Not to denigrate what's going on now, arguably it's far more important technically and possibly a bigger achievement, but it doesn't _feel_ anything like as exciting as the first shuttle launch. And to be clear, I was pretty pumped to watch the first booster landing and the roadster launch.
Pretty much the whole (western) world stopped to watch it. It felt very much like returning to space for the first time since the end of the Apollo project (it wasn't, but it felt like it), it was such a step change from the previous generation of rockets. This was science fiction in action, it was going to revolutionise space travel. It even looked like a new form of transport, and the speed with which it cleared the gantry was amazing to people used to a Saturn 5.
We taped it off the TV, and I remember going back to watch it again multiple times.
This is more of a commentary on society than anything else. There are much more pressing things happening on facebook these days than autonomously-landing robot rockets.
Maybe, and certainly if we'd seen an unmanned booster land on after completing a successful launch in the early 80's we'd have been very excited, but the shuttle just caught the imagination that bit more. Justifiably or not.
Anyway, the question was, "how do they compare?". Personally, emotionally, they're pretty damn cool, but way less exciting. More so than can be hand-waved away as simply being older and more cynical.
Pretty much the whole (western) world stopped to watch it. It felt very much like returning to space for the first time since the end of the Apollo project (it wasn't, but it felt like it), it was such a step change from the previous generation of rockets. This was science fiction in action, it was going to revolutionise space travel. It even looked like a new form of transport, and the speed with which it cleared the gantry was amazing to people used to a Saturn 5.
We taped it off the TV, and I remember going back to watch it again multiple times.