Mars tickets will cost less than $ 500,000

Original author: Mike Wall
  • Transfer


Illustration of SpaceX Starship spacecraft on the surface of Mars. The image precedes the latest Starship design, which includes stainless steel ships.

SpaceX ships will transfer everyone to the Red Planet and back if everything goes according to the plan of Elon Mask.
The price for a seat aboard the SpaceX Starship interplanetary ship will ultimately drop so much that it will be available to most of the population of the industrialized world, Musk wrote.
“Depends on the number of people, but I'm sure that moving to Mars (return ticket is free) one day will cost less than $ 500,000. Or maybe less than $ 100,000. It’s more than enough for most people in advanced economies to sell their home on Earth and move to Mars, ”Musk wrote on Twitter on February 10.


A 100-passenger Starship will go into low Earth orbit on top of a huge rocket called Super Heavy, and then head to Mars (or the Moon, or whatever its final destination is, the ship can visit many places in the solar system, Musk said). Super Heavy will return to Earth, land vertically and fly again - many more times.

The quick and