Thats exactly my point. After all these years, and reaching the moon with a computer with the brains of a casio calculator, many years ago, its still a struggle to get into "orbit". Yet, oh la dee da, here we have Spacex charging people a chunk of cash to secure a ride on a extremely dangerous mission thats STILL oh so difficult to accomplish, apparently. Spacex is spending so much money launching rocket after rocket with this and that added to make things easier, and yet its still no easier is it? If it was, dont you think they would offer to the populace a round trip ticket to the moon??? Someplace man has supposedly already been??? More than once??? Shoudlnt that be a piece of cake rather than cramming a schoolbus full of people into a rocket and saying "Enjoy your life on mars, youll never return, we hope you make it, well enjoy your MONEY!"
First point about the computer thing people keep bringing up. NASA had a huge computer at NASA ground control that was sending instructions to those little computers (3 of them) on the lunar lander and orbiter. They where good at a few things.
The struggling to get to orbit is more an energy cost thing. Unlike computers that get smaller and cheaper every year, the energy requirements to go to space are the same year after year. Physics n stuff.
But the costs to go to space have gone down, dramatically. One Apollo mission cost about $110 Billion in todays money. SpaceX is going to send 2 private civilians to a round trip to the moon in 2018 for about $150 million each. That is one hell of a cost reduction.
Why could SpaceX not send people up earlier. Demand and supply. The demand is now increasing because more people can actually afford the price. It still takes very long to build a human rated craft though. Even a simple 4 seater aircraft takes many years to certify.
And remember, SpaceX has only been around for about 10 years. Before them, no other company cared to drop the cost, because that would mean dropping profits $$$