Watched the SpaceX launch,

Every mission is a answered question for the next design, have Fixed more and faster in The flights made than NASA did to deliver Saturn V.

Spectacular achievements. Humans will soon be on Mars, soon building outposts to further ourselves.

A rather unfair comparison- let us put equal footing upon the apples:

The Saturn program didn't have the Space-X knowledge to build upon, and Space-x didn't have NASA'S sliderules, pencils and vacuum-tube microprocessors.

If NASA had Space-X's 60-years' technical advantage, the astronauts that gave their lives, would have been around to yield even greater advancement...

and in reversed roles, Space-X would have lost hundreds of astronauts, not remotely-guided test platforms.

In reality, it would be only accurate to suggest that Space-Ex succeeds only because NASA accomplished it half a century earlier, with significantly less available technology that had to be developed when none other existed.

It is clearly a circumstance of time having lifting one up upon the shoulders of giants.

the unknown defines limits of discovery. Sailing across the ocean to find the new world was once a 3 month life risking task. Flying across it solo in 70 hours was a monumental advancement, now it's a daily occurrence at 35,000 feet.

Had it not been for a pair of bicycle mechanics from Ohio, or minnesota iron and West Virginia coal miners and with Philadelphia ironworkers we might still be hewing masts from tall trees.

My grandfather revitalized a lake resort in NW Iowa after WW2. he had a half dozen wood fishing boats with oars and motors.

A salesman showed up one day, with a new technology...
Fiberglass boats. My grandfather said 'If God wanted us to have fiberglass boats, he would have given us fiberglass trees".

fifty years later, a friend of my dad showed up at the local river beach in a brown fiberglass boat.

My dad said "If God wanted us to have Brown Fiberglass Boats..

He would have given us Brown Fiberglass Trees!"