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Worth pointing out however that the Saturn V cost roughly $1.2B per launch, compared to $90M for the Falcon Heavy. So it was roughly 6x more expensive per kg to
by kore 9y ago
Worth pointing out however that the Saturn V cost roughly $1.2B per launch, compared to $90M for the Falcon Heavy. So it was roughly 6x more expensive per kg to LEO.
Not to mention it required a nation state to fund its roughly $40-80B development cost. Can only guess, but would expect the development costs of the Falcon 1/9/Heavy were maybe $3-5B?
That said, Space X has benefited from all of the R&D done in the past. They weren't building it in a vacuum.
- chasingthewind 9y agoYou said it first and better :)
- lionpixel 9y agoIn the press conference after the Falcon Heavy start a journalist asked the question of how much the investment was. Elon answered “around half a billion [silent for 1s] propably more.”
- kore 9y agoCorrect, but that was just the cost to develop the core booster of the Falcon Heavy. That doesn't include the original costs to develop the Falcon 9 and all of its subsequent variants, nor the cost to develop the original Falcon 1.