There are people on Veeky Forums RIGHT NOW who think that SpaceX can build this in 6 years

based musk

>That's a fairly small factor of improvement when you consider that there's been half a century of technological progress

Not in rocketry. Most tech progress in the last 50 years has been in computers, there's no Moore's Law for chemical rockets.

I'm not talking about rocket-specific technology. I'm talking about things like material science, 3d printing, production robotics, computer-aided design, computer simulation, and computer guidance.

It's all much easier now, if you use these things correctly.

Stop projecting so much. This is Veeky Forums, not /movietheater/.

*IF* they deliver the ITS for approximately the same price or slightly lower than the Saturn V it's still a feat because the ITS is a much more capable rocket than the Saturn V. It's like if you managed to build a 747 for the same price as a Cessna.

If they're operating in parallel, they really don't count as separate stages.

Kill yourself.

In what way are they separate stages? Would you consider the Space Shuttle SRBs to count as two stages because they're physically separate boosters?

There won't be $30 billion for ITS development. $10 billion is what they've said.

Reason it would be comparable is that they need similar-scale facilities. Reasons it would be cheaper are that now they can do things with much less labor, and this isn't a government project.

Parallel staging is still staging because the boosters drop off first, while the core keeps going.

The SRBs are a stage (boost stage), and the orbiter is a stage (sustainer).