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How much money did it cost to orbit Saturn V (including R&D of course)?

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

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.

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?"

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.

Those weren't on the Saturn V, though. They were various rockets for Mercury, and Titan II for Gemini.

Do you think they would/could have built the Saturn V without building the other engines first?

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.

What about the costs paid by the Song dynasty to develop rockets in the 13th century!

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.

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.

>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.

> Saturn V was launched 13 times in total. Starship is already 75% of the way there

Apollo 1 - lost on the launch pad, crew killed. very bad Apollo 13 - major malfunction causing loss of mission but crew saved. very not bad

Starship - 10 launches 5 failures. No crew ever so that pressure is also not comparable.

Are we really claiming Starship has achieved 75% of the results of Apollo? That's absolutely ludicrous

Starship is 75% of the way to 13 launches. That's just mathematically correct.

And is absolutely useless. Apollo 9-17 went to the moon with human occupants. All but one put men on the surface of the moon. They all returned to Earth with zero fatally exploding ships.

Not one of these triumphant 75% achievement in launch numbers would have had a surviving human. Apollo had 0 practice runs. Starship is nothing but practice runs. To equate the number of launches to something so drastically different is just an exercise in futility that I can only assume you're trolling

Dude, when did I say they were triumphant? SpaceX is burning taxpayer money sending empty coke cans on ballistic trajectories for no good reason. My whole point with this line of inquiry has been to point out what a useless waste of resources Starship has been so far.

> Starship is already 75% of the way there and hasn't orbited once

Read it as "Starship is already 75% of the way to that cost and hasn't orbited once" (you seem to be in agreement)

But who will get to 100 launches first? 1000? Saturn V was in one way a great success that will be remembered for all of history. But in another it was a failure due to your exact statement. It only launched 13 times due to being so expensive as to just not be feasible.

Neither will.

>It only launched 13 times due to being so expensive as to just not be feasible.

"There aren't many uses for such a gigantic rocket. Let's make an even bigger one and hope it works out!"

Actually, "let's build a cheaper one and hope it works out" is the design philosophy here, and it's a very effective one across pretty much all domains. The fact that it's bigger too is mostly incidental to its economic case. You think we would have stopped at Apollo 17 if the same Saturn V was capable of flying Apollo 18 - 30?

Hadn't we already built the Saturn V for Apollo 18, 19, and 20?

Starship has already reached orbit many times but places itself on a suborbital trajectory to intentionally test re-entry and landing which it has done successfully several times.

Wrong. Starship has yet to orbit the planet. Certainly not "many" times, considering this is only its tenth flight.

They've already demonstrated they can orbit, they just choose not to. Reaching orbit and orbiting the planet are two different things. Saying that that is not reaching orbit is like saying McDonalds is failing at serving breakfast all day because they chose not to serve breakfast after 11:00 to meet their goals.

>Reaching orbit and orbiting the planet are two different things.

LOL. Are you serious?

To reach orbit: to reach a horizontal speed such that the spacecraft can complete a revolution around the celestial object while in free fall, without having to execute any additional maneuvers.

Starship has yet to reach orbit. The reason doesn't matter. It hasn't done it.

In your world, you can't run even though you get up to running speed but you chose to walk. You sound so dumb.

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.

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?

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.

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

facepalm not sure how I misread that

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.

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.

I had understood that reusing shuttle parts was more about keeping congressional districts (that make the parts) happy, and thus securing votes for funding.

"We're going to spend more to save money." is something I've heard said almost verbatim far too many times in government projects.

Adding 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.

Looks 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.

I'm confused -- how is it meaningful to compare the cost of Starship test flights with operational Saturn V missions?

There 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.

From 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

It 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.

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.

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?

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

Spacelab was carried on Shuttle flights, Skylab was launched on a modified Saturn V. And it was low orbit, not suborbital.

