I am pretty sure that SpaceX was able to achieve what they did today also because they studied the Soviet N1 rocket and learned from what the engineers at that time had to figure out from scratch.
The other thing is that the N1 Moon rocket was a very different design - a single booster with many small engines, so incredibly difficult system to control, especially given the state of technology 50 years ago. Falcon Heavy is more similar to the successful Energia booster - core + strap on boosters - that was originally designed for the Russian shuttle. Or the Angara series.
In comparison, the Saturn V used only 5, they were just that much bigger. It's widely regarded that the 5 vs 30 was the difference as to why Saturn V was successful and N1 was not, as the Soviets simply had to roll too many dice in a situation where a failure resulted in complete mission loss.
It's a lesson in system engineering, particularly around failure durability and parallel vs serial critical subsystems.
In this sense R-7 is remarkable because it has a good overall success record (most launched rocket) and 32 chambers working at liftoff. Some of those chambers are rather small - about 3 metric tons of thrust, about as much as main chambers on British launcher Black Arrow - but still.
You're right, though, the R-7 is a fantastic achievement not only for the chambers, but also considering how many engines and pumps it has. All those spinning, moving parts are another point of failure and they're all necessary for success.
If Soviets wanted something modern, they had to reinvent it from scratch - or steal it. They were fairly good at both. Whether it was a computer, transistors or entire designs. The results were usually very simple designs where little could go wrong and that didn't need complicated technology - which wasn't available. E.g. the Soyuz capsule vs. both the Apollo and Space Shuttle craft.
I lived in a former Soviet bloc country and I can tell you that getting even silly components like LEDs required superhuman efforts. The few that were made domestically ended up in industrial uses (or exported to USSR) and importing anything from abroad was almost impossible. We had a black & white TV full of tubes until late 80s at home - color solid state TVs didn't become available until 1988 or so (and sucked big time).
That being said, SpaceX is taking a much more pragmatic and efficient approach to building rockets with far less bureaucracy. This is the epitome of private sector efficieny over government projects.
The problem is lack of meaningful competition, rather than government vs. industry; governments can be very good when competing with other governments.
Also, something nobody has talked about yet. Falcon Heavy is capable of something no other US rocket is really able to do yet, launch new space station modules (or new space stations period).
I'm pretty sure one can launch space station modules on regular Falcon-9 as well. Russians launch some on Soyuz rocket.
Surely FH is more convenient for big stations.
SpaceX's Falcon project is the first major progress we've made in the field of human spaceflight since the Apollo program.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-twins-study-investigators-...
Most astronauts spend six months on the station, and obviously most of them don’t have a twin, but they all add data to our knowledge of how space affects humans. We have learned a lot about how to counter muscle atrophy, and we have a better understanding of how the eyes and bones are degraded by prolonged weightlessness.
NASA loves to talk about ways that space research has improved life on earth (just google it, they’ll shout it at you), but even if you could find a way to do all that other research without a crewed space station, you can’t accumulate six astronaut-years of human medical data in space every single year for decades on end unless you’ve got a place in space to put a bunch of humans for a really long time, over and over again.
To me, that is what makes ISS a human treasure. Someday we will build a more cost-effective replacement on the basis of the lessons we’ve learned, but for now it’s the best we’ve got, and it’s quite good.
The knowledge was valuable, but not priceless. The same data could have been gathered, many times over, with long-duration multi-member orbital missions. We could have probably gotten an interplanetary flight in, too. The staggering cost of the ISS crowded out a lot of good science.
The argument could be made that we could have made do with less data, perhaps. But we could not have gathered this volume even once without ISS, let alone “many times”.
NASA spent 72 billion 2010 dollars on the ISS [1]. (Total cost is over $150 billion.) From Expedition 1 in 2000 through Expedition 53 in September, the ISS played host to 25,290 crew days of human occupation [2]. That comes to $2.8 million per day for NASA or over $5.9 million more generally. (Remember: this does not include the cost of getting to nor from the ISS.)
The Apollo program cost $107 billion 2016 dollars [3], or $98 million 2010 dollars [4]. (This includes the cost of the Saturn I, Saturn IB and Saturn V launch vehicles.) From Apollo 7 in 1968 through Apollo 17 in 1972, the Apollo program hosted 305 crew days of human spaceflight [5]. That comes to $3.2 million per day.
TL; DR We could have replicated the time spent on the ISS with a series of Apollo programs, using Apollo technology and Apollo-era costs, and had budget left over for a manned (probably non-landing) interplanetary mission [6].
The ISS is a boondoggle [7] on every measure except number of dollars funneled to defense contractors. It's not fun to trash these programs. (I grew up adoring the Space Shuttle and the ISs.) But over time, I've realized it's necessary. We cannot correct failures we refuse to recognize.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#Co...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_International_Space_St...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program
[4] https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Mission_summary
[6] Keep in mind the degree to which I'm putting my thumb on the scale in the ISS's favor. We're counting the Apollo program's launch costs but not the Space Shuttles. We're including, in $2.8 million per day figure, everyone's crew member hours but only NASA's costs.
[7] I am not (yet) in favor of de-orbiting the ISS. Sunk costs are sunk. Looking forward, there is probably something useful to be done with the beast.
I doubt an Apollo CSM [1] could support astronauts for a full year (although Mir could [2]). It has proven very handy to have a space station within reach of resupply missions and with enough space to house some gym equipment and a whole bunch of medical equipment. You might also have trouble finding people willing to spend much time beyond the Van Allen radiation belts [3] in an Apollo era space craft [4].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Command/Service_Module
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_EO-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TM-18
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt
[4] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/news/stereo_astron...
It's not all about flashy missions like sending humans to Mars (for dubious scientific value as opposed to just sending robots).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_records#Te...
Marginal at best. The Space Shuttle lofted 833 astronauts at a cost of $209 billion [1]. In 2013, NASA was paying Russia $70 million per astronaut for a Soyuz lift [2]. That comes to $58 billion in 2013 dollars. That leaves $151+ billion, ignoring inflation, to justify everything else the Shuttle did. $150+ billion is 10x SpaceX's lifetime capital expenditures. (It's about what NASA expects it will cost to put humans on Mars.)
At first, the Space Shuttle (conceived as a shuttle to an American space station, the latter never built) was an expensive way to low-earth orbit. After the ISS, the Space Shuttle became an expensive way to the ISS. It pioneered virtually nothing and nowhere and was better at nothing than any other craft.
It was not worthless. But for the cost we could have achieved vastly more. Opportunity cost is real; the Space Shuttle set spaceflight back at least a generation.
It's not fun to trash these programs. But over time, I've realized it's necessary. We cannot correct failures we refuse to recognize. The Space Shuttle's dismal ROI was a motivating factor behind the Bush administration's support of COTS [3]. Without that programme, SpaceX wouldn't be what it is today.
[1] https://www.space.com/12376-nasa-space-shuttle-program-facts...
[2] https://www.space.com/20897-nasa-russia-astronaut-launches-2...
[3] https://www.nasa.gov/commercial-orbital-transportation-servi...