No. Have you heard the expression, "Standing on the shoulders of giants?" It means that we build on what has come before. That only works if you don't lose what you've already done. Every time a company forgets its past achievements we take two steps backwards.

In this specific example there is a tremendous amount of large-engine experience wrapped up in the F1. These engineers are trying to learn from that to help design the next generation of big engines. Ignoring the work done on the F1 - failing to resurrect it - would force them to make the same expensive mistakes as their predecessors. And that, more than anything, will put a nail in progress's coffin.

It's a good thing there aren't a lot of patents in the space industry, or aren't enforced as heavily as they could be.

I'm not sure whether it was possible for the private companies contracted by the space program to patent their publicly-funded work.

Interesting to see what happens now that private enterprise is running its own programs alongside the government. I believe there will be a distinct chilling of relations between the main private players in a few years, once their main competition becomes each other rather than the government.

I am not sure it is possible for private companies to patent rocket work, with help from the public or otherwise. Rocket technology is heavily export controlled.

The patents on all these components expired before I was born.

Looks more like they're picking up where they have left, rather than shorting progress in place of recent advancements of which there aren't any.

Your statement is wrong is so many levels that's quite easy to tear it apart. Let's start by the meaning of the word progress. The second definition of the Ofxford Dictionary states: advance or development toward better, more complete, or more modern condition. According to that, in order to have progress made you've got to start somewhere. Another word for that would be engineering.

Anyway, I'd say researching a F1 engine is a great start point to progress towards the development of a newer rocket engine. Kudos to these guys!

How about investing all this time in trying to develop alternative propulsion system? This will not be categorize as a progress from the traditional rocket propulsion ?

You're acting as though NASA announced that it will exclusively focus on last century technology. NASA is spending a lot more time and money focused on future rockets and spacecraft than they are on the F1. Check the article again: this is just a small team of junior engineers. Also, given that most of the people who build the moon rockets are dead, studying what they did is extremely important. It's like school: most of what you learned is old news, invented by people long dead. Better not spend any time learning about it, right?