift rocket, whereas SpaceX spent <1 billion in total to get to the Falcon 9. SpaceX is making the first real moves towards lower-cost launch systems, and this is a completely different (and more sustainable) achievement than going to the moon by throwing money into the spigot.

It's not that simple. It's not like some video game tech tree unlock where suddenly you get access to lots of cool new stuff just because of some prior work.

NASA had less technology when some of this original work was done (and still does in some cases), there are budget considerations, public organization issues, political maneuvering and plenty of monopoly contracts meant to make as money as possible instead of improving technology. They're great at what they do but they are far from an optimal organization.

You are describing a great set of excuses for NASA, but none of these things help SpaceX develop better rockets.

> why is SpaceX so much better at rocketry than everyone else?

Because Spacex doesn't have to deal with these things. In fact they benefit from the Nasa funding right now as a major source of revenue. They wouldn't have survived if they were just self-funded. Also they can get talent from NASA and other organizations that have already done a lot of groundbreaking work with pioneers in the field.

Just to be clear, Spacex has focused on reducing the launch costs but they haven't yet and they still have a long way to go to actually delivering people and heavier loads in a repeatable process. They've also taken about 15 years to get to the last launch so none of this was quick.

SpaceX has done a fantastic job, but that still doesn't diminish what was achieved by those that went before them many years ago, or change the fact that they stand on the shoulders of giants.

The people who helped SpaceX get where they are today are the people who designed earlier liquid rocket engines, found out which propellants were best, and came up with the principles of multiple stage rockets. NASA's achievements have been stunning, and I am in awe of many, but only a tiny proportion (<<5%) of NASA's spending and attention has been laying the groundwork for SpaceX's achievements. If NASA wanted to contribute to the future of manned spaceflight, they would be experimenting with simulated Mars and Lunar gravity at the ISS.

I think the X-1 is still in the camp of furthering advanced expensive technology and pushing the boundary of what is possible, compared to SpaceX and their efforts to make space transport practical. In support of the author's theory think of the significance of the Ford Model T compared to whatever the first impractical car was.

But I don't think it's possible to judge historical significance of anything with so little hindsight available. Give it another few decades and then let's talk about what the most significant spaceflight development was.

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).

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.

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.

The Apollo lunar landers had plenty of computer assistance, both for navigation, guidance and control during landing. E.g. to control the throttle during final descent so that the spacecraft didn't reach zero vertical velocity and start moving upwards again. The landings were much less automated than they would be today, but Apollo would have been vastly more difficult without computers.