The ending doesn't quite work, and I'd say neither does the article as a whole really.
First, we didn't really forget "greek fire" or "roman concrete" exactly. We don't know what the formula for "greek fire" was exactly because it wasn't recorded. But in modern times we have an amazing chemistry and can come up with a hundred formulas for napalm -- we just don't know which of those matches "greek fire". Nothing was lost but the association between a formula we almost certainly know and a name.
Same goes for roman concrete. We know far more about concrete than the Romans did. We just don't bother to engineer everything to last forever, because that costs money and has little point to it a lot of the time. Yes, some buildings are works of art, but many things just have a function to fulfill, which is often temporary. Nobody is sad that the millions of mass-made soviet residential crappy buildings aren't still as good as new. If they were made to a better standard they'd still be ugly cookie cutter things.
And I'd say the same goes for the Saturn V. We didn't forget material science or heat shielding. We launch plenty rockets and even landed car sized robots on Mars -- that required excellent understanding of heat shielding. If we had any reason to build a modern copy, we'd use whatever shielding is required, after accounting for modern improved materials. We wouldn't be dumbfounded that the thing melted down on the launch pad. That in the popular consciousness we see the engines without the asbestos covering doesn't really mean much of anything.
First, we didn't really forget "greek fire" or "roman concrete" exactly. We don't know what the formula for "greek fire" was exactly because it wasn't recorded. But in modern times we have an amazing chemistry and can come up with a hundred formulas for napalm -- we just don't know which of those matches "greek fire". Nothing was lost but the association between a formula we almost certainly know and a name.
Same goes for roman concrete. We know far more about concrete than the Romans did. We just don't bother to engineer everything to last forever, because that costs money and has little point to it a lot of the time. Yes, some buildings are works of art, but many things just have a function to fulfill, which is often temporary. Nobody is sad that the millions of mass-made soviet residential crappy buildings aren't still as good as new. If they were made to a better standard they'd still be ugly cookie cutter things.
And I'd say the same goes for the Saturn V. We didn't forget material science or heat shielding. We launch plenty rockets and even landed car sized robots on Mars -- that required excellent understanding of heat shielding. If we had any reason to build a modern copy, we'd use whatever shielding is required, after accounting for modern improved materials. We wouldn't be dumbfounded that the thing melted down on the launch pad. That in the popular consciousness we see the engines without the asbestos covering doesn't really mean much of anything.