I understand this sentiment, but if SpaceX pulls this off, it's going to be an order of magnitude cheaper and more sustainable than the incredibly awesome but one-off and flashy Apollo (or even shuttle) missions.
Crew Dragon is not visually BIGGER than a Saturn V, but it is in a lot of ways a firmer footstep into space than we've ever taken before. SpaceX's program isn't going to dry up as soon as the cold war is over, and we stop devoting 5% of GDP to beating the Soviets. This is for real.
Soyuz has done a good job of making spaceflight routine, but unfortunately it's a bit of a dead end (if only for political / organizational reasons, but also the technology hasn't been updated in decades).
I was directly comparing to the Shuttle, which cost more like $450mm per launch.
And yeah, maybe Crew Dragon won't drop to $6mm, but Starship (next) pretty plausibly could, if it works.
You cut off the bit where it was made clear that was in comparison to the Apollo and Shuttle missions. Please don’t knowingly take quotes out of context and use them like that. It’s really unpleasant behaviour.
Crew Dragon is not visually BIGGER than a Saturn V, but it is in a lot of ways a firmer footstep into space than we've ever taken before. SpaceX's program isn't going to dry up as soon as the cold war is over, and we stop devoting 5% of GDP to beating the Soviets. This is for real.