How did we get humans on the moon in 1969 and are still struggling to get the Starship rocket to launch properly?

Different design paradigms. In 1969, they had one shot to get everything right, and prepared accordingly (not to mention, they had a massive budget since the space race was all part of the cold war).

SpaceX is taking a different approach, fail fast and cheap. They are taking an iterative approach that allows them to learn from previous failures, rather than anticipating what all those failures could be and then over engineering the rocket to prevent that.

They are different approaches, and each has their own pros and cons. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

That's a great summary, I appreciate it. Do you think the new approach has been worth it so far? The Artemis 1 launch was successful first try.
- The Artemis 1 launch was also staggeringly expensive, and yet to be repeated.
  
  In the time it's taken to develop that rocket, SpaceX has gone from it's very first real flight (by which I mean actually achieving something, rather than a pure test flight) to launching far more every year than the entire rest of the world combined. Note that by that definition, Artemis hasn't had a single "real" flight yet.
- They have completely different goals. If SpaceX wanted to throw out the Starship and Booster sections every time, they're already as capable as the Artemis launcher. But they are looking longer term, and want to also be 1000x cheaper.
  
  It took them dozens of launches to be able to re-use a Falcon9. They'll get there eventually.
  
  Nobody thought they'd get Falcon 9 to launch, and they did. Nobody thought they'd get Falcon 9 to land, and they did. Nobody thought they'd be able to re-use a Falcon 9 enough to make it worth the investment, and they did.
  
  Doesn't mean they'll succeed, but it does mean they have a good track record.
- To put it in context, Artemis did many fully destructive tests but typically on the ground. Artemis had and spent an overhaul budget that was likely close to a hundred times that of what SpaceX is spending in today's dollars.
  
  And even better representation, all the fully destructive tests of SpaceX have carried out have costs less than a single successful shuttle launch. And it has a much larger payload.
  
  Even with the destructive tests, of which are planned this way, not only is SpaceX is far cheaper than any past space program, they are advancing fairly rapid.
- Well, they've produced the first, (and only so far), truly reusable rocket.
  
  And starship is slated to be the second.

Easy answer. Far less money is being given today to NASA:

Further, that NASA budget includes all the extra planetary science happening (multiple Mars rovers, Deep Space network, LEO space station operations, deep space probes like DART, Juno, OSIRIS-REx, etc, plus all of the atmospheric flight stuff like the low noise supersonic flight experiments. This also includes all of SLS which is a SECOND rocket being made for Moon exploration.

To answer your second question: yes, reuse is worth it. We didn't do it during Apollo because it would have been even more expensive. Because we didn't have it, any flight was just as expensive as the first. So we had to stop going unless the crazy amount of money would stay, which it wouldn't.

Plus SpaceX squanders far less money than the contractors that have sucked off the government teat via NASA for 50+ years.

Those bloated companies are part of the military-industrial complex and finance lobbying to push projects (especially cost-plus) which they can then "compete" for.

Don't get me wrong, I don't blame NASA, this is a problem of politicians and grubby bastards in companies like Boeing, General Dynamics, etc. NASA is controlled by congress and whoever is providing financing - the shuttle development history demonstrates these problems very clearly (competing requirements from Air Force, NSA, etc, who were providing funding).

At a high level, NASA, (like many government projects) have traditionally used more of a "Waterfall" project management approach, while SpaceX has used an iterative Agile-like approach. This means SpaceX can be more nimble while learning along the way, enabling them to change direction when they discover a fundamental misunderstanding. The first launch of Starship demonstrates this approach perfectly.
- NASA was also different in 1960's.
  
  People said they could have meeting with supplies and make changes in the meeting. Now it seems like everything is a huge ballache to change anything.

Several reasons.

1 - SpaceX is a startup company. They run on venture capital, and unlike NASA who gets a big bag of taxpayer money, SpaceX has to promise new investors something better every year. And since SpaceX hasn't come close to turning a profit, they need to do it by making spectacle. Launching Rockets is spectacle. Traditional companies can take their time to get it right, but SpaceX can't draw in the venture capital they need to survive based on one succesful launch every other year. But they can get money with slightly less shitty failures.

2 - SpaceX is using an entirely new type of engines, burning liquid methane instead of kerosine or hydrogen, and making rocket engines is... well.. rocket science. The problem is mostly that it's really really hard to get engines to relight when you don't have gravity, and especially hard when it's methane you're burning. This is why Apollo used hypergolic engines (fuel that will burn when it touches, instead of needing to be lit) for everyone but the main launch.

