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Starship didn't really start in a meaningful way in 2012. In 2012 there were at best some vague concepts of a large rocket and some initial concept ideas for Ra
by panick21_ 3y ago
Starship didn't really start in a meaningful way in 2012. In 2012 there were at best some vague concepts of a large rocket and some initial concept ideas for Raptor. But at that time for Raptor they were still thinking about Hydrolox.
SpaceX simply didn't have the resource to fully invest in Starship until much later. Even by the early presentations around 2016 it was a tiny part of SpaceX and was prototyping with limited resources. Real ramp up of spending happened significantly later.
Your understanding of Apollo is also flawed. The F-1 engine started development as early as 1955, not 1961. So if anything your 2012 date would be more like 1955.
Starship is also twice as powerful as Saturn V and designed to be reusable in both stages. That's a significantly harder task. Had SpaceX just wanted to match Saturn V, that would have been significantly easier.
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoWell, whether you want to call it 8/9 years ('61-'69) or 14 ('55-'69), I don't think NASA looks too shabby landing men on the moon in that time frame without the decades of experience we have to draw on today, and with 1950's/60's technology, and so far no-one else has done it.
- ben_w 3y agoThe Apollo missions were certainly an achievement worthy of getting memorialised. I also think that, given the size of the Apollo landers, if SpaceX had actually wanted to they could've redone those missions years ago with a Falcon Heavy and a variant of the Crew Dragon design.
- electriclove 3y agoThe NASA of that time has been long gone for decades
- panick21_ 3y agoNobody said it was 'shabby'.
- chrisco255 3y agoYeah they did less than 20 launches, had 6 successful missions, and then had to kill the program because the costs were too high at a $500B equivalent annual budget. Apollo 1 also burnt up and killed 3 astronauts on the ground. Modern day NASA could not redo the Saturn V missions again. They lost the talent that achieved those missions a long time ago.
- leoc 3y agoIt also seems that Saturn V's performance wasn't flawless, even on crewed missions (though some of the problems were down to external factors like lightning or debris from Skylab): https://www.wired.com/2012/03/great-balls-of-fire-apollo-rocket-explosions-1965/ https://www.wired.com/2012/03/great-balls-of-fire-apollo-roc... .