Sure, the Saturn V and STS were much less safe than smaller rockets. Still, they blew up an awful lot less than other rockets of their size like N1 or Starship.

> Still, they blew up an awful lot less than other rockets of their size like N1 or Starship.

I think the only reasonable comparison would be after cost equivalency. The Starship has a long way to go, to catch up.

Cost equivalency ignores the R&D and decades of scientific progress and advancements in tooling capability. The prices of materials have shifted, but designing and manufacturing a precise propulsion system with modern CAD and simulation tools is a lot cheaper than the hand work hundreds of people used to be doing to verify much simpler engine designs. Precision machining and tools to inspect metal fatigue and imperfections have also come a long way.

Of course commercial rockets are always going to be as shoddy as they can get away with rather than as good as possible, but if it still takes SpaceX or Boeing as much money to build a rocket as it did back in the Saturn V days, they're doing something wrong.

If you use that as an argument any comparison becomes meaningless by default.

Many Saturns blew up during testing. Starship is still in testing.

Your arguments are strange, a mirage concocted to fit a narrative of denigration and darkness. You mock with zeal, yet have no point to the mocking.

Always with the mocking, you cause an ache which cannot be balmed. Cease, I pray you. Stop these machinations, this mad canter.

Falcon was built the same way. It blew up many times too, explosions aplenty. Now it is the most successful lift on the planet.

Would love to read about Saturn V explosions during testing. Have a link?

I recall reading the engines blew up in testing, the rockets on the pad, on and on. And why wouldnt it?

No one has ever built a plane, or even a car without breakage during testing. The very idea is absurd. There's a whole profession called "test pilot".

I don't know why anyone would suggest otherwise.

I'm sure there are links aplenty, but the absurd suggestion here would be building a rocket and having zero incidents of failure. That beyond weird. That's what needs a "do you have a link" question.

> I recall reading the engines blew up in testing, the rockets on the pad, on and on. And why wouldnt it?

You're recalling wrong, or you were reading nonsense. Lots of engines were destroyed in testing (particularly before computer modelling, this was basically how rocket engines were _developed_), but no, no Saturn V ever exploded on the pad. Prior to this incident, the most-impressive on-pad boom was one of the N1s.

No fully assembled Saturn V ever failed, though a few of them had near-misses.

Well we're discussing testing only here, so are you sure none explpded on a test a pad?

It's a weird debarc point to discuss non testing craft vs testing. And "fully assembled", when spacex is flying non-final builds on purpose, using a different test methodology.

> Well we're discussing testing only here, so are you sure none explpded on a test a pad?

Yes! I am sure! That did not happen!

Early development of Saturn V rocket engines involved destructive testing, but a whole rocket would not have been involved at that point.

Here's some later ground testing of final engines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rP6k18DVdg

Engines during testing, sure, but did a Saturn V ever sit fully fueled on a pad, and explode?

A fully fueled starship stack hasn't exploded either. Yesterday's anomaly was a failure of just the upper stage.

No Saturn V ever blew up on the pad.

The Saturn V second stage (S-II) has at least two examples listed as destroyed during testing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-II

"First all-up S-II stage, assembled between 1963 and 1965. Completed several engine tests at the Mississippi Test Facility (now the Stennis Space Center). Destroyed by accidental LH2 tank overpressurization during pressure testing May 28, 1966[7][6]"

and

"Destroyed in test stand September 29, 1965"

Also described here: http://heroicrelics.org/ussrc/s-ii/index.html

"The S-II program was beset with problems and delays. NASA had planned on North American making an S-II stage, S-II-D, for dynamic testing but the order for that stage was cancelled in early 1965 in favor of using the structural static test stage, S-II-S, as a combined static/dynamic test stage; that stage was renamed to S-II-S/D. Unfortunately, the S-II-S/D stage was destroyed during testing, leaving S-II-F to take on the added role of dynamic testing and being redesignated as S-II-F/D."

I though all of the Saturn V stages were destroyed during testing at least once but it looks like I remembered it wrong. :)

Upvote for phrasing.

> It had inadequate abort modes

Does Starship have launch abort boosters? Seems infeasible with the amount of fuel and mass on it since it also serves as a second stage, but maybe they solved that somehow?

Starship doesn't currently have launch abort modes

Nor does it have any crew / passenger cargo.

DearMoon was supposed to launch 2022, passenger space service between LA and Ridhya by 2028 (announced in 2018 and they said it was on track for 2028 still several years later). They said it would be around the price of business class air travel and be in full commercial operation by then. That might have been after they started adding "aspirationally" to most Musk company statements following some lawsuits.

Also, both Saturn V and the Space Shuttle were dual-purpose programs - they had military goals on top of the scientific ones.

Well the military purpose was why the Shuttle was so crappy. The original design was smaller and meant to sit on top of its rocket. This would have probably prevented loss of crew in both of the instances where shuttle failed.

Eventually Starship will also be bid for military programs.

And Saturn V never had a military mission, neither had Shuttle.

The Space Shuttle never had a combat mission, in the sense that it was never used to drop bombs via polar orbit over the Soviet Union. But of course it had tens of military missions, the Shuttle launched many department of defense satellites.

Shuttle regularly launched spy sats and was designed to grab an enemy one in a single orbit mission. Also Soviets believed it would nuke Moscow by sudden plane change via its wings & build their own version as a result.

That sounds military enough for me.

The bombing of the Soviet Union was to happen via polar launch. The wings were there not for plane change, rather for cross range landing after the single orbit polar mission.

Interesting - I was never sure about the exact mechanism m, just that the orbital speed & lift provided by wings were part of it. :)