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Even more impressive to me is the fact that Saturn V did in a single launch with 1969 technology, what we're now proposing to do with 10-15 Starship launches (e
by hliyan 1y ago
Even more impressive to me is the fact that Saturn V did in a single launch with 1969 technology, what we're now proposing to do with 10-15 Starship launches (each as large as a Saturn V) and an additional SLS launch for Orion return capsule. What's more, the US had orbital launch expereince of just 3 years (Explorer 1 in 1958) when the Apollo program began, and 8 years later they were on the moon. Perhaps web development is not the only thing that is susceptible to bloat.
- trhway 1y ago>Saturn V did in a single launch with 1969 technology, for up to 0.8% US GDP per year. Today that would be $200B/year, pure spent. Where is Space X today is making, ie. it has a revenue, $15B/year. >Perhaps web development is not the only thing that is susceptible to bloat. similarly - web dev today can be done on $300 laptop by any schmuck. Even simple programming back then required a computer which cost a lot, and it was an almost academic activity.
- supermatt 1y agoSure, but spacex are building on the shoulders of what came before. Easy to save 200bn on research and development if someone else has already paid for it and shares the results for free.
- inglor_cz 1y agoThis is true, but also a bit trivial to observe. Even the Primitive Technology channel, which usually starts with mud and clay, builds on knowledge of other people. The value added is interesting. For example, both the Merlin and the Raptor family of engines. These are some fine engines, and they are remarkably cheap and reusable.
- supermatt 1y agooh sure, no doubt - and the universe before that, etc. but here the baseline set by the comment i responded to was "whatever nasa spent 200b on".
- motorest 1y ago> for up to 0.8% US GDP per year. Today that would be $200B/year, pure spent. Where is Space X today is making, ie. it has a revenue, $15B/year. The likes of SpaceX are reporting costs in the range of $15B/year because NASA front loaded the cost of trailblazing launch technology half a century ago, with the technology available half a century ago. Let's not fool ourselves into believing the likes of SpaceX are reinventing the wheel. Also, those $15B are buying a fraction of the capabilities of SaturnV, and while SaturnV was proven effective and reliable 50 years ago, here we are discussing yet another "anomaly". Perhaps half these "anomalies" wouldn't exist if they weren't lean'ed into existence?
- supermatt 1y ago> NASA front loaded the cost Not even just NASA. SpaceX are building on technologies that originated from both sides of the iron curtain (and beyond)
- schiffern 1y agoHeck, fundamentally it's building on Iron Age technology, which is thousands of years old. How far back is the "start" of history in this telling, and (more importantly) why?
- varjag 1y agoIt's not unreasonable to suggest that most of specifically rocket and spacefaring technology SpaceX uses now was introduced by someone else. Their main achievement is reusability and adjacent technical solutions.
- supermatt 1y agoAre you being deliberately obtuse? The grandparent comment was pointing out that it cost NASA 200bn, and spaceX 15bn. The parent comment pointed out that spaceX are actually saving money because they already got what nasa spent 200bn on. My comment pointed out that they aren't just saving money by using NASAs tech, but tech from the Soviet Union as well - suggesting that their savings are far beyond just 200bn R&D
- hliyan 1y agoThis seems off. According to this: https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo (or in more detail: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTKMekJW9F8Z3fWnx-IxvHSPD35iZxZxDVoqIp25FaxxXjOqJ2Rk-zS858dND0N_3cwcacbIX8gr9xt/pubhtml https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTKMekJW9F8Z... ) Total lunar effort from 1960-1973, adjusted for 2024 USD: $326 billion Launch vehicle costs (Saturn V): $113 billion I think this is what should be compared against the total Starship program cost starting from 2020 until such time it completes 6 lunar landings (not counting SLS or other costs). Or, for the year that Starship actually lands on the moon, compare against the Saturn V launch vehicle costs for 1969, inflation adjusted: $5.9 billion. See: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTKMekJW9F8Z3fWnx-IxvHSPD35iZxZxDVoqIp25FaxxXjOqJ2Rk-zS858dND0N_3cwcacbIX8gr9xt/pubhtml# https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTKMekJW9F8Z...
- dzhiurgis 1y agoSingle Starship stack is <$100m so they are less than 1% in.
- jve 1y agoI love this quote from Gwynne Shotwell when asked how they achieved that no government has: "The first is that we're kind of standing on the shoulders of giants." Source: https://youtu.be/Dar8P3r7GYA?si=RHZ8lWFYKrd7qQhy&t=321 https://youtu.be/Dar8P3r7GYA?si=RHZ8lWFYKrd7qQhy&t=321
- s1artibartfast 1y ago% GDP isn't an inflation adjustment. 0.8% US GDP in 1969 would be about 8B/yr today. Very different answer
- trhway 1y agoUS GDP 2024 is $29T. Thus 0.8% is $230B.
- s1artibartfast 1y agoExpense scales with inflation, not GDP, which is the point.
- aredox 1y agoYou are comparing "sending a small crew for a few days on the Moon ASAP for propaganda purposes" with "setting up a permanent outpost on the Moon". Do you know the McMurdo permanent Antarctica base is costing us far more than the dogs, sleds, and tents of Admundsen and Shackleton? Incredible, isn't it?
- MrSkelter 1y agoThis is an inane comparison. Starship is “the program to build a permanent base in the moon”. It’s not even the only vehicle involved in the moon program. It’s a rocket designed to take astronauts from moon orbit to the moon’s surface. The astronauts will actually fly to the moon in SLS. So far it’s proved incapable of being launched, attaining orbit, and returning to earth as designed. That’s without a payload. It has no life support system built and is literally years behind schedule. Rather than making progress it is being redesigned on the fly to mitigate fundamental problems with its capability which Musk laughs off as “moving fast and breaking things”. The problem is we aren’t moving fast at all. The rocket is a disaster. Saturn V was better by an order of magnitude and likely cheaper if you consider how much fundamental work went into creating it which is now easy to buy off the shelf. Comparing the programs while ignoring the fact that hobbiest regularly reach the Karman line is deceitful. Starship is doing this on easy mode and it’s failing.
- madaxe_again 1y agoNice one. Now do SLS.
- bluescrn 1y ago> Starship is doing this on easy mode and it’s failing. But this 'easy mode' is still so incredibly hard that nobody else will even attempt it. I'd love to see some serious competition emerge in the reusable rocket space, but SpaceX is far, far ahead with Falcon 9 being an incredible success, even if the Starship project may be headed for failure. Nobody reports on 100+ successful Falcon 9 launches/landings in a year, those are now mundane. But a small number of Starship failures - test flights of an experimental vehicle - become big news, mostly because they involve spectacular explosions. It seems that Starship may be too big to 'fail fast', mostly because of the visual spectacle of those failures.
- panick21_ 1y ago> what we're now proposing to do with 10-15 Starship launches That's complete nonsense. 10-15 Starship launches would land a lander that can carry like 100tons of payload orbit. Saturn V landed 15000kg on the moon, but most of that isn't payload. But of course with Saturn V you are throwing away a rocket that cost 1 billion $ or more per launch. You are comparing 'thing lands on moon' to 'things lands on moon' without any nuance. But you are right Apollo was insane in how fast it was done.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoSpaceX is currently spending around $100m per launch for 'things that don't get into orbit', never mind land on the moon. So yes, I suppose that is more inefficient, in a way.
- panick21_ 1y agoFirst, you don't have any idea what those numbers actually are. Second, SpaceX has consistently shown lower development cost then anybody else. Starship is expensive its likely cheaper then New Glenn. Remember, Ariane 6, a marginal upgrade over Ariane 5 with only a new upper stage engine cost 6 billion $. And SpaceX is already at much higher launch rates and manufacturing rates for thing like engines. SpaceX is investing into mass production already.
- mcv 1y agoI don't think GP meant 10-15 Starships missions needed to carry the same payload, but 10-15 test launches necessary before it's ready for real. I think the Saturn V had only two test flights before it took people around the moon.
- Teever 1y agoNo, GP is referring to the refuelling missions that will be required to put Starship on the moon and bring it back. Which as the person you're replying to is point out isn't really a fair comparison because Starship and Saturn V deliver vastly different amounts of mass to and from the moon despite the mission being only to ferry some people there for a few days. If Starship ends up flying to the moon it effectively enables the landing of a lunar base that could be occupied for years at a time with sufficient resupply of food and the right equipment for extraction of water/oxygen from the moon. The Saturn V as amazing as it was could never have brought that much equipment to the moon in a cost effective manner.
- varjag 1y agoWhenever my Volkswagen car software glitches I can't help but to observe it was done by a 6000 people strong development team vs 600 in Apollo programme within similar timeframe. The latter had vastly more primitive hardware, tools and younger programming culture available too.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoObligatory bruised_blood comic: https://x.com/iamdevloper/status/1072503943790497798/photo/1 https://x.com/iamdevloper/status/1072503943790497798/photo/1
- HPsquared 1y agoThe Apollo programme had some serious human capital. The best minds aren't working on infotainment. (EDIT: not car infotainment, anyway...)
- yc-kraln 1y agoouch
- notahacker 1y agoAnd some serious financial capital working on enabling technologies. NASA funding peaked at 4.4% of US GDP. Even considering that this was 1960s GDP and they weren't standing on the shoulders of 100 years of automobile development or decades of previous launches, NASA got (and needed) a lot more resources than car manufacturers or newspace companies
- raisedbyninjas 1y agoSeveral lives, national pride, and a new human frontier was riding on Apollo, but not VWs infotainment.
- varjag 1y agoIt's not just infotainment though. We had all instruments blanked out on a motorway. Granted not as terrifying as with Apollo 13 but we had 3 people onboard too.
- perihelions 1y agoStarship was designed from the very beginning to land humans on Mars and it is correctly sized for that. It's apples-and-oranges to compare its design to Apollo. (edits:) It's clearly not ideal for a short lunar landing, considered in isolation. But: what else would you do? Whatever you build, it would land on the moon perhaps once, and never again. Would you, being in charge, design a one-off vehicle for one or two moon landings—spend that R&D budget, in that way? That's not cheaper than 15 Starship launches; it's considerably costlier. (But the Apollo engineers didn't need to worry about this; it's was their express remit to spend $200 billion on one-off designs that would never be used again). And: I hope no one suggests the "just make a unique lunar Starship variant that's simply a bit smaller". There's no "simply" resizing things in engineering. Recall that the last time Starship's length was altered by 2 meters, new mechanical resonances appeared, and it blew up three times in a row. Any "one-off" change for lunar landings is a less-tested, less-understood machine you'd be putting human lives on.
- arghwhat 1y ago> Whatever you build, it would land on the moon perhaps once, and never again. But it would also never land on Mars, so it would be a waste to build it for that. Build it for what it will actually spend its life doing. Not saying SpaceX won't go to Mars, but if/when they do it will likely be several rocket generations later and possibly with specialized rockets, with a significant portion of it being one-time-use as you ain't returning.
- hliyan 1y agoI completely forgot about this. Current aerodynamics and heat shielding are optimized for Earth reentry. They may have to significantly rethink the design for Mars. What they land on Mars will likely be very different from what we see today.
- rtkwe 1y agoEven if it does go to Mars there are some major warts on the design. When you land you're 35-40 meters or so up in the air so there's a whole other elevator assembly needed just to get people out of the rocket to the ground.
- arkh 1y agoYou know the saying about OSHA rules "they're written in blood"? That's what happens with most domains. At first people don't know the dangers and can go fast and loose: surgery, radioactive material, planes, cars, trains, rockets. Then people start losing their lives or part of their bodies to "easily preventable accidents". So some rules are enacted. Decade after decade, accident after accident, more rules, more red tape: things cost more, take more time. But you get a lot less victims. So yeah, with a good budget and in a less strict country you could get something to the moon in no time. And potentially many people' parts all over your launchpads too.
- aaronmdjones 1y ago> At first people don't know the dangers and can go fast and loose: surgery, radioactive material, planes, cars, trains, rockets Gas pipework: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR486zloao0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR486zloao0
- m4rtink 1y agoNot to mention that before natural gas people used to light and heat their homes with coal gas/town gas, which was basically carbon monoxide. Yes, that highly poisonous thing that binds better to hemoglobin than oxygen molecules. So you could get poisoned and then still explode.
- philistine 1y agoRemind me exactly how the Saturn V rocket returned to its launch pad?