Posted on 03/01/2018 3:06:16 PM PST by Voption
Sounds right. And that original $100s of millions included development of at least six engine designs (including iterations), the earlier Falcon 1 booster, launch pads (including demolition of the old STS gantry, and replacement of one destroyed during that static test at SLC-40), and was the basis for the FH.
In today’s dollars, the wiki-wacki sez the Saturn V cost $1.16 billion — per launch.
That’s actually cheaper than the sort-of-reusable Shuttle because it could put at least five times the payload into orbit.
The article up there sez the SLS has cost $50 billion so far — the entire Apollo program cost something like $130 billion in today’s dollars, and it included manned and unmanned tests, orbital tests, nine manned trips to lunar orbit, and among those nine trips, six landings.
Sure am glad they’re trying to “save us money” by redeveloping something we’d already paid for, that has already cost 50 times what SpaceX has spent.
“Supposedly Tesla can launch and land booster rockets in a vertical position”
Supposedly? The company is SpaceX, not Tesla. They launched a Tesla, but the company doing the launching is SpaceX. And yes, they CAN launch and land booster rockets in a vertical position. Deal with it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59pY74ZhQ50
That’s the power of the private sector, something you’re supposed to appreciate on this site. No one has repeated Apollo because no one has launched a rocket as powerful as the Saturn V since then and no one has had the budget to do it. The USA will be sending astronauts back to ISS soon with the help of SpaceX, and with BFR they’ll be sending them beyond low earth orbit as well. Privatization is the way of the future.
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