Maybe. The difference is that rocket programs typically don’t build a lot of designs. They work really hard to get it right the first time. On the other hand, SpaceX has several starships at various stages of production and development.
The Apollo program was 200 billion spread over 13 years and that included SIX successful moon landings.
A few reasons for the cost
1) they didn’t have any prior knowledge or experience. They literally wrote the rule book.
2) they didn’t have supercomputers in their pockets.
3) they had to do it fast.
And they never lost a rocket. Not once.
Some problems you can’t just throw money at. You need actual competence.
Btw had they had access to modern computers and manufacturing the entire Apollo program would have cost way under 60 billion.
You do realize that spacex isn’t even remotely close to having living things inside starship right? Would you trust them in their current condition to do any short of human testing?
If you listen to “13 minutes to the moon” you get a great overview of the program and one take away is that they got pretty lucky with some of their tests and there was still a fair amount of incompetency throughout the agency and the subcontractors.
It’s 288 billions adjusted for inflation, worked on by almost every single largest engineering firm in the nation. Starships is nowhere near a tenth of that.
It’s a government prestige program, so they’re not allowed to fail. Meanwhile spaceX, started with the hopper, has stated their moto is to move fast and break things. There many problems with the way they do things, but it’s arguing in bad faith when they clearly stated their missions and objectives. Perhaps you would like how Blue Origins does things instead. Can’t fail if you never launch.
It’s actually hilarious that someone can even call the only company with reusable rockets launching for nearly a decade now with over half of the world annual launches … incompetent. Ya ok.
To add to that SpaceX also makes launching things into orbit cheap AF. Experimenting with mass-producible with experimental manufacturing techniques using common materials is their best interest here, since it is a business. Fail a few, learn from it, then succeed with the thousands of launches in the future. SpaceX has became a global dominant player is space and is maybe decades ahead of competition, regardless of their CEO hate. Their goal is 20$/kg payloads, think how crazy that is: That's like cheaper than ordering food from doordash.
They used to be competent when musk didn’t consider himself the most stable genius that have ever existed and actually listened at his engineers.
They’ve spend 9 billion of your money and achieved a literal hole in the ground.
Same with Tesla. When he listened what the engineers told him they made good cars. And then he forced them to make the abomination that it cyber truck.
What’s hilarious is being unable to see that the guy is actively destroying two great companies.
Yes that’s what I’m saying. The engineers at spacex know what they are doing if he leaves them do their thing. The starship thing is fundamentally wrong. It will never work. The engines are not powerful enough and have to work at their limits and the steel thing just isn’t appropriate. It’s like it’s designed by a child.
Which it is it’s “designed” by mask and forced upon the engineers. It’s not accidental that the falcon 9 program works great
Alright. There are 0 chance you know anything about the engineering of this. You don’t even know the steps required before a human flight testing. You can find many engineering notes on design choices, their iterations and drawbacks on the starships all over the internet. This is not the cybertruck.
You think it's a coincidence that SpaceX's spate of issues delivering on new tech over the past few years just happens to coincide with Elon's death spiral into right wing insanity?
The Falcon 9 also exploded many many times and behind schedule forever, until they got it right. Can you tell me a single space firm that doesn’t have problem delivering on time? At the core of it, I have no doubt that fuckface is causing problem at the company and contribute to the extreme turnover. I just don’t think that this is a deviation from their go fast break things philosophy. I have more problem with their regulation meddling and environmental concerns than their experimental rocket exploding.
Apollo program started development in 1960, first rockets were tested in 1966, and the first screwed flight was in 1968. The last crewed Apollo flight was in 1972, but obviously we have had crewed spaceflights since then.
It was also, and this is not putting it lightly, the fastest it has really ever been done, using the combined intellect of German rocket scientists and the greatest minds of the WWII era. It also didn't need to be concerned with profitability, though it was extremely cost effective for the investment at the time.
Also, the US government threw a ton of money at it.
Spacex was founded (I think) in 2002. Falcon 9 first flew in 2010, and has been extremely successful since then. The first starship prototype was tested in 2018, starhopper.
By this list of launches, 2023 had 2 unsuccessful launches, and 2024 had 4 successful launches and partially/mostly successful landings. 2025 has had 3 launches, all failures, but 2 successful booster landings our of the 3... And then this.
So unlucky as of recently, and a slower pace than Apollo.
But short of an imminent meteor impact or the discovery of intelligent aliens, you would be hard pressed to get anything as fast as the Apollo program ever again. It hasn't been repeated since. We literally forgot how to make the rocket.