Maybe, but remember that getting astronauts to the moon and back took a single Saturn V launch but with Starship, it will take (at least) 10 flights for refueling, possibly as many as 20. So each launch has to be much cheaper to beat Saturn V for the full mission.

Nobody but SpaceX knows how much each Starship test costs but the estimates online range from $50 million to $200 million. Presumably, whatever the actual cost, they're more expensive right now while they're redesigning bits and doing custom, one-off work for each flight but it has a long way to go to beat Saturn V for the full mission.

A starship mission to the moon will land over 100tons of cargo. Saturn V could get roughly 5tons to the surface. Its an entirely different class of operation.

That's LEO, not to lunar orbit and entry. Saturn V had a maximum lift capacity of 310,000 lb (140,000 kg) to low Earth orbit (LEO) and could deliver approximately 50 tons (45,000 kg) of payload to the Moon.

Well... no. The PLAN for the Starship lander is to have 100tons of cargo. That's why it takes so many refulings.

How 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.

Starship 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.

I 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.

Wikipedia:

> 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.

> 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?

If the alternative was throwing away and building/buying a new car for every trip? Absolutely.

They said the same about landing a first stage booster - impossible and pointless to attempt. And it just happened for the 400th time yesterday.

And yet the boosters are not being reused. They're just making brand new engines for every launch. If we're generous they're being dismantled and recycled.

They were talking about Falcon 9, which is absolutely being reused.

Alright, if we're talking about Falcon 9, I don't know what the cost savings are for a reusable rocket, or if there are any. If someone has that data, feel free to provide it.

There are a lot of variables, but very roughly, the Falcon 9 has cut launch costs in half compared to its competitors.

> As of 2024, SpaceX's internal costs for a Falcon 9 launch are estimated between $15 million[186] and $28 million,[185] factoring in workforce expenses, refurbishment, assembly, operations, and facility depreciation.[187] These efficiencies are primarily due to the reuse of first-stage boosters and payload fairings.[188] The second stage, which is not reused, is believed to be the largest expense per launch, with the company's COO stating that each costs $12 million to produce.[189]

From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Pricing

False dichotomy - the mission profile dictates the refuelling station and all that, but it never was the only option. Somehow we've decided we needed to be able to do lots of trips to the moon for Artemis, but it's not clear to me that it's such a precious golden oportunity and warrants this spending/impact on the environnenent.

We didn't get to the moon with a refuelling station did we? How come we need one now? We're really seeing 15 starship launches per moon trip as reasonable, rather than just building a single trip program?

The mission itself is nonsensical. The problems are stemming from the SLS, I'll find a link to a relevant source.

The Apollo missions landed two crew members in a tin can with extreme limits on what weight they could bring with them in either direction.

A single trip launch will always be constrained like this due to the tyranny of the rocket equation.

A modular mission system with multiple launches is the best way to expand capabilities and enable things like landing larger payloads for more advanced or long-term missions.

There's never going to be long-term crewed missions to the Moon. It has no scientific value. Even the little exploration we did in the '60s and '70s were a dubious proposition. There's not that much we could do by sending people that we couldn't do by sending robots.

If you think there's no value to returning to the moon, building a base, etc. then fine. But you keep moving the goalposts of what you are taking issue with here.

I didn't move any goalposts.

1. Starship is never going to be usable for a Moon mission.

2. There's little scientific value in Moon missions.

3. There's never going to be long-term missions to the Moon.

I maintain all three simultaneously.

IIRC, the expected return payload for this is lighter than Apollo. In no small part because they're dropping all their return fuel and their entire return vehicle into the Moon's gravity well, rather than leaving it in orbit. Subjecting themselves to extra abuse from the good ol' rocket equation.

One of many wacked-out things about the plan.

The vehicle that returns to Earth is Orion which stays in NRHO and does not bring its fuel to the lunar surface.

Return payload constraints are probably from using Orion as the return vehicle. Mass to the surface is much higher than Apollo since that is launched separate from the crew.

