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SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight
- fluoridation 1y agoHow much money did it cost to orbit Saturn V (including R&D of course)?
- voidUpdate 1y agoAccording to wikipedia, the entire cost of the saturn v project was US$185 million, equivalent to US$33.6 billion today. That's from R&D to all launches
- fluoridation 1y agoYes, I also can look trivial stuff up. That would include costs after the rocket first orbited the Earth, so it doesn't answer my question.
- anonymars 1y agoNo need to be condescending when communication is ambiguous. Your question can be better phrased as, "How much did it cost for Saturn V to reach the point where it could successfully orbit?" which I assume means "how much did it cost up to and including Apollo 4?"
- dylan604 1y agoWouldn't the cost of all of Mercury and Gemini missions need to be included in this as they could not have Apollo without the others first.
- fluoridation 1y agoThose weren't on the Saturn V, though. They were various rockets for Mercury, and Titan II for Gemini.
- dylan604 1y agoDo you think they would/could have built the Saturn V without building the other engines first?
- fluoridation 1y agoIf we're going down this road, we'd have to include the global GDP back thousands of years. I asked specifically about Saturn V so I could make a reasonable comparison between it and Starship.
- terminalshort 1y agoWhat about the costs paid by the Song dynasty to develop rockets in the 13th century!
- fluoridation 1y agoNever mind that. Remember that Grug had to die from eating poisonous mushrooms for the first time, all so we could have disposable plastic forks.
- anonymars 1y agoI think as phrased this is going to get way too pedantic. But I think it raises a larger point which is worthy to consider. Presumably what we're trying to get at is, in broad strokes, "is Starship more cost-effective to develop than Saturn V" (and I assume the follow-on for that will be to compare the "NASA approach" vs the "SpaceX approach") But you raise a good point in that the baseline playing field is completely different. The existing knowledge each program started with, be it in materials science, understanding of rocket combustion, heat shield technology, electronics, simulation ability, you name it, it's completely different. So we can find and pull out whatever numbers, but I don't think it's possible for them to say anything meaningful for comparison on their own.
- thesmart 1y agoSo you think SpaceX isn't building on the shoulders of giants? There are teams of incredible engineers working there because NASA paved the way.
- terminalshort 1y agoAnd then we also need to add the costs of the V2, because surely we wouldn't have had Mercury and Gemini without the V2 first... and of course we wouldn't have that if the Chinese hadn't developed the first rockets in the 13th century, so we need to figure out their development costs. Where does it stop?
- ralfd 1y agoYou mis-copied the numbers for one launch. Wiki says: > Project cost US$6.417 billion (equivalent to $33.6 billion in 2023) > Cost per launch US$185 million (equivalent to $969 million in 2023) That a manned Apollo mission would/did cost under a billion dollars (todays money) is surprisingly cheap. A single Artemis launch using the Space Launch System (SLS) costs an eye watering $4 billions. Different metric: > [1966] NASA received its largest total budget of $4.5 billion, about 0.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States at that time. Using that metric NASA yearly budget would with todays GDP be $150 billion dollars.
- nashashmi 1y agoIn recent years, NASA’s budget has hovered around $25–27 billion. This represents less than 0.5% of the total U.S. federal budget, though it’s one of the most visible and impactful science agencies
- voidUpdate 1y agofacepalm not sure how I misread that
- mikepurvis 1y agoSome of this was the overall urgency of the 1960s space race, that people were motivated to cut through red tape and get it done, and I know it's also argued that modern safety standards and requirements around supply chain, real time monitoring, system redundancy, etc all complicate things and raise costs. That said, it would be interesting to have someone really knowledgeable go over what it is that Artemis has and Saturn V didn't, and then break them down and assign each an approximate proportion of the cost delta.
- wat10000 1y agoPart of the SLS cost comes from trying to save money. Yearly budgets are kept low, which spreads out the work over a long time. This makes everything cost more, but the politicians only care about the yearly spending. SLS is also a pretty weird design due to reusing Shuttle components for a completely different kind of launcher. This saves development costs (maybe) by using existing stuff that has already been developed, but the unsuitability of those components for this system increases per-launch costs. Once NASA runs out of old Shuttle engines, manufacturing new ones is going to cost $100 million apiece if not more, and each launch needs four of them. It was OK for Shuttle engines to be expensive since they were supposed to be amortized over hundreds of flights (and in practice were actually amortized across at least tens of flights) but now they’re being used in expendable launches. If Starship even comes remotely close to its goals, an entire launch will cost less than a single SLS engine.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- boxed 1y agoAdding to previous comment, looks like the cost per launch when the system was up and running was ~1billion USD inflation adjusted. I'm going to assume Starship will beat that easily.