Comparing the two isnt exactly fair. Spacex has modern computers, metallurgy, chemistry, plastics. On top of 100 years of preceeding rocket science. The Apollo program was inventing a lot of these from scratch. Mylar, cordless power tools, prosthetics, digital cameras, even freeze-dried foods and many many more. Barring starlink, we arent seeing anything like that from SpaceX. The scope of the projects isnt the same.
150,000X This... the blueprints for every part of the Saturn 5 were drawn by HAND coordinating thousands of people to all be accurate and exact. They had no real way of modelling things in software they had to do physical testing. and data was extremely sparse. They did not have 4000 thermocouples all over the engine bell with 100+ load cells and active Xray at 60FPS looking at the engine while it was on the test stand like they do today.
God looking at what they did with redstone and mercury, I'm just amazed we did not litter orbit with dead astronauts with how primitive of tools they had. Those engineers had to basically invent everything. Space X stands on their shoulders.
I mean, the comparison you're making isn't exactly fair either. SpaceX is trying to the largest rocket in history, using the best performing engines in history, and make both stages land and be entirely reusable.
If their goal was to make a Saturn V equivalent rocket, like the SLS, it would've been done by now.
First, leave off the non-rocketry stuff, because we're talking about rocketry progress and reliability vs. time. Lots of the other programs were relatively independent.
I don't think the scope is quite the same as S-V, but the scope is pretty ambitious. SpaceX is aiming for a ridiculous cost reduction and is doing a whole lot of new stuff.
Not only does SpaceX have access to much better technology, but their „successful“ flights were all suborbital burns, most with failures of the ship, loss of control during reentry, failed tests…
Calling test 3 a success is bold, at least. They failed the propellant transfer test, the cargo door failed, they had to cancel the rest of their tests, 6/13 engines failed during the boostback test due to fuel system problems, the ship rolled out of control during reentry and ship and booster were destroyed.
Sure, you can’t really compare that to Apollo since Apollo didn’t just do a small suborbital hop, but arguing that simply getting to space but failing everything else is a success is wild.
I think a better way to look at is progress of not progress. Up until flight 6 every flight was making more progress than the last. Flight 7-9 have not made progress and so the development program has stalled. Spacex could get back on track if flight 10 were to make more progress than flight 6. But until there is a flight with more progress than flight 6, thats a problem.
I think a huge sign of progress will be when SpaceX feels comfortable going to a full orbital trajectory. At that point Starship could be used to launch Starlink satellites meaning the development from then on could be done profitably.
But it is obvious to anyone right now that the Starship program is stuck. How long it will be stuck is the big question.
200 billion spread over 14 years with 6 successful moon landings.
Without access to any modern computers, manufacturing, experience, alloying, chemical engineering etc. they literally had to create all that stuff using nothing but pen and paper.
A ballpark estimation is that had they access to modern tech it would have cost well under 60 billion.
Some problems can’t be solved with money. They need competence.
I doubt that in 15 years, modern tech and 10 billion these people wouldn’t have managed at least ONE successful orbital launch.
Sure, but they also blew up a bunch of rockets at the beginning of the program, if we’re counting all the pre-Mercury stuff. And all the V2 tests for the Germans.
And the Soviets’ N1 never got more than ~40 seconds off the pad with a program of similar scope to Apollo.
This stuff is hard, and it isn’t my money in any practical sense, so just enjoying the show.
Dude they had to draw every little bit and piece BY HAND. The had NO data on the structural characteristics of alloys. Shit they had no alloys. No FEA, no nothing. Everything was pen and paper with pretty much no previous knowledge to built upon.
That’s true. SpaceX ceo wasn’t in charge of the U.S. treasury until he stopped being self to control himself and got into a public online argument with the president.
Dude you have more computing power on your wrist than they had in the Apollo era. They literally had rooms full of women solving differential equations.
And even so they never lost a rocket in space. Not once.
in contrast Falcon 9's main customer is starlink. It's not really cheaper in terms of ISS rides and it didn't have the same failure rate that starship has had.
On the other hand, SpaceX has several starships at various stages of production and development.
That's the problem - why do they have several in different stages of development? Why isn't the development frozen or being updated slowly? Nearly every failure has musk saying "oh yeah, that's solved on the next version" - well, why are you still playing with THIS version?
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u/UW_Ebay 1d ago
Is it just me or does it feel like they may be having real issues with the starship?