Traveling to the Moon

So i'm reading the wikipedia article about the New Horizons mission to Pluto scheduled to arrive in 2015. It mentioned that it only took the craft 9 hours to reach the moon, compared to three days that Apollo 11 took in 1969. So, if we were to send a rocket full of astronauts and equipment to the moon today, would it take only nine hours like the pluto mission craft? Would all that weight slow the escape velocity and make a longer trip? Is modern rocket technology a lot more powerful than it was when we first went to the moon?

To go somewhere in space, you first accelerate the first half of the way there, the second half you start decelerating.  If you accelerated all the way to the moon (there's not much friction in space by the way so you can go like really fast) you'd smash into it or not be picked up by it's gravity if you like circling it and stuff.  I don't, I'd rather speed straight for it and ignite my forward boosters, then I align the ship while letting the AI control the boosters.  Landing is still a pain though as the ship will explode if you land too fast.  I think there's a way to someone make this easier but when I try it I crash about half the time... also, when I finally manage to land, my mining bots won't find any minerals because I'm in a star system too close to coordinates 0,0,0 :/