- loeg 1y agoLooks like Starship test flights are already beating that $1 billion per-launch cost (I'm seeing estimates in the $100-500 million range), and they'd like to get the marginal cost down to ~$10 million.
- anonymars 1y agoI'm confused -- how is it meaningful to compare the cost of Starship test flights with operational Saturn V missions?
- fluoridation 1y agoThere were no Saturn V test flights like Starship is doing, that I can find info on. Wikipedia lists 3 tests before Apollo 4, which was the first full launch.
- anonymars 1y agoFrom context I interpreted GP to be somehow concluding that Starship is "cheaper" (these test flights are "beating" the price tag of the Saturn V launches), I'm gently pointing out I don't think that is a reasonable conclusion to draw based on empty suborbital test flights vs. taking humans to the moon and back
- fluoridation 1y agoIt would seem no one has the information I originally requested. All we have to go on for Saturn V is a per-launch cost where we don't know what's included. I agree it's an apples-to-oranges comparison, but it seems to be all we have.
- thatoneguy 1y agoHow does that matter? It's doing a thing already done nearly 70 years ago but at its own pace. I bet it will get to the moon cheaper, too, and the Muskonauts will use less expensive lenses than Hasselblads to take photos.
- fluoridation 1y agoStarship isn't exactly the same as Saturn V. It's bigger, for one. The reason why it matters is that efficiency matters. It's fine if it takes longer, not so much if it costs way, way more, especially if such a huge rocket has limited applications. And as I understand it the consensus is that Starship (or at least a fully-loaded Starship) will never go to the Moon. Once it's in orbit it takes like twenty refueling launches and space rendezvous to fill it up again so it can make the transfer burn. In other words, it's never happening.
- stetrain 1y agoI think that understanding of the consensus is incorrect. The mission plan for Artemis 3 is that a specialized Starship upper stage will be refueled in LEO and then transfer to lunar orbit where it will wait for astronauts arriving on SLS/Orion. Yes the mission profile is more complex, but that complexity can mostly be settled before the astronauts launch on their mission. NASA seems to think it is a viable plan which is why they selected SpaceX to execute that part of the mission.
- fluoridation 1y agoWikipedia: > After a multi-phase design effort, on April 16, 2021, NASA selected SpaceX to develop Starship HLS and deliver it to near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) prior to arrival of the crew for use on the Artemis III mission. The delivery requires that Starship HLS be refueled in Earth orbit before boosting to the NRHO, and this refueling requires a pre-positioned propellant depot in Earth orbit that is filled by multiple (at least 14) tanker flights. I stand by what I said: not happening. I'll believe it when I see it. Can you imagine if to make a sightseeing trip to another city you had to stop in the middle of the highway and then make 14 round-trips with a second car to fill your first car back up? I can't imagine why someone would approve this plan, other than corruption.
- moralestapia 1y agoThe downvotes here are undeserved. There is nothing wrong with this question. Zero. Stop eroding this site's community.
- andsoitis 1y ago"That was absolutely incredible," SpaceX Build Reliability Engineer Amanda Lee said during live launch commentary. "A huge congrats to all the teams here." "Great work by the SpaceX team!!!" SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X after the flight. Amazing accomplishment. Always a thrill to watch live. SpaceX conducted 134 launches in 2024 and is targeting a record-breaking 160-170 orbital launches in 2025. https://www.spacex.com/launches https://www.spacex.com/launches
- AtlasBarfed 1y ago[flagged]
- perihelions 1y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45033563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45033563 (195 comments)
- seatac76 1y agoAmazing achievement. Just watching no that giant thing lift off is a great feeling.
- criddell 1y agoI know it's a similar size to the Saturn V, but something about the Saturn V just seems grander to me. Maybe it's the paint job? Frankly, it kind of blows my mind what the US pulled off in the late 60's, early 70's with the technology and materials of the time.
- ekianjo 1y agoThey had virtually infinite budget at the time. SpaceX is much, much cheaper.
- fhd2 1y agoIs it though? I'm not knowledgeable on this at all, but it _seems_ like Space X is blowing up a lot more expensive equipment compared to NASA back in the space race days. Genuinely curious how it compares and how true my outsider impression is.
- onlyrealcuzzo 1y agoNot to mention the mountain of prior art to work off of... It's way harder to do it the first time.
