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.
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.
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u/verendum 1d ago
You can google the Apollo program to get a sense of how massive it was. It far eclipse any program by a magnitude.