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> At more than $100 million each (equivalent to $750 million today), they departed Earth, then fell in pieces into the ocean. Could you imagine the unit cost t

> At more than $100 million each (equivalent to $750 million today), they departed Earth, then fell in pieces into the ocean. Could you imagine the unit cost today, if we kept building Saturn V in an iteratively improving process? Even as an expendable rocket, the efficiencies from mass production and weight savings from miniaturizing avionics would have produced a very capable, affordable machine.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
We modernized and rationalized the Space Shuttle to make the SLS and each SLS costs > $4B. Building Saturn V's at low volume under the standard cost-plus arrangements that NASA uses with Boeing et al would result in steadily increasing costs.
- khuey 2y ago
  > We modernized and rationalized the Space Shuttle to make the SLS and each SLS costs > $4B. Except we didn't, because we took absurdly high-end engines (RS-25s) that were designed for reuse and refurbishment and now we drop them in the ocean after every launch.
  - BuyMyBitcoins 2y ago
    And because we are using those engines, which lack sufficient thrust at liftoff, we have to use the Solid Rocket Boosters. Those were supposed to be recoverable but the SLS just drops them into the ocean now too.
    - Aloha 2y ago
      AFAIK, we do recover and refurbish them - at least when shuttle was flying.
      - Polizeiposaune 2y ago
        Not any more. SLS drops them in the ocean.
        jasongill 2y ago
        So did the Shuttle; all of the Shuttle SRB's were recovered (with one obvious exception) and refurbished and reused at least in part. It wouldn't make sense for either Shuttle or SLS to drop them on the ground
        bpodgursky 2y ago
        And yet, the SLS does.
        V99 2y ago
        The two solid rocket booster casings are dropped into the ocean and (usually) recovered with both the Shuttle and SLS. RS-25s were the three main engines. They were very expensive, designed for reuse and were recovered with the rest of the orbiter they were bolted on to. Not in the ocean. Then refurbished with a much greater amount of effort and money than initially expected, and eventually reused on a future mission.. But the SLS first stage doesn't fly itself back to Cape Canaveral after 2 weeks like the Shuttle orbiter did. So those now FOUR very expensive "reusable" engines are now chucked into the ocean never to be seen again.
        Polizeiposaune 2y ago
        They've given up on refurbishing & refueling the SRB casings for the SLS.
        lupusreal 2y ago
        Simply having to maintain one or more ships (continuous expense, year round, year after year), to fish those tubes out of the ocean (once every few years) almost certainly ate up any cost savings they could possibly get from refurbing the tubes.
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      Space Shuttle (and now SLS) SRBs always dropped into the ocean for recovery after the fact.
      - mikepurvis 2y ago
        I think it’s actually a bit more nuanced than that, see: https://space.stackexchange.com/a/45894 https://space.stackexchange.com/a/45894 Basically the SRB had multiple modules and some were more reusable than others, so some got recovered and refurbished a lot more.
    - tim333 2y ago
      I found on a forum >it would cost $23 million to refurbish a used SRB and $12~70 million to refuel it. A unconfirmed sources, that worked at NASA claim that Thikol employee explained to him. That reuse cost 3 time more, than a expendable SRB https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=51959.0 https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=51959.0
andrew_lettuce 2y ago
https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm
stickfigure 2y ago
...or possibly one would have failed, killing three astronauts and ending the program. It very nearly happened once during 13 total flights. Not great odds.
- kqr 2y ago
  We did kill three astronauts during the Apollo project. It's just that space people tend to die closer to the ground. The space shuttle had something like 1:70 in practise but was planned for 1:90. Artemis is currently evaluated at 1:70 too, which is deemed a little too high. We seem to be ready to sacrifice people to space at a relatively high cadence.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    The Shuttle program never properly calculated their risk in the first place because NASA admins preferred happy fiction. Only after Challenger broke up and slammed six professional astronauts and a school teacher into the ocean were the NASA admins forced to face realistic risk figures for the program. Today, NASA as an institution has learned nothing from it. Their heat shield for Orion is defective and they tried to cover it up instead of admitting the problem. They're still proceeding under the assumption that they can simply ignore the hear shield not performing as designed if they use a different reentry profile, which they intend to do without first testing this theory.
  - ChadBrogramer69 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - kqr 2y ago
      Compared to virtually every other profession, where we don't have death rates of even close to that of astronauts. Please leave your insults at home when you go on the internet.
      - naavis 2y ago
skirge 2y ago
None because this institution didn't have that objective in mind. Rockets were financed by government in "cost plus" mode which made no sense in cost saving. "Rocket science" was synonym to something complex, created by people who wanted to raise costs. SpaceX proved that you can make rockets from same material your kitchen pots are made.
starspangled 2y ago
If it continued to be built as government projects by the same old military industrial corporation contractors? Yes I sure can imagine the unit cost, but "astronomical" is the word that comes to mind, rather than affordable. I won't say they weren't capable or reliable, but what made rockets affordable was the privatization effort that happened after the USA, under the careful stewardship of NASA and those MIC corporations, lost the ability to send astronauts to space for the first time in 50 years, and was humiliatingly forced to rely on Russia for its astronaut launch services, even using Russian rocket engines for launching payloads of important national security and economic importance.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  The Saturn Vs were built by private contractors, as were the Shuttles. What changed is those contractors got fat and lazy off the cost-plus contracts and lost their will to get shit done on time. Fixing those contractors is probably impossible, those companies are addicted to inefficiency as surely as junkies to heroin. Rather they simply need to be replaced by new contractors, ideally under fixed-price contracts, that presently have a demonstrable ability to get shit done. And should they ever lose their edge, they need to be cut loose and replaced again. Ruthlessly excising inefficient contractors despite their heritage and legacy, rather than keeping them around to keep senators happy, is how you keep capabilities.
  - starspangled 2y ago
    > The Saturn Vs were built by private contractors, as were the Shuttles. Yes, under government run projects. The change in direction from the administration around the Obama administration is considered privatization / commercialization of space launch services not because private companies are now involved in building rockets, but because the projects are largely private, and the government mainly bids for services not rocket construction.
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      SLS is as much a government run project as the Shuttle and Saturn V. It's the old way of doing things, and that's why it's so wasteful and useless. The commercialization of launch services has given us SpaceX and Rocketlab, which are both lean and efficient by any measure and easily so by the measure of programs NASA is more involved in.
Gravityloss 2y ago
It's really hard to take a Saturn V and make it reusable. Though there were plans [1] It would be better to develop technology at a smaller scale, being able to iterate more, both in more paths explored per dollar and per year. In that sense DC-X and the lunar lander challenge were on to something, as was Fastrac. Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Starship then continued from there. (Spaceshipone and hybrids were a dead end.) 1: http://www.astronautix.com/w/wingedsaturnv.html http://www.astronautix.com/w/wingedsaturnv.html
wat10000 2y ago
Soyuz followed that path. The result is a pretty dependable, pretty cheap launcher, but nothing too remarkable.
fsckboy 2y ago
>Could you imagine the unit cost today, if we kept building Saturn V in an iteratively improving process?... the efficiencies from mass production and weight savings from miniaturizing avionics the Saturn Vs were hand-welded but large numbers of welders; we can't even build one today because there is no workforce of skilled welders remaining. And avionics I don't think contributed substantially to the Saturn V's weight. I think SpaceX's iteratively improved process is what produces the capable affordable machine.

