If memory serves, $500 million was the amount Musk and some venture cap investors spent to develop the working Falcon 9 launch system from scratch. Thanks Voption.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the figure.
Musk also said in a recent interview they spent about $500 million on Falcon Heavy development, and he didn’t seem proud about it. Way too much.
As another comparison, Boeing is estimated to have spent $32 billion on 787 development.
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.