This is attached to a fallacy with Musk's reusable boosters. Out of pure curiosity, I would like to know what percentage of fuel needs to be saved to land the rocket. If you're not going to save the booster, then obviously, you can run the tanks dry.
With respect to VTOL in in aircraft. Even the British launch the Harrier from a ramp on their carriers, because vertical takeoff wastes a ton of fuel. The same is true for landings.
It can't relate directly, since the rocket booster's tanks are so much bigger in relation to its empty weight. But I"m not sure it can be completely ignored. The amount of extra payload would equal the amount of fuel needed to saved for landing
Here I question if Space-X's costs have been reduced by the amount of research money pumped into the moon landing project. After all, NASA is sharing their research with these private companies.
Then too, you can more than likely do launch trajectory and other related maths, on one of today's laptops, as opposed to a roomful of lab workers in white lab coats and "Eniac" vacuum tube computers.
Our government wanted the moon landing done, no matter what the costs. Contractors were pretty much given blank checks to bring the project to fruition. I doubt it would cost 1.1 billion in today's money to build a Saturn V, even if cost versus inflation indicate that that was the case in the past
Here's the page on the "guidance computers" aboard the lunar vehicles: Read the specs. No doubt you'll be amazed, astonished, or appalled. Possibly all three.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
We're pumping a lot of "off budget" money into Space-X.
If we allocated money for NASA into the budget, we'd have to explain why there wasn't enough money to feed and breed new generations of Obama voters in our ghettos, not to mention Medicare and prescription drug plans for an aging population.. In fact, that's (IIRC) why NASA's budget was cut so dramatically, in large part to fund social entitlements.
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