bryanlarsen 2y ago

We modernized and rationalized the Space Shuttle to make the SLS and each SLS costs > $4B. Building Saturn V's at low volume under the standard cost-plus arrangements that NASA uses with Boeing et al would result in steadily increasing costs.

khuey 2y ago
> We modernized and rationalized the Space Shuttle to make the SLS and each SLS costs > $4B. Except we didn't, because we took absurdly high-end engines (RS-25s) that were designed for reuse and refurbishment and now we drop them in the ocean after every launch.
- BuyMyBitcoins 2y ago
  And because we are using those engines, which lack sufficient thrust at liftoff, we have to use the Solid Rocket Boosters. Those were supposed to be recoverable but the SLS just drops them into the ocean now too.
  - Aloha 2y ago
    AFAIK, we do recover and refurbish them - at least when shuttle was flying.
    - Polizeiposaune 2y ago
      Not any more. SLS drops them in the ocean.
      - jasongill 2y ago
        So did the Shuttle; all of the Shuttle SRB's were recovered (with one obvious exception) and refurbished and reused at least in part. It wouldn't make sense for either Shuttle or SLS to drop them on the ground
        bpodgursky 2y ago
        And yet, the SLS does.
        V99 2y ago
        The two solid rocket booster casings are dropped into the ocean and (usually) recovered with both the Shuttle and SLS. RS-25s were the three main engines. They were very expensive, designed for reuse and were recovered with the rest of the orbiter they were bolted on to. Not in the ocean. Then refurbished with a much greater amount of effort and money than initially expected, and eventually reused on a future mission.. But the SLS first stage doesn't fly itself back to Cape Canaveral after 2 weeks like the Shuttle orbiter did. So those now FOUR very expensive "reusable" engines are now chucked into the ocean never to be seen again.
        Polizeiposaune 2y ago
        They've given up on refurbishing & refueling the SRB casings for the SLS.
        lupusreal 2y ago
        Simply having to maintain one or more ships (continuous expense, year round, year after year), to fish those tubes out of the ocean (once every few years) almost certainly ate up any cost savings they could possibly get from refurbing the tubes.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    Space Shuttle (and now SLS) SRBs always dropped into the ocean for recovery after the fact.
    - mikepurvis 2y ago
      I think it’s actually a bit more nuanced than that, see: https://space.stackexchange.com/a/45894 https://space.stackexchange.com/a/45894 Basically the SRB had multiple modules and some were more reusable than others, so some got recovered and refurbished a lot more.
  - tim333 2y ago
    I found on a forum >it would cost $23 million to refurbish a used SRB and $12~70 million to refuel it. A unconfirmed sources, that worked at NASA claim that Thikol employee explained to him. That reuse cost 3 time more, than a expendable SRB https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=51959.0 https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=51959.0