3 - SpaceX only got the contract for the lunar lander because the head of the lunar lander program, Kathy Lueders, gave them (and not the other parties) a private call to tell them the exact budget available. Then she awarded the contract to SpaceX, for being the only party to submit a bid within the budget. (Source: https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2021cv1695-77-0 the court opinion where they spell out this was legal, and say nothing on wisdom or ethics, pdf alert). Incidentally she now has a cushy and well-paid job at SpaceX.

4 - NASA recently paid a second party, blue Origin, to also develop a lunar lander, so feel free to take that as you will. It's probably not a sign of trust in SpaceX... so I'm willing to say that point 5 is that either SpaceX is shit at this (unlikely, since Falcon 9 is pretty awesome) or they're just not taking it seriously.

Point 1: SpaceX's entire development philosophy is "test early, test often and learn from failures". This is a much quicker pace than simulating every imaginable failure scenario and leads to faster progress in development. With the Falcon 9, that process proved wildly efficient and successful, culminating in a launch vehicle so reliable that it's cheaper to insure a payload on an F9 that already has multiple launches under its belt than a brand new booster. And they're turning enough of a profit to develop the Starship largely on internal funds, seeing how the early Raptor flight tests were before the HLS contract.

Point 2: Just adding, the Raptor engine is the first full-flow staged combustion engine to ever get off a testing stand and actually fly. The engineering complexity of these things is on the level of the Shuttle's RS-25.

Point 3: SpaceX were the only ones with more than designs and mockups to present, and they had a reliable track history from working with NASA on the commercial resupply and crew projects. And I see no problem with awarding a contract to a bid that actually fits into the budget.

Point 4: Multiple options was always part of the plan. NASA wants redundancy, so that if one of the providers runs into problems, the other provider can continue (and perhaps even take up the slack) instead of everything coming to a grinding halt. For a perfect example, look at the Shuttle and Commercial Crew programs. The Shuttle got grounded and since it was NASA's only manned launcher, they had to bum rides from the russians. In contrast, the CC contract was awarded to Boeing and SpaceX. With Starliner's continued issues, SpaceX has picked up the slack and fulfilled more than their initial contract in launches, instead of NASA having to bum rides from the russians again. The initial HLS contract was supposed to go to two providers, until the budget got cut. Blue's bid was always the favorite for the second pick.
- SpaceX’s entire development philosophy is “test early, test often and learn from failures”. This is a much quicker pace than simulating every imaginable failure scenario and leads to faster progress in development.
  
  This is a catchy statement, not an actionable philosophy. There's many ways to do it, and it's entirely possible that SpaceX is doing it poorly.
  
  There's a lot of value in brainstorming every imaginable failure scenario. It's industry standard to do so in fact with HAZOPs. There's failures that you may not necessarily see in testing -- especially those that are rare but catastrophic. This is a field that should be acutely aware of that given past events.
  
  There's also a right way to do testing and a wrong way to do testing. You typically consolidate tests and do several at a time, depending on the stage in the project. And you don't typically risk precious equipment in doing so.
  
  From the sounds of it, they don't have a robust safety program, and they're hemorrhaging money and resources through poor testing philosophies.
- SpaceX’s entire development philosophy is “test early, test often and learn from failures”. This is a much quicker pace than simulating every imaginable failure scenario and leads to faster progress in development.
  
  Is it? Starship has been in development since at least 2012-ish (as the "mars colonial transport" or "its" or "bfr" or a few other names). It hasn't done a succesful mission yet. ULA's Vulcan was anounced in 2014, and it works just fine. So I don't really think it's actually faster or better, but it IS more showy.
  
  They’re turning enough of a profit to develop the Starship largely on internal funds
  
  No they're not.
  
  SpaceX has reported 1 quarter in 2023 with positive cashflow of 55million dollars out of 1.5b in revenue, and has then gone completely silent again. SpaceX has done 33 commercial launches and 63 starlink launches. Some very basic math shows that there is no way Starlink can pay for that (63 launches times 62 million per launch divided by 2.6 million subscribers = 1500$ per user per year, which is every single subscription dollar). So two-thirds of SpaceX launch income comes from a company that itself is unsustainable and operating on purely on venture capital.
  
  Point 3: SpaceX were the only ones with more than designs and mockups to present
  
  Absolute and complete lie. Its exactly the opposite. SpaceX did not, and still DOES NOT have a solid design or mockup of HLS. Dynetics and Blue Origin had both.
  
  I see no problem with awarding a contract to a bid that actually fits into the budget.
  
