The test flights include R&D. The ~1b per flight of Saturn V was excluding R&D when the program was churning along.

I guess you could argue that it's never meaningful to compare anything that isn't a commodity though, which certainly isn't the case here. But I find that silly.

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anonymars 4 days ago | parent [-]

That's not what I'm saying. We are comparing 1 billion per operational Saturn V flight to...what? There are no operational Starship flights to compare with. What sense is there in comparing the cost of manned flights to the moon and back with unmanned suborbital test flights?

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boxed 4 days ago | parent [-]

Saturn V did have at least one suborbital mission with Spacelab though. So not as hard to compare as you say.

	▲	dragonwriter 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Spacelab was carried on Shuttle flights, Skylab was launched on a modified Saturn V. And it was low orbit, not suborbital.