SpaceX rockets costs as much as a jumbo jet?!

[alcoholbob]

Maybe airliners are a lot more expensive now than they were in the 60's.

Yeah, the 747 used to cost 21 million it now costs nearly 400 million to build. But that's my point. What makes your think the cost of airplanes has gone up so much but the cost of reaching the moon only costs 3 airliners? If moon landings are so cheap, why hasn't anyone done it since the Apollo missions?

 

[Brovane]

So your saying it cost 150 airliners in the 1960s but it's miraculously now only going to cost 3? If it only costs 3 747s to build a Saturn V why is isn't Boeing building them en mass and exporting them to everyone on the planet? Heck a Moon landing could fit into the budgets of the Air Force of a dozen countries.

The actual incremental cost of Saturn-V production was about $113 Million.

 

[Brovane]

Yeah, the 747 used to cost 21 million it now costs nearly 400 million to build. But that's my point. What makes your think the cost of airplanes has gone up so much but the cost of reaching the moon only costs 3 airliners? If moon landings are so cheap, why hasn't anyone done it since the Apollo missions?

Keep in mind there is multiple ways to look at launch costs and it can get very confusing. It is hard to even track down firm numbers sometimes on Space Shuttle costs.

#1- You have to consider facility costs. NASA has a large incremental fixed cost for all the facilities etc. to support it's operations. This can have a variable impact on your per launch cost. Example if your fixed facility costs are $2 Billion a year and you have 4 launches, well that would mean $500 Million added to each launch. However if you have 8 launches that means $250 Million added to each launch. Looking back it makes it hard to pin down exact numbers. You can see this affect during the Space Shuttle stand-downs and NASA still spent Billion's on the Space Shuttle during years with no launches because all those assets and people still needed to be supported. You cannot just lay off your check-out crew and expect you can hire a new crew in 18-months.

#2- You then have the actual operations cost for launches, fuel, transportation of the launch vehicle etc, checkout of cargo going up. Those costs can represent easily 30%+ of a launch cost.

#3- You then have the actual vehicle cost. For the Saturn-V this is your actual cost of production. However which number do you use the actual incremental cost or do you factor in the R&D cost? Then that means the more launches you have the more ways your D&D costs can be split.

#4- If you are launching the Saturn-V, what are you launching? Well if you are going to the Moon you have the Command Module, Service Module and Lunar Module. All this hardware costs money and should be added to the mission cost.

Sometimes the actual easiest number is to take the total program cost which was about $130 Billion (It is even hard tracking down this figure) and then divide by number of flights. However which flights do you include? Do you include the un-manned and manned flights that didn't land on the lunar surface? If you just take the total program and divide by six you get a total cost of about 21.6 Billion per lunar landing.

Now to your question on why the lunar landings haven't been repeated.

Hardware, Hardware, Hardware.

The tricky thing about producing Aerospace hardware like Launch Vehicles, spacecraft, airplanes etc. Is that once a production line is shutdown it is very hard to start that production line back-up again. Congress and the Nixon Administration in it's infinite wisdom decided to shutdown the Saturn-V and later all the Apollo hardware production lines starting in 1969. That means we lost or ability to build the Saturn-V, Apollo-CSM and Apollo-LM. So in order to go back to the Moon you would need to develop new hardware which is very expensive and then build it and then support the mission costs. Right now NASA has spent close to $20 Billion to just develop the SLS and Orion which would replace the Saturn-V and Apollo-CSM for a lunar landing. You would still need to develop the lunar lander. So to just develop the hardware for a lunar landing you are probably looking at close $30+ Billion. That is before actual production and operations cost.

So does that answer your question about why the lunar landings haven't been repeated?

 

[alcoholbob]

Keep in mind there is multiple ways to look at launch costs and it can get very confusing. It is hard to even track down firm numbers sometimes on Space Shuttle costs.

#1- You have to consider facility costs. NASA has a large incremental fixed cost for all the facilities etc. to support it's operations. This can have a variable impact on your per launch cost. Example if your fixed facility costs are $2 Billion a year and you have 4 launches, well that would mean $500 Million added to each launch. However if you have 8 launches that means $250 Million added to each launch. Looking back it makes it hard to pin down exact numbers. You can see this affect during the Space Shuttle stand-downs and NASA still spent Billion's on the Space Shuttle during years with no launches because all those assets and people still needed to be supported. You cannot just lay off your check-out crew and expect you can hire a new crew in 18-months.

#2- You then have the actual operations cost for launches, fuel, transportation of the launch vehicle etc, checkout of cargo going up. Those costs can represent easily 30%+ of a launch cost.

