> NASA approach cost 20 billion $ at least and has a per launch cost of 4-5 billion $ going forward. They didn't develop new engines and is mostly based on legacy avionics. There really isn't a comparison in those terms.
You're leaning on a lot of hypotheticals and assumptions, right?
Do we even know how much a Starship launch costs? The only cost I can find is Musk saying they'd dropped $2-3B, but that was back in 2019. My point is...how can it not be a comparison when costs may (or, may not) be comparable?
I don't think the reason NASA Is risk-adverse is because of cost - it's because a similar explosion would effectively crash the entire NASA space program.
> You're leaning on a lot of hypotheticals and assumptions, right?
We know how much SLS cost in a lot of detail. Also remember, SLS development, the 20 billion is only to first launch to get to 1B they will likely drop another 10 billion or so and it will likely take until 2030.
We don't know about Starship, but it is far, far less. SpaceX could absolutly not spend 5 billion $ a year on the program.
And the complexity of Starship is in a different dimension.
So Starship for a fact is orders of magnitude cheaper then SLS and orders of magnitude more complex.
You're leaning on a lot of hypotheticals and assumptions, right?
Do we even know how much a Starship launch costs? The only cost I can find is Musk saying they'd dropped $2-3B, but that was back in 2019. My point is...how can it not be a comparison when costs may (or, may not) be comparable?
I don't think the reason NASA Is risk-adverse is because of cost - it's because a similar explosion would effectively crash the entire NASA space program.