Hacker News Reader

No, they lost one when it mattered most: when humans were on board. Besides, Starship is meant as more of a replacement for Apollo than for the shuttle.

View on HN

This does not contradict what I wrote.

It's not a contradiction what I wrote, it's a fair point. Two of the five shuttles eventually exploded with passengers on board. Better to learn the hard edge cases in testing.

You probably shouldn't have started the sentence with "No" then, but never mind. Let's hope that space travel will be safer in the future.

Anyway, I really just wanted to point out that 50 years ago it was apparently possible to develop spaceships in less time without a "move fast and break things" approach.

The Apollo program cost about $156 billion in modern money. Starship's approach is very cheap in comparison. Must estimates about $5bn.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com