Question How much would a Saturn 5 cost today?
- Thread starter jathey88
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Ark
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I wouldn't be surprised if it winds up costing close to, or maybe more than, a Shuttle launch. The old manufacturing dies and equipment are all scrap by now, and the original engineers who designed it are all dead or close to it. Your R&D costs would be close to that of a new rocket from trying to reverse-engineer it and solve problems all over again that you forgot the solutions to 30+ years ago.
Anyway, building more Saturn Vs wouldn't be that smart. The basic configuration may still be valid, but even though spaceflight tech hasn't advanced THAT much, I'm sure we could do better after 40 years of additional development.
Anyway, building more Saturn Vs wouldn't be that smart. The basic configuration may still be valid, but even though spaceflight tech hasn't advanced THAT much, I'm sure we could do better after 40 years of additional development.
jedidia
shoemaker without legs
The electronics should be somewhat cheaper, but the Saturn V didn't have much of that to begin with. I have no Idea about materials, but engines we'd either have to take the same (they're still among the strongest ever developed) or we'd have to engineer a completely new one, as we don't have those kind of engines in stock (we don't need such monsters currently).
As Ark said, The costs for dusting off the design are probably quite considerable, not too far away from inventing it a new, especially if you want to employ newer technologies and not just replicate it.
As for the pure costs of building one, that would depend on how many you want to build. If you would want only one, the costs of setting up the whole manufacturing line would probably raise the price well beyond what it was in the sixties.
Also, the number would be a lot higher than in the sixties, because of inflation. But accounting for inflation, I'd say it's a safe estimate to claim that repeating the whole moonlanding program today wouldn't be significantly cheaper than it was back then.
As Ark said, The costs for dusting off the design are probably quite considerable, not too far away from inventing it a new, especially if you want to employ newer technologies and not just replicate it.
As for the pure costs of building one, that would depend on how many you want to build. If you would want only one, the costs of setting up the whole manufacturing line would probably raise the price well beyond what it was in the sixties.
Also, the number would be a lot higher than in the sixties, because of inflation. But accounting for inflation, I'd say it's a safe estimate to claim that repeating the whole moonlanding program today wouldn't be significantly cheaper than it was back then.
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