- philipallstar 1y agoThere's absolutely loads being done for the first time here. Not least of which: running this r&d off commercial contracts instead of directly off taxpayer money.
- fastball 1y agoThe mountain of prior art being... one rocket that had very different requirements?
- Spivak 1y ago[flagged]
- Romario77 1y agoIt was a significant progress, but I won't call it "nailed it". As there was an damage or explosion on re-entry where the skirt of the starship got damaged. And we could see pretty significant damage on one of the fins. Nailing it would be without the things above.
- stetrain 1y agoYes, although it was stated before the flight that they were intentionally flying with some heat tiles removed and with a more aggressive profile to test some outer limits.
- ballenf 1y agoThey even removed some near fuel tanks. In the past the missing tiles were in less critical areas. I'm surprised they didn't take less risks just to avoid a narrative of failure.
- ndr 1y agoWhy would they need to care about narrative at this point? It's privately own, might as well learn as much as possible with each dollar spent.
- DoesntMatter22 1y agoI'm certain they don't care about the narrative because ultimately even though yesterday was a big success some places had headlines that really downplayed it
- NitpickLawyer 1y ago> I'm surprised they didn't take less risks just to avoid a narrative of failure. That's the advantage of being privately owned. "Vibes" (hah) don't matter. Public opinion doesn't matter. What matters is executing on your vision / goals. And they're doing that. The fact that they're bringing in loads of cash from Starlink surely helps. They haven't had the need to raise money in a while, now.
- nomilk 1y agoGiven the results of test 10 (successful splash down of Starship), any ideas what test 11 will entail? Could we be looking at a chopstick catch of the Starship itself?
- stetrain 1y agoI wouldn't expect that on the next flight. One option is they can run it again with the data gained from missing tiles etc. and see if there is an improvement. They could also do a similar flight but with an actual orbital insertion and de-orbit if they are confident in the odds of success of the de-orbit burn. Landing the ship at the launch site means overflying land and potentially populated areas, so I think they're going to want to demonstrate successful control, re-entry, and landing from orbit a few times before attempting that.
- plqbfbv 1y agoThat's not out of reach/plans according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starship_launches#Future_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starship_launches#Futu... But I agree with you, I'd rather have test flight 11 demonstrate at least another successful reentry with no issues (they had a non-fatal explosion on ship reentry in flight 10) before attempting to catch the booster AND landing the ship.
- redox99 1y agoProbably the same as 10, but with SHB catch.
- potato3732842 1y agoThey're probably gonna keep wasting ships until they've got the exact limits of their capability established. I know it seems counterintuitive to everyone who grew up in the era of the space shuttle, but the ship is the cheap part, the giant booster is the expensive part. The ship has a way longer cycle time so starship unit costs are going to dominate fleet construction cost despite being the cheaper unit so knowing exactly how hard you can run them is very valuable information it's worth gleaning by wasting some units early on.
- enraged_camel 1y agoIncredible achievement, but what is more incredible is how many people (including almost all of my friends circle) have started rooting for SpaceX to fail due to the shenanigans of its founder. I think as a culture we've lost the ability to compartmentalize. We should be able to criticize and even despise the head of a company, and at the same time celebrate when the intelligence and hard work of the countless smart and hard-working people at that company push the boundaries of what is possible for humanity.
- maxehmookau 1y ago[flagged]
- lstodd 1y agoAt a cost of indiscriminately imprisoning and killing people (remember Korolyov and von Braun)? Surely. he-he. If Musk does achieve a second foothold for the humanity, then any and all objections to his methods become irrelevant. So far he does deliver. So we wait for the final result. Also, if you don't know, we've got a war in europe for like 3.5 years already. I'm seriously curious how many times a space-x total program cost since their start in 2000s has been already sunk into that.
- MOARDONGZPLZ 1y agoSetting aside the founder or company itself, philosophically and ethically the “ends justify any means” concept is deeply flawed.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Aeolun 1y agoAnd maybe more interesting. How much did it cost them to get this far vs the sls?
- thesmart 1y agoYou can't really compare them because SLS was a jobs program intended to spread out contracts across many states by reusing suppliers from shuttle programs. Cheap? No. Wasteful? also no. Most of that money went back into those economies.
- marcusverus 1y ago> Wasteful? also no. Most of that money went back into those economies. If the government 100B to dig a big hole and fill it up again, that money would also "go back into those economies". Does that mean it wouldn't be wasteful?