  The problem is that SpaceX had a bid at the same level of the others, but they lowered it when Kathy Lueders gave them a call (and not the other parties) to lower it. This is spelled out in NASA's own document: https://www3.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-a-source-selection-statement-final.pdf (note how it's fully written in the first person by Kathy herself). This is primary basis, massive favoritism by a NASA employee who then immediately started working for SpaceX. I'll leave the motivations of her doing these things as an exercise to the reader.
  
  When the other two parties found out, they offered not just to match SpaceX bid, but beat it. Of course, since Kathy Lueders didn't show them the same favoritism, they didn't find out till after the bidding process closed.
  
  Multiple options was always part of the plan.
  
  No, the contract stated that anything between zero and three were options, based on funding. They said the goal was two, but then budget was reduced. Nobody was told this. The number of contracts was also reduced to one as a result. Nobody was told this. And then Kathy Lueders gave SpaceX a call, and not the others, to share this information.

We privatized anything related to space exploration.

Remember how Reagan and Thatcher told your parents that private corporations are (somehow) "more efficient" than state run organisations?

Yeah... they lied.

They are more efficient.

They are more efficient moving money from the bottom to the top and making investors and CEOs rich.

They are more efficient at making the minimum product for the price while suppressing labor, reducing customer service, and enshittifying the product as the lifespan of the company progresses in order to do #1.
- Well... since you put it that way - I'll just have to concede.

To add on to what everyone else is saying, compared to the Apollo capsules, Starship is fucking HUGE. Apollo 11's capsule was 10 feet tall by 13 feet in diameter. Starship is 180 feet tall not including the launch vehicle.

Edit to add: Mercury was literally just an ICBM with a dude strapped on top, with Saturn V being based on that design. We're only now beginning to make designs that are actually made just for space travel.

Also... Starship absolutely got into orbit, and could have completed the orbital insertion part of an Apollo style single use mission.

They just haven't finished troubleshooting the re-use part yet. It's already more powerful and cheaper than a Saturn V.

The technology from the Apollo program is gone. It was destroyed and can be developed again but that takes time. Now couple that with the fact that private companies are trying to create a completely new tech with reusable rockets that return to earth intact and you have several engineering hurdles to say the least.

I have to admit it's a beautiful thing seeing it happen! We're going to get there again! We must explore space or become stagnant as a species.

What do you mean the tech was destroyed?
- There was no need to produce the items in question, so we lost the expertise and the underlying manufacturing facilities/experience/etc. Stuff like: The company that made the windows no longer exists. The company that made the panels still exists, but they can no longer source the strictly defined % alloys as that company no longer exists. Stuff like that.
- Also to add to the other person the literal paper files were accidentally destroyed when they were in storage in NASA.

Other commentor answered very well. I'll just add that if China or Russia starts sending successful ships to the moon/mars and/or starts making real steps for a moon base, then you can bet your ass the US government will pour all their resources into our space program. In other words, the Cold War boosted the space program in the 60s because Russia scary. During "peace-time", the US government purposely under funds the living shit out of NASA. That's why private corporations are doing it now, like SpaceX.

I agree, but I'm afraid these days they'd just farm it out to a private business instead of doing it themselves with the goal of doing it right like they did in the 60's. Today they'd overpay some billionaire hugely for worse results because greed for profit = overcharging and substandard parts and oversight.

I don't know for sure but if it started to suck after 1980, it was Reagan's fault.

Safety, scope of mission, budget

The first moon missions were extremely risky. Many people died during development and/or during those missions. As NASA evolved, they reprioritized safety and that changed the demands of the vehicle.

The scope of the missions are also different. The first moon missions were, mostly, about just getting there. Taking moon samples back and doing science experiments were limited. The mission now is for a larger group of people to stay on the moon for week/weeks.

Budget has been a huge issue since the 80s. Once the allure of new and exciting space things died down after the first landing on the moon, public perception and federal budgets got moved to other things. The reason NASA is using the SpaceX rocket isn’t because they couldn’t make something better. But SpaceX has done a lot of the development on their own dime. Getting a moon-worthy rocket without an additional decade of funding and research ensures reasonable timeframes for the new moon missions.

In the early 70s it was a risky and expensive one-time deal. Starship is doing it sustainably and will completely revolutionize space travel. I wouldn't say they're struggling they're just still developing it.

The capabilities of starship are orders of magnitude more payload and for orders or magnitude less money at the same time.

Turns out it's a bad idea to totally scrap a billion dollar rocket every time you use it.

modern companies use "Agile" development

I may have missed it in another comment, but I believe part of it is the cost of lives. During the space race someone dying would've just been part of the risk. Now we are using more automation and a human fatality might risk a company's ability to continue its pursuit.

