It's not a loss of art, it's a loss of political will. Given the same budget as in the Apollo years, I have no doubt NASA could produce something better than the Saturn V. But its current funding is a tiny fraction of that. (I mean, Apollo 18 was a complete mission that was scrapped, more-or-less to save the cost of the fuel).
NASA is building something better than the Saturn V: By buying launches from SpaceX, they've enabled a company that is going to fly a rocket that's 1/2 of a Saturn V next year, in a family of rockets that's commercially viable and has a high launch rate.
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It's not a loss of art, it's a loss of political will. Given the same budget as in the Apollo years, I have no doubt NASA could produce something better than the Saturn V. But its current funding is a tiny fraction of that. (I mean, Apollo 18 was a complete mission that was scrapped, more-or-less to save the cost of the fuel).
NASA is building something better than the Saturn V: By buying launches from SpaceX, they've enabled a company that is going to fly a rocket that's 1/2 of a Saturn V next year, in a family of rockets that's commercially viable and has a high launch rate.