- Ajedi32 1y agoThat's not how it works. If you pay people to dig a giant hole in the ground and then fill it back in, that money "goes back into the economy" but that doesn't mean it's not wasteful.
- jjk166 1y agoThe money could have gone into those economies while also securing a productive accomplishment (or more productive accomplishments depending on your opinion of SLS). Factories could have been retooled and workers could have been retrained to produce things of greater value instead of deliberately keeping them obsolete. It's still wasteful even if not completely useless.
- chermi 1y agoAhh, much like the economy has grown so much because the government gave people money and shovel to dig and refill holes. Went back into the economy, must've been a good move. Let's not bother considering what else could've been done with the money.
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- nerdjon 1y ago[flagged]
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- nerdjon 1y ago[flagged]
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- Zigurd 1y agoToo many things don't add up, for example: SpaceX, and friendly commentators, have framed this as a highly experimental test flight. The most visible aspect of that are the heatshield test tiles on various parts of the upper stage. That kind of testing is understandable to a certain extent. But it doesn't make sense to ditch the rocket in the Indian Ocean once you've run those experiments, instead of catching it, and having all the parts available to study.
- yakz 1y agoHow much would it cost them to catch it, though? Not just in money, but time. How do you know it doesn't make sense?
- acd10j 1y agoI don’t think they are letting go of these rockets; they are definitely being retrieved back. Otherwise, rival countries like China will end up retrieving them.
- dpifke 1y agoThe ground equipment is the longest lead-time item for future flights. If you accidentally blow that up, it sets the program back months.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- aDyslecticCrow 1y agoThe tower is more expensive than the rocket. The old tower is sketchy and quite flawed, and the new tower is not complete yet.
- Fischgericht 1y ago[flagged]
- mannyv 1y agoUh, SpaceX isn't funded by the government in the way you state. It has contracts, but development costs are borne by SpaceX.
- Fischgericht 1y ago[Even worse than someone ranting like this is someone who then on top also self-replies!] "But explosions aren't THAT bad"!! Yeah, it just means that up until now, the chance of any astronaut crew surviving any trip anywhere is 0%. But hey, if some of the next tests don't end in an explosion, this maybe can be improved to 50/50 chance of death. Yeah, astronauts will buy that. After all, people also still buy Telsa's "Full Self Killing". Darwin, please come to the rescue.
- inglor_cz 1y ago"Yeah, it just means that up until now, the chance of any astronaut crew surviving any trip anywhere is 0%. But hey, if some of the next tests don't end in an explosion, this maybe can be improved to 50/50 chance of death. Yeah, astronauts will buy that. After all, people also still buy Telsa's "Full Self Killing"." Uh, this is very unfair to SpaceX as a whole, which has had 0 fatalities so far on the ground and in the sky, after almost quarter of century of operation. This is a remarkably good record for spaceflight. Contrast it to the Apollo project, which killed three astronauts even before the first flight (Grissom, White and Chaffee burnt to death during testing on land) and almost killed another three during mission 13. Contrast it to the space shuttle with its 14 victims, and the first flight of the space shuttle was touch and go as well. Contrast it to Boeing whose recent Starliner proved so problematic that they did not dare fly the astronauts back to Earth using the same ship and made them wait for a Dragon. Contrast it to Scaled Composites, which never reached orbit, but three engineers were killed on the ground and one test pilot during a suborbital test flight. Insinuating that SpaceX is a killing machine is absurd, when you look at their actual safety record and compare it to their competitors.
- lupusreal 1y agoIt's a very cool rocket and this success is a nice change of pace from the past several failures. However, I just have to say: > Mars rocket Very dubious. If you disregard all the SpaceX marketting talk and just go by what they're building, then it's a rocket meant for launching very large satellite constellations as cheap as possible.
- NitpickLawyer 1y agoThe only reason they're doing full reusability is to enable Mars missions. Had they only wanted cheap flights for satellite constellations they could have launched with what they have now (i.e. reusable booster and single use starship), and it would be cheaper than anything on the market with huge upmass capabilities.
- macintux 1y agoThat doesn't mean they're going to achieve full reusability, although obviously it looks more and more likely.
- Anon1096 1y agoSomething that I rarely see mentioned about SpaceX's goals and financial viability of a reusable Starship is how significant of a boost they get to their talent pool by working on the absolute bleeding edge on things that seem impossible. People go work at SpaceX because they work on crazy things like Starship instead of only working to make "cheap flights for satellite missions". SpaceX attracts the absolute cream of the crop (at below market rates even but that's besides the point) and those people work better/harder than they ever would working on more boring goals. It's the power of vision and motivation.
