12 ms·

Are these numbers inflation adjusted? The difference would be far more dramatic if not.

quercusa 6y ago
It's surprising not to see that anywhere — it's the natural question.
dgacmu 6y ago
Thanks for asking this, it's super-important to understand it. If they're not infation-adjusted, then there's already been a (very slow) exponential reduction in the cost. I think they are inflation-adjusted. Here's an inflation-adjusted source that explicitly lets you pick FY2021 dollars as the reference: https://aerospace.csis.org/data/space-launch-to-low-earth-orbit-how-much-does-it-cost/ https://aerospace.csis.org/data/space-launch-to-low-earth-or... It puts the Saturn V at $5k USD/kg, the same as this article. What's interesting is that it shows a general downward trend a little more clearly than this one does, but the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are still very shocking outliers.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Not at my computer, but this function in mathematica would help: https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/InflationAdjust.html https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/InflationAdjust.h...
TeMPOraL 6y ago
They seem to be unadjusted. The source link under the picture links to this dataset: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1TPewJ64QNVtM5sbRDIXuMO3rsSSQ2ZZA2SwvMF6CEVg/htmlview https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1TPewJ64QNVtM5sbR... There's a column there for inflation-adjusted prices, but not much data in it.
- zamadatix 6y ago
  This seems to support it being adjusted not unadjusted. There is no unadjusted column and the Saturn V is listed as 5400 adjusted which lines up with the graph, if it were the unadjusted number it'd be ~7x off.
watfly 6y ago
Just updated the figures to be inflation adjusted.
nijave 6y ago
There is a source link in the article that shows a spreadsheet that claims to be inflation adjusted Edit looks like it was updated minutes ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

It's surprising not to see that anywhere — it's the natural question.

Thanks for asking this, it's super-important to understand it. If they're not infation-adjusted, then there's already been a (very slow) exponential reduction in the cost. I think they are inflation-adjusted. Here's an inflation-adjusted source that explicitly lets you pick FY2021 dollars as the reference: https://aerospace.csis.org/data/space-launch-to-low-earth-orbit-how-much-does-it-cost/ https://aerospace.csis.org/data/space-launch-to-low-earth-or... It puts the Saturn V at $5k USD/kg, the same as this article. What's interesting is that it shows a general downward trend a little more clearly than this one does, but the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are still very shocking outliers.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Not at my computer, but this function in mathematica would help: https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/InflationAdjust.html https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/InflationAdjust.h...

TeMPOraL 6y ago

They seem to be unadjusted. The source link under the picture links to this dataset: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1TPewJ64QNVtM5sbRDIXuMO3rsSSQ2ZZA2SwvMF6CEVg/htmlview https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1TPewJ64QNVtM5sbR... There's a column there for inflation-adjusted prices, but not much data in it.

zamadatix 6y ago
This seems to support it being adjusted not unadjusted. There is no unadjusted column and the Saturn V is listed as 5400 adjusted which lines up with the graph, if it were the unadjusted number it'd be ~7x off.

watfly 6y ago

Just updated the figures to be inflation adjusted.

nijave 6y ago

There is a source link in the article that shows a spreadsheet that claims to be inflation adjusted Edit looks like it was updated minutes ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]