Is 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.

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bzzzt 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's not as expensive as it looks, Starship plus booster costs around 100 million. A Saturn V Apollo mission cost 185 million in 1969 which, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#Cost, would now be a bit less than a billion dollars.

Also, SpaceX is not building rockets, they are building a rocket factory. If they succeed they will have lowered the cost of putting stuff into space by an order of magnitude. The potential rewards are huge.

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mempko 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes but at this point the upper stage is barely a spaceship. Mostly an empty shell. And they have spent $10 billion so far on something that barely flies.

	▲	twirlip 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		R&D and prototyping is an up-front expense. Amortization over many units spreads out the costs to long term profitability. Does SpaceX have that kind of time, though? A prospective global depression would dry up the capital for funding Starship development.

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spwa4 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Clearly this is not true. I'm not even sure what about it is not true, but there must be some reason Musk paid Trump to destroy his competition.

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ajmurmann 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://orbitaltoday.com/2022/09/05/starship-vs-saturn-v-cho... claims Saturn V development cost $50 billion vs Starship at $5 billion. Not to mention the cost per mission once Starship is fully functioning and reusable.

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mjamesaustin 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They can spend numerous ships testing because the cost is dramatically lower per ship.

As with any manufactured item, high volume and iterative design improves the production process and finished product.

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DrBazza 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's more of a production line when building Starships, with modern mechanised tooling - much of it computerised and 100% repeatable. There's been at least 10 so far, vs only 15 Saturn V, 3 of which were ground tested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V

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throwawaymaths 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

saturn v was about 30B in 2025 dollars. starship has cost on the order of 5B so far.

raptor engines are designed to be cost efficient, as is the rolled steel? that is used for the fuselage

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onlyrealcuzzo 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not to mention the mountain of prior art to work off of...

It's way harder to do it the first time.

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philipallstar 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

There'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.

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fastball 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The mountain of prior art being... one rocket that had very different requirements?

	▲	sho_hn 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Apollo also invented, funded and productized a lot of modern embedded computing and computer manufacturing, to keep in our lane here. Obviously SpaceX has access to a very different tech environment that yes, Apollo helped push forward. Manufacturing the Apollo Guidance Computer (which wasn't in the rocket per-se, but was wired up to it and could fly the rocket in certain scenarios) alone consumed around 40% of the US' entire IC production capacity at the time.

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FredPret 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

SpaceX IS doing lots of important things for the first time.

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2OEH8eoCRo0 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Cost comparisons are strange because Starship isn't finished.

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Zigurd 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

And don't nobody mention Falcon Heavy. 11 successful flights and a proven 60% of the spec payload of Starship.