alt Hacker NewsWay more safety and rigid testing procedures and a better understanding - the Apollo program was all done by the seat of the pants engineering that somehow worked all based on the ideas of the team that built the German V2.
Each F1 rocket engine was hand tuned by drilling holes into the "plate" so it would not cause the combustion mixture to vibrate the engine into smithereens.
Such an approach would never be tolerated today by NASA.
That doesn't imply that it was faster though. It just implies they didn't have the technology to simulate it, nor CNC machining to do it another way.
I mean does it sound like that was faster then what we can do today?