Because politicians cared more about it back then, nowadays they're too concerned about making the other political party "lose" than doing stuff to actually benefit the country's citizens

Musk wants to reinvent the wheel, essentially

Permanently Deleted

Apollo was a huge government project. It was affectively a military, science, geopolitical and political project that had a lot of backing by the public.

I would argue Apollo is the great project ever and it's kind of unfair to compare anything to it.

But the real crux of this matter here is if you get your info from Lemmy or reddit (and not one of the places filled by experts). It's full of "Lol Elon bad" circlejerking. "Haha the rocket blew up they so stupid". It's really cringe. In fact SpaceX, NASA, the FAA, astronauts who will go on the ships, other space companies, experts they all expected this to happen. This is the plan. (Though the FAA did have some issues).

Ignore the "Elon is an idiot" memes and what you actually find is Elon's SpaceX is probably the greatest rocket company in the world and all rocket agencies including governmental ones though that SpaceX has already achieved was impossible. People don't like seeing that and outright ignore the facts.

Anything could go wrong with this project but I don't think people would be overly concerned if rockets failed all throughout this year. (But it is expected to be better than that.)

Lost me at the second paragraph, Elon most certainly can be a complete moron while SpaceX remains a competent launch provider with, but to ignore his track record and business dealings in considering HLS would be a lapse in judgement.

Aside from the man, the plan of starship is vague at best, and given 2 billion in public funds is planned to be spent on starship this year alone, I would certainly like to know more details.. as NASA does too:

20 launches, up from musks initial 8, will be needed to fuel the craft

Contracts have deadlines and astronauts need assurances

It's really cringe

If NASA is to a point healthy critique is considered cringe, then I doubt we'll be on the moon for long. Sure there's some rashness, but in the publics eye, do you think Apollo could've succeeded if they had dismissed hardware failures as RUDs?

Apollo 1 nearly ended the program, yes it was the deaths of those astronauts that prompted that, but its necessary rigor that prevents another such accident. An inherent con of the trial-by-fire method SpaceX has had is the potential to miss something that wasn't an immediate issue. This can be mitigated, but is a valid source of concern for the engineer.

I however am not nearly qualified to make a call. But I feel as though this video from the channel SmarterEverDay (whose family was involved in Apollo) sums up a set of valid concerns that I think anybody with interest in these this should at least hear.

I want us to go back to the moon just as the next person, but remember: Apollo cost some $200B in todays money, part of that cost was the extensive checks needed to avert tragedy, we must be sure we're not cutting that its only a natural concern. And we can't make heroes of men while we're at it, nobody is infallible, if the proposal is solid it will be the one to take us regardless who's running the show. Or if its not, we cannot afford to make mission proposals personal.
- If NASA is to a point healthy critique is considered cringe, then I doubt we'll be on the moon for long.
  
  You're being intentionally obtuse. I'm obviously not calling NASA cringe and that's not even remotely implied.
  
  NASA is running the project, set the tenders and observing the suppliers. No one would expect anything else. Smartereveryday was largely on about culture at NASA from what I remember from that video. That and the lack of hypergolics. If NASA wanted hypergolics on the moon they could have put a requirement "must use hypergolics on the moon". But they didn't. That's why all the relighting tests are being done. If the engines relight to the needed reliability then everything is fine, they have set the standards.
  
  The Apollo project was tested live. They did all the lab tests but the real world tests were largely done with people in them. Apollo was risky as fuck and would never ever be allowed to happen now. I think some of the astronauts thought there was as high as a 50% of death. The fact you don't know how risky Apollo was to the astronauts shows you don't know much about this because you are using the safety of Apollo as a benchmark. Look I love Apollo but it wasn't a high benchmark of safety.
  
  With things like this. Testing to failure is pretty norm. NASA uses falcon 9 rockers for crew which was largely tested the same way. They obviously have faith in SpaceX because they out humans in their rockets.

Maybe it's because Elon is too busy rattling off on Twitter and building trucks that rust after a couple of days.

SpaceX is not getting people into space, and certainly not to Mars. It'll be a long time before we have someone who's level-headed enough to make such a feat happen again. Even if resources were more limited back in the late 60's, what made stuff work is people knowing how to use the tools they had. Now, we have all this stuff, and nobody with the knowledge to give it any use. It is rocket science, and big, fancy computers aren't going to do anything if you can't write the software for it.

Meanwhile spacex is getting people into space...

reagan

Yes, that's the correct answer