An unwelcoming view glared at Armstrong. Where the orbital maps indicated a smooth plain, there was instead a vast crater field and collections of truck-sized boulders. Flying manually and low on fuel, Armstrong leveled off and searched for a smooth spot.
I scrolled down far enough to find something mentioning this, dozens of comments above just saying that robot landers must work better just because.
The budget, for one. It was 2-3% of the GDP at the time. These commercial efforts have nothing remotely close to that. Also failure was seen as a bigger deal for all involved (due to the soviet threat). So, they'd rather waterfall the hell out of that program rather than fail and do things iteratively. I'm sure these commercial projects will eventually succeed. But it takes time.
Why do you express the budget as a percentage of GDP instead of inflation adjusted dollars?
To better represent how big of an effort it was. A non-trivial part of the economy was dedicated to get that project working. I think that is a better representation of the effort.
Once numbers are sufficiently large, most humans fail to grasp the amount. Most people can grok a percentage though.
Wow, 2-3% of the GDP is massive. I didn’t realize it was such a well-funded effort.
I am wondering if 2-3% of GDP is accurate? 2-3% of GDP was spent on 0.2% of the population ... Really?