To me there's a pretty big difference. The moon landing was a national effort envisioned by the President and involving thousands of employees in the public se

To me there's a pretty big difference. The moon landing was a national effort envisioned by the President and involving thousands of employees in the public sector as well as massive media coverage and public funding + support for close to a decade. SpaceX is a private company. Their accomplishments, while impressive, are nowhere near the same national-level endeavors as the Apollo program. Also, if you ask anyone who was at least 5 years old in 1969, they will tell you the two events were nowhere near the same on an emotional and pure coverage level. The moon landing was by far the most-watched television broadcast in history up to that point, and held that record for a decade - 650 million viewers for a live event. Demo-2 was less than 11 million (with probably a billion more people having access to it than in 1969). It kind of saddens me that America has gotten to the point where people think these two events are equivalent. We've really lost the sense of what national identity-defining big projects even mean.