We could have had this all along.
First there are solid state inertial motion sensors[1]. Those combined gyros, accelerometers, and magnetometers that way just a few grams. Those bad boys weighed a couple hundred pounds in the Apollo rockets. We put the equivalent up in a $100 quadcopter these days.
Second there is 3D printing of rocket engine alloy, this allows SpaceX to 3d print a raptor engine[2] both faster, lighter, and without error than any engine we could have built before 2010.
Third was the development of fracking which created so much methane availability [3] that using it for rocket fuel became cost effective.
Fourth and fifth changes were three decimal orders of magnitude on the ability of computers to compute with a commensurate drop in cost, and with that an explosion the the ability to use high frequency radio to do things that used to be done by cable harnesses and wiring. (sorry no citation, general knowledge)
I can appreciate that it is really really hard to internalize how much as changed and improved since Apollo and can strongly recommend a trip to one's local science museum if you have one to get a visceral sort of amazement at what Apollo engineers did with the technology available to them at the time.
So it isn't accurate to say we could have had this all along, although if one of the 'big' players like Lockheed Martin or Grumman Aerospace had continued investing even after the 'Star Wars' program was cancelled I do agree we would have had it sooner than we did. How much sooner? Maybe 5 years? But it is important to realize that at that time (late 80's early 90's) they didn't know that the Internet was going to be a thing and so they didn't have a built in "market" for all of that launch capability. Even with Teledesic[4] which tried to go there, you needed someone who like Musk who was too ignorant of what "could be done" to push a bunch of really smart people beyond what they thought they were capable of.
[1] Apollo PGNCS --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_PGNCS
[2] SpaceX simplifies Raptor engine: Has it used additive manufacturing? --- https://www.tctmagazine.com/additive-manufacturing-3d-printi...
[3] The U.S. fracking revolution has caused natural gas prices to drop 47 percent compared to what the price would have been prior to the fracking revolution in 2013. --- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-economic-benefits-of-...
[4] Teledesic -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic
Musk isn't Tony Stark, single-handedly building everything. But then again, that's not how most innovations work.
Engineers who worked directly with Musk, such as Tom Mueller, have spoken about Musk's technical acumen and involvement in managing projects.
There have been many rocket programs, both public and private, that have accomplished less with more money. Bezos's Blue Origin, for example, started earlier than SpaceX and had a much richer backer for most of its existence, but is only now hoping to launch its first orbital rocket (and I hope they succeed).
There's more to it than just writing a check.
He’s a twat. But he has vision longer than the next quarter and can inspire / coerce people into delivering.
“Never been done before – xAI did in 19 days what everyone else needs one year to accomplish.”
He’s a twat? What are your credentials?
It's a lot less impressive being the second person to fly a plane. Grok was released in November 4, 2023; Llama was released freely in February 2023. They had plenty to build off.
> He’s a twat? What are your credentials?
What credentials would be relevant to determining that?
I credit Musk for a lot of the vision behind SpaceX, but I'm glad he seems a bit distracted from it right now with X etc. It's possible to be both visionary and a twat simultaneously. Howard Hughes serves as a similar example.
For sure. Outstanding vision. I'll give him credit. But vision doesn't launch a rocket or finance a business. There are probably thousands of people out there with sufficient "vision" to build a space program, but only one of them is a billionaire willing to finance it. Musk is not some one of a kind unique person. He just happens to be one of the few who have the means ($$) to hire people who can actually bring his vision to life.
IIRC they were talking about 100+ Apollo launches to get a real space station, moon base, and expedition missions to Mars by 1980 and with that would have come a real drive to innovate and improve on the Saturn V.
Without the computational power that we take for granted today they would have definitely brute forced their way to elegant solutions and got somewhere close to where we are by the mid 90s.
This would have lead to tremendous innovations in solar panels, batteries, and metallurgy much sooner than we ended up getting to them.
Instead we chose a different path and made ourselves completely dependent on oil.
Now only if Project Orion had not been canceled due to international treaties banning nuclear testing we’d be on the moons of Jupiter by now (sigh).
I think that the Saturn V was a solid platform that was robust enough to do the kinds of things that Von Braun and others had in mind as well as versatile enough to be improved upon.
They would have done it with sufficient budget but the political drive wasn't there. The politicians were more concerned with killing Vietnamese and Cambodians and then selling out American interests to oil companies.