- lupusreal 1y agoThe constellations they can launch now are only a small fraction of the size they aspire to launch. Their plans for Starlink alone call for almost 10x as many satellites as they currently have. Then there are all the other constellations they might launch in addition to Starlink, including defense contracts that might call for rapid replenishment of expended/destroyed satellites. As for Mars, Starship might be ready for that in a few years (a year ago I was saying in a year or two, but I've kicked that back). But where are the Mars customers? Who is developing Mars habitation plans and hardware that will be ready in even twenty years? Commercial demand for large satellite constellations obviously exists. Demand for Mars colonization is nonexistent, it exists only in the hopes and dreams of sci-fi junkies. I really hope I'm wrong, because I'm a sci-fi junkie!
- sidcool 1y agoAmazing progress. SpaceX speed is enviable.
- GMoromisato 1y agoStarship is like AI/LLMs in that success would revolutionize the world, but technological failure is very possible. And despite the confident predictions on the internets, we don't know which it's going to be. After the Shuttle program ended in failure, work on reusable launch systems stopped for decades. A similar thing would happen if Starship fails. Space would remain the province of the military and large governments. Today it costs ~$3,000 per kilogram to put something in orbit (on a SpaceX Falcon 9). Starship aims to lower that to $10 per kg. That's totally crazy, but even if it could get it down to $300 per kg, that would revolutionize access to space. Data centers in space, biotech manufacturing, and maybe even asteroid mining and energy generation become practical at those prices. To say nothing of telecommunications, remote sensing, and global navigation--all become much cheaper. And, of course, that drops the price on all the cool science/exploration goals that we always talk about: massive space telescopes, regular probes to all the planets, and crewed exploration. We're literally at an inflexion point between two possible futures and we don't know which it's going to be. If I were younger I would absolutely try to work at SpaceX to help tilt the chances. But as it is, all I can do is root for them.
- nwah1 1y agoAssuming it doesn't trigger Kessler Syndrome.
- nroets 1y agoWith one company being so far ahead is actually a good thing: No tragedy of the Commons. Or reckless gambling on unproven technology.
- GMoromisato 1y agoAgreed! Also, Kessler Syndrome is over-feared, like the China Syndrome from the nuclear age. At Starlink orbits, space debris renters in years, if not months. And even then, having cheap access to orbit would allow us deploy replacements quickly. At GEO, the distances are so vast that Kessler Syndrome is much less likely (though not impossible). In between, there is some danger, but again, cheap access to orbit gives us the possibility of clean up.
- mchusma 1y agoLove it, great job SpaceX! I watched the Martian again the other day and I marveled about how much has changed. With Starship progress, almost none of the plot really makes sense (bespoke vehicles and payloads etc). The first mars expeditions will probably be stocked with a thousand tons of gear, enough to easily last a guy 5 years. And if some dude were stranded on Mars, SpaceX could start lobbing things in his direction within maybe 30 days? The Martian is a vision for a 2035 mission from 2011. We seem likely to beat that!
- FireBeyond 1y ago> The first mars expeditions will probably be stocked with a thousand tons of gear, enough to easily last a guy 5 years. > The Martian is a vision for a 2035 mission from 2011. We seem likely to beat that! What, exactly, is that guy doing for those five years? We don't know how to terraform Mars, and it's questionable what having someone on the surface will add to the knowledge we have of surface composition. And then what? That equipment is still on earth - after it's built. Oh, and how's he planning to get off Mars? I would comfortably make a $100 bet that there is no chance that we have sent a manned mission to even orbit Mars by 2035, let alone are "settling" it.
- sho_hn 1y agohttps://idlewords.com/2025/02/the_shape_of_a_mars_mission.htm https://idlewords.com/2025/02/the_shape_of_a_mars_mission.ht...
- FireBeyond 1y agoFrom this: > The effect of this no-abort condition is to make Mars mission design acutely risk-averse. "Acutely risk-averse" is not SpaceX. And being acutely risk-averse also underscores my point. If we are actually acutely risk-averse, we aren't going from "still test-flighting and developing the launch vehicle" to "manned mission" in 9.5 years.
- WalterBright 1y agoAt a minimum, it would be a major test of the habitat's ability to support human life for 5 years. A major activity for the Martian would be exploring the location and prospecting for necessary raw materials, like digging for water.
- gwbennett 1y agoI watched every minute of it. It was awesome. Bravo Zulu SpaceX.
- everyone 1y ago[flagged]