"That was absolutely incredible," SpaceX Build Reliability Engineer Amanda Lee said during live launch commentary. "A huge congrats to all the teams here."
"Great work by the SpaceX team!!!" SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X after the flight.
Amazing accomplishment. Always a thrill to watch live.
SpaceX conducted 134 launches in 2024 and is targeting a record-breaking 160-170 orbital launches in 2025.
How much money did it cost to orbit Saturn V (including R&D of course)?
thatoneguy · 12m ago
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.
voidUpdate · 28m ago
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
ralfd · 8m ago
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.
nashashmi · 4m ago
[delayed]
fluoridation · 16m ago
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.
anonymars · 11m ago
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?"
boxed · 24m ago
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.
loeg · 1m ago
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.
"Great work by the SpaceX team!!!" SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X after the flight.
Amazing accomplishment. Always a thrill to watch live.
SpaceX conducted 134 launches in 2024 and is targeting a record-breaking 160-170 orbital launches in 2025.
https://www.spacex.com/launches
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I bet it will get to the moon cheaper, too, and the Muskonauts will use less expensive lenses than Hasselblads to take photos.
> 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.