#3- You then have the actual vehicle cost. For the Saturn-V this is your actual cost of production. However which number do you use the actual incremental cost or do you factor in the R&D cost? Then that means the more launches you have the more ways your D&D costs can be split.

#4- If you are launching the Saturn-V, what are you launching? Well if you are going to the Moon you have the Command Module, Service Module and Lunar Module. All this hardware costs money and should be added to the mission cost.

Sometimes the actual easiest number is to take the total program cost which was about $130 Billion (It is even hard tracking down this figure) and then divide by number of flights. However which flights do you include? Do you include the un-manned and manned flights that didn't land on the lunar surface? If you just take the total program and divide by six you get a total cost of about 21.6 Billion per lunar landing.

Now to your question on why the lunar landings haven't been repeated.

Hardware, Hardware, Hardware.

The tricky thing about producing Aerospace hardware like Launch Vehicles, spacecraft, airplanes etc. Is that once a production line is shutdown it is very hard to start that production line back-up again. Congress and the Nixon Administration in it's infinite wisdom decided to shutdown the Saturn-V and later all the Apollo hardware production lines starting in 1969. That means we lost or ability to build the Saturn-V, Apollo-CSM and Apollo-LM. So in order to go back to the Moon you would need to develop new hardware which is very expensive and then build it and then support the mission costs. Right now NASA has spent close to $20 Billion to just develop the SLS and Orion which would replace the Saturn-V and Apollo-CSM for a lunar landing. You would still need to develop the lunar lander. So to just develop the hardware for a lunar landing you are probably looking at close $30+ Billion. That is before actual production and operations cost.

So does that answer your question about why the lunar landings haven't been repeated?

No, I think you missed my point entirely. Which is a purely logical question. If the cost of all things built by the military industrial complex--airplanes, aircraft carriers, etc, have gone up substantially, why would one particular item--heavy lift moon rocket--drop in cost when no one has built one since?

Yes, it cost billions of dollars per landing in the 1960s. Why would it it only cost 1 billion today? That's basically saying in relation to 747s, Aircraft Carriers, and Tanks, (other things built by the military industrial complex), that a 160 ton heavy lift space rocket has dropped in price by 90% even though we've never built another one, providing no evidence why it should have gotten so much cheaper, and just asserting the price must have dropped by 90%. That makes no sense.

 

[Brovane]

No, I think you missed my point entirely. Which is a purely logical question. If the cost of all things built by the military industrial complex--airplanes, aircraft carriers, etc, have gone up substantially, why would one particular item--heavy lift moon rocket--drop in cost when no one has built one since?

Yes, it cost billions of dollars per landing in the 1960s. Why would it it only cost 1 billion today? That's basically saying in relation to 747s, Aircraft Carriers, and Tanks, (other things built by the military industrial complex), that a 160 ton heavy lift space rocket has dropped in price by 90% even though we've never built another one, providing no evidence why it should have gotten so much cheaper, and just asserting the price must have dropped by 90%. That makes no sense.

The Saturn-V launch cost was $185 million and inflation adjusted equals $1.2 Billion. This is the incremental launch cost dropping all R&D cost etc. If you add all the Apollo Hardware the price rises to 375 Million which equals $2.4 Billion, however this is again incremental launch cost dropping all the R&D etc and total program cost.

How are you coming up with that it dropped by 90% a heavy lift launch? What are the $ figures you are using for these calculations? It doesn't cost $1.2 Billion today to land on the moon. It would cost a lot more than that.

It didn't cost Billions to land on the Moon in 1969, the actual hardware cost per mission was $375 Million, but that drops the amortization of R&D over the lunar missions.

 

[alcoholbob]

A 100,000 ton nuclear powered aircraft carrier cost about 200 million back then, now it costs 13 billion to lay the steel down for a carrier.

Unless you arguing the steel quality is 65 times better today or something, it's really a pipe dream to think 40 years ago you could build 2 100,000 ton nuclear powered aircraft carriers for the price of a Saturn V, now all of a sudden you can build 13 Saturn Vs for the cost of a single carrier.

Mind boggling how people think it makes sense to use the CPI to calculate how much something would cost for the military industrial complex to build when literally every other item in their production basket has increased in price multiple times what the cpi claims overall inflation is.

This is what leads to the cognitive dissonance when you simultaneously can claim its so cheap to build a deep-space heavy lift rocket and can't figure out why no one else has managed to build one when if it honestly was that cheap, dozens of countries would have done it by now. If the cost of landing on the moon was literally no more than buying a single modern naval Destroyer every government that could afford it would've done it by now for the press alone.