4 ms·
Saturn V was 110m tall and 140t in the 1960s.
by sschueller 4y ago
Saturn V was 110m tall and 140t in the 1960s.
- nomilk 4y agoThe height difference is not huge, but Starship is twice the weight and 1/10th the cost ($50b vs $5bn in 2022 USD)!
- mempko 4y agoStarship at this point is mostly a shell. Internal human grade components aren't there yet. We have no idea what the final cost will be. But doesn't matter since NASA is the one paying.
- 93po 4y agoWhat? This makes zero sense. The cost to create a crew capsule is extremely well understood because they've been made countless times before. Also to imply the cost of that would put any dent whatsoever into the 5b vs 50b comparison is ridiculous. The cost of adding a crew capsule is a rounding error on total cost.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Denvercoder9 4y ago> We have no idea what the final cost will be. But doesn't matter since NASA is the one paying. The HLS contract SpaceX has gotten from NASA is a fixed-fee contract (like most contracts NASA gives out these days), so the final cost absolutely matters to SpaceX's bottom line. Anything they spend beyond the contracted amount they'll have to come up with themselves. A good example of this is Boeing, which is now booking losses on the Starliner program every quarter because it has gone over time and budget.
- panick21_ 4y agoActually we do know what NASA will be paying. Its all in the public contract. And its fixed cost, so it will not cost NASA more, no matter how often it blows up. That doesn't give us details about how much it will cost SpaceX but its good information.
- 93po 4y agoAnd twice the thrust
- samstave 4y agoIs 2x thrust accomplished by scaling # of engines, or are the engines 'more-thrustful' per unit because of engineering advances?
- scrumper 4y agoSV first stage had 5 engines, vs 33 on the Starship's booster. Which I think answers your question :) I don't know about other metrics for comparing engine efficiency. But the design requirements seem quite different here - they have to be restartable (not something the F1 engines on the SV had to worry about), probably more steerable, and able to throttle down to quite low power for landing. And presumably the fact that there's so many in an array also imposes its own constraints on the design.
- samstave 4y ago>>Which I think answers your question :) " it doesnt, please eLI5
- kfarr 4y agoMore engines make it go fast
- barbacoa 4y agoHaving a whole bunch of engines means loosing a few at launch won't end in disaster. That means you can pursue more high-risk, high-performance engine designs.
- vkou 4y agoThe N1 was designed with 30 engines, under that same theory. It, uh, didn't do so well. As it turns out, getting 30 rocket engines to run at once is not trivial.
- rootusrootus 4y agoAs impressive as Starship is or will be, Saturn V has definitely earned a place in the history books that cannot be undone. The first airplane flew in 1903. Just 64 years later, Saturn V was launched for the first time. The fact that it has taken us 56 more years since then to outdo it says a lot.
- mschuster91 4y ago> The fact that it has taken us 56 more years since then to outdo it says a lot. Mostly that people stopped caring after it was proven that, yes, the US can land a person on the moon.
- cubefox 4y agoAnd by all excitement and history and nostalgia, if we are honest, the moon landing program was a massive waste of money. Like the Egyptian pyramids. The are impressive, yes ...
- vkou 4y agoYou're correct. On the scale of vanity projects of questionable utility, manned space flight is definitely up there.