andrew_lettuce 2y ago

https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm https://idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lunacy_of_artemis.htm

stickfigure 2y ago

...or possibly one would have failed, killing three astronauts and ending the program. It very nearly happened once during 13 total flights. Not great odds.

kqr 2y ago
We did kill three astronauts during the Apollo project. It's just that space people tend to die closer to the ground. The space shuttle had something like 1:70 in practise but was planned for 1:90. Artemis is currently evaluated at 1:70 too, which is deemed a little too high. We seem to be ready to sacrifice people to space at a relatively high cadence.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  The Shuttle program never properly calculated their risk in the first place because NASA admins preferred happy fiction. Only after Challenger broke up and slammed six professional astronauts and a school teacher into the ocean were the NASA admins forced to face realistic risk figures for the program. Today, NASA as an institution has learned nothing from it. Their heat shield for Orion is defective and they tried to cover it up instead of admitting the problem. They're still proceeding under the assumption that they can simply ignore the hear shield not performing as designed if they use a different reentry profile, which they intend to do without first testing this theory.
- ChadBrogramer69 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - kqr 2y ago
    Compared to virtually every other profession, where we don't have death rates of even close to that of astronauts. Please leave your insults at home when you go on the internet.
    - naavis 2y ago

skirge 2y ago

None because this institution didn't have that objective in mind. Rockets were financed by government in "cost plus" mode which made no sense in cost saving. "Rocket science" was synonym to something complex, created by people who wanted to raise costs. SpaceX proved that you can make rockets from same material your kitchen pots are made.

starspangled 2y ago

If it continued to be built as government projects by the same old military industrial corporation contractors? Yes I sure can imagine the unit cost, but "astronomical" is the word that comes to mind, rather than affordable. I won't say they weren't capable or reliable, but what made rockets affordable was the privatization effort that happened after the USA, under the careful stewardship of NASA and those MIC corporations, lost the ability to send astronauts to space for the first time in 50 years, and was humiliatingly forced to rely on Russia for its astronaut launch services, even using Russian rocket engines for launching payloads of important national security and economic importance.

lupusreal 2y ago
The Saturn Vs were built by private contractors, as were the Shuttles. What changed is those contractors got fat and lazy off the cost-plus contracts and lost their will to get shit done on time. Fixing those contractors is probably impossible, those companies are addicted to inefficiency as surely as junkies to heroin. Rather they simply need to be replaced by new contractors, ideally under fixed-price contracts, that presently have a demonstrable ability to get shit done. And should they ever lose their edge, they need to be cut loose and replaced again. Ruthlessly excising inefficient contractors despite their heritage and legacy, rather than keeping them around to keep senators happy, is how you keep capabilities.
- starspangled 2y ago
  > The Saturn Vs were built by private contractors, as were the Shuttles. Yes, under government run projects. The change in direction from the administration around the Obama administration is considered privatization / commercialization of space launch services not because private companies are now involved in building rockets, but because the projects are largely private, and the government mainly bids for services not rocket construction.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    SLS is as much a government run project as the Shuttle and Saturn V. It's the old way of doing things, and that's why it's so wasteful and useless. The commercialization of launch services has given us SpaceX and Rocketlab, which are both lean and efficient by any measure and easily so by the measure of programs NASA is more involved in.

Gravityloss 2y ago

It's really hard to take a Saturn V and make it reusable. Though there were plans [1] It would be better to develop technology at a smaller scale, being able to iterate more, both in more paths explored per dollar and per year. In that sense DC-X and the lunar lander challenge were on to something, as was Fastrac. Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Starship then continued from there. (Spaceshipone and hybrids were a dead end.) 1: http://www.astronautix.com/w/wingedsaturnv.html http://www.astronautix.com/w/wingedsaturnv.html

wat10000 2y ago

Soyuz followed that path. The result is a pretty dependable, pretty cheap launcher, but nothing too remarkable.

fsckboy 2y ago

>Could you imagine the unit cost today, if we kept building Saturn V in an iteratively improving process?... the efficiencies from mass production and weight savings from miniaturizing avionics the Saturn Vs were hand-welded but large numbers of welders; we can't even build one today because there is no workforce of skilled welders remaining. And avionics I don't think contributed substantially to the Saturn V's weight. I think SpaceX's iteratively improved process is what produces the capable affordable machine.