I thought the return vehicle was a to-be-developed direct-return vehicle from both SpaceX and Blue Origin (both got contracts, and supposedly both's versions will fly)?

[EDIT] Apparently there are multiple plans involving even more spacecraft, because why not I guess? It's as you describe for Artemis III, but then gets way more complicated with Artemis IV, involving more spacecraft for some reason.

As far as I know all of the known Artemis mission profiles only use the lunar lander to shuttle from NRHO (lunar orbit / gateway station location) to the lunar surface and back. All crew return is planned to be done with Orion for now.

NASA has optioned an additional lander from Blue Origin but that would be taking the same role as SpaceX's lander, shuttling from lunar orbit to the surface and back to lunar orbit.

> We didn't get to the moon with a refuelling station did we?

No. We did it by throwing away ~98% of the vehicle on the way there.

> How come we need one now?

Because building a new gargantuan tower and tossing that majority of it into the ocean/deep space every time we need to go the moon is not sustainable.

> We're really seeing 15 starship launches per moon trip as reasonable, rather than just building a single trip program

Yes. Because again. The alternative (dictated by physics) is that we expend the whole thing.

And why do we need to do all this? This is the thrust of my point.

Making trips to the moon sustainable is pointless and nonsensical.

Edit0: good read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40410404

>The alternative (dictated by physics) is that we expend the whole thing.

We can also, you know, not. We could put that money to something here on Earth instead of burning it up.

The money is not "burned up" - it is spent right here on Earth. It's paid to extremely skilled engineers, technicians and scientists.

The technology developed for doing such a difficult task will inevitably benefit all of humanity. It did so for Apollo. It will again in the future.

https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-...

>The money is not "burned up" - it is spent right here on Earth.

If the idea was not clearly conveyed then let me try again: the money is spent building things that are intended to be destroyed (in order to fulfill their function, but nevertheless), when it could be spent building things that are intended to last.

>The technology developed for doing such a difficult task will inevitably benefit all of humanity.

I've heard this refrain several times. Please name a technology that was developed for the space program and that would have otherwise not been developed.

How did the fuel you put in your car get there? Your car didn't come with all of the fuel for the trip, nor did it spawn at the gas pump.

It was pumped, shipped, refined, and trucked to that point using a complex supply chain, enabling your final trip to happen with one fuel transfer.

You can easily mathematically prove that orbital refueling increases mission efficiency. This is a simple fact, it's not about Starship or whatever. Your analogy does not hold.

> I stand by what I said: not happening. I'll believe it when I see it.

And it's totally valid for you to have that opinion. But it's your opinion, not "the consensus."

The mission is wildly more complicated than the Apollo missions. There's a whole oddball-orbit space station that has to be placed as a way-station, for one thing, and none of that's happened yet (remember how long it took to build the ISS?). Also, landing all your return fuel instead of leaving it in orbit, so a way heavier lander (with a smaller return payload than Apollo!), which is a pain in the ass. Multiple space ships launched by different rocket systems involved. The SLS still has to be finished for it to go forward. Orbital refueling of large fuel tanks is a hard problem that remains unsolved, and this goes nowhere without fixing that. The contracts for the return vehicles are disturbingly light on parts about making sure they can reliably work, including surviving re-entry.

I'm with you. Not happening. We're more likely to come up with a totally different, simpler plan, and do that instead, before this happens.

> landing all of your return fuel

The fuel that is landed is used to get back from the lunar surface to lunar orbit, not to return to Earth. That fuel stays with Orion in NRHO.

"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."

Taking longer at lower cost is a great trade-off for Starship but wasn't for Saturn V. The main driver for Saturn V was the space race against the Soviet Union. Economic interests played a very small role. It was all about being first and compensating for the Sputnik shock.

The downvotes here are undeserved.

There is nothing wrong with this question. Zero.

Stop eroding this site's community.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com