6 ms·

According 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 ago
Yes, 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 ago
  No 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 ago
    Wouldn'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 ago
      Those weren't on the Saturn V, though. They were various rockets for Mercury, and Titan II for Gemini.
      - dylan604 1y ago
        Do you think they would/could have built the Saturn V without building the other engines first?
        fluoridation 1y ago
        If 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 ago
        What about the costs paid by the Song dynasty to develop rockets in the 13th century!
        fluoridation 1y ago
        Never 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 ago
        I 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.
        fluoridation 1y ago
        >but I don't think it's possible for them to say anything meaningful for comparison on their own. It depends on how different they are. Saturn V was launched 13 times in total. Starship is already 75% of the way there and hasn't orbited once. Ignoring R&D and just going by launch costs alone, that's USD 4B (2025) to orbit 1 Saturn V, vs USD x to orbit 1 Starship, where x >= 1B.
    - thesmart 1y ago
      So 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 ago
      And 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 ago
You 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 ago
  In 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 ago
  facepalm not sure how I misread that
- mikepurvis 1y ago
  Some 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 ago
  Part 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]

fluoridation 1y ago

Yes, 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 ago
No 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 ago
  Wouldn'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 ago
    Those weren't on the Saturn V, though. They were various rockets for Mercury, and Titan II for Gemini.
    - dylan604 1y ago
      Do you think they would/could have built the Saturn V without building the other engines first?
      - fluoridation 1y ago
        If 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 ago
        What about the costs paid by the Song dynasty to develop rockets in the 13th century!
        fluoridation 1y ago
        Never 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 ago
        I 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.
        fluoridation 1y ago
        >but I don't think it's possible for them to say anything meaningful for comparison on their own. It depends on how different they are. Saturn V was launched 13 times in total. Starship is already 75% of the way there and hasn't orbited once. Ignoring R&D and just going by launch costs alone, that's USD 4B (2025) to orbit 1 Saturn V, vs USD x to orbit 1 Starship, where x >= 1B.
  - thesmart 1y ago
    So 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 ago
    And 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 ago

You 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 ago
In 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 ago
facepalm not sure how I misread that
mikepurvis 1y ago
Some 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 ago
Part 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]