Starship capacity is 150 (reusable) to 250-300 (non-reusable).
Saturn V non-reusable capacity was like 140 metric tons or so.
Saturn V cost in today’s dollars roughly $1.5bn per launch. Current Falcon heavy launch from SpaceX is in the $20mm cost (to SX) range, for 64 metric tons. So that’s 1,500:40 = slightly less than 40x cost improvement over Saturn V.
Starship’s target costs would be $10mm per reusable launch or roughly another 4x cost improvement over Falcon Heavy.
Also, the SX team is huge, including some critical operators like Gwynne Shotwell, it’s not just Elon driving this 160:1 improvement in lift and cost capacity.
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Starship capacity is 150 (reusable) to 250-300 (non-reusable).
Saturn V non-reusable capacity was like 140 metric tons or so.
Saturn V cost in today’s dollars roughly $1.5bn per launch. Current Falcon heavy launch from SpaceX is in the $20mm cost (to SX) range, for 64 metric tons. So that’s 1,500:40 = slightly less than 40x cost improvement over Saturn V.
Starship’s target costs would be $10mm per reusable launch or roughly another 4x cost improvement over Falcon Heavy.
Also, the SX team is huge, including some critical operators like Gwynne Shotwell, it’s not just Elon driving this 160:1 improvement in lift and cost capacity.
Saturn V was 60 years ago. It's okay though, we will have a colony on Mars in 2024.