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> 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 S
by 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
- b112 1y agoNot sure about parent poster, but to be fair NASA built on German WWII rocket/missile development, and Canadian know how after the collapse of Avro Canada. How many billions was that? This sort of "they're just building on" talk is weird to me, and not really relevant. What SpaceX has accomplished is astonishing, and no belittling of their accomplishments should be tolerated.
- motorest 1y ago> This sort of "they're just building on" talk is weird to me, and not really relevant. Not really. You're not talking about technology. You're debating the economics behind it. You're seeing naive fanboys praising SpaceX's costs for the likes of Starship by comparing them to the cost of the SaturnV project, arriving at the simplistic conclusion that Starship is cheaper. This is like comparing your cheap Android phone as being far cheaper than a 1950s UNIVAC. And when the silliness of this specious reasoning is called out, your reaction is to downplay it as "not really relevant"?
- b112 1y agoRead the comment I'm replying to. Now read mine. That said, you're upset that I said comparing costs isn't relevant? Isn't that the case you're making right now, that the costs cannot be compared, therefore aren't relevant in this discussion? My tact on non-relevance, is that saying "it was built on another program's tech!" is not relevant, because everything meets that criterion. For example, as I said, the Saturn was built on decades of German research, including war time research during WWII, into rockets. Saturn's US development costs were a fraction of overall rocket research done by the Germans! So if upthread is going to argue "but it's all built on the Saturn, and free knowledge!", then the same argument can be carried further back, thus negating this argument. Why? Because it makes the Saturn cost trillions.
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- Zobat 1y agoTo be fair, they're also doing launches at a pace NASA could only have dreamed of back then. In 2024 SpaceX had 134 launches, we're far into the Space Shuttle program before Nasa had made that in total. I wonder what "tons of payload to orbit" vs "dollars budget" would look like for Saturn era NASA vs Current SpaceX. No doubt they're standing on the shoulders of giants, but let's not forget that they've helped transform the "go to space"-business.
- motorest 1y ago> To be fair, they're also doing launches at a pace NASA could only have dreamed of back then. That's like comparing how many containers Maersk moves today with how much sea cargo was moved back in the age of discovery. Also, Saturn V worked and fulfilled it's mission, whereas Starship blows up.
- Aeolun 1y agoI’m sure if the government gives SpaceX 200B a year to build a more reliable starship they can do it without blowing them up.
- dotancohen 1y agoActually, this version 2 of Starship was explicitly designed for lower the dry mass of the vehicle. It seems like SpaceX is exploring the lower limit on acceptable mass, and thus strength, of the Starship. This is a development program, after all.
- piva00 1y agoThis comparison doesn't make sense, the USD 200B/year was to invent the capabilities, do trailblazing work on something that needed to be proven even feasible as a concept, to do fundamental/foundational work, not to productionalise technology. I'd expect SpaceX to do much more now than NASA in the 60s if granted USD 200B/year, considering they are already standing on the shoulders of giants.
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- DoesntMatter22 1y agoWhat a ridiculous point of view.Do you know how many anamolies nasa had on the way to make the Saturn 5? Orders of magnitudes more blow ups than Space x has ever had
- m4rtink 1y agoNot to mention the comparable Soviet N1 rocket never launching successfully before being canceled.