I could be wrong, but these two things don’t seem like they’re really that comparable. Apollo was certainly a monumental engineering achievement, but did it require that we 100X the state of the art efficiency of some critical tech?
One order of magnitude in propulsion.
When Kennedy made his “We choose to go to the Moon” speech [1], our most powerful rocket was the Saturn I. Its H-1 engines thrusted at 200k lbf [2]. The Saturn V’s F-1s did 1.5mm lbf [3]. (The Saturn V, similarly, could lift an order of magnitude more mass to LEO than the Saturn I.)
It wouldn’t surprise me to find 100x increases in some material’s performance, et cetera.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_Moon
Saturn V had a specific impulse of 263 s [1]. NSTAR did 3,000 s [2]. That’s an order of magnitude improvement in efficiency in 30 years of low-effort improvements.
Starship should demonstrate in-orbit refuelling next year. That’s another 10x technology. Add on a solar sail and you’re in the realm of two orders of magnitude of efficiency gains with known technologies. (Three from Apollo.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Solar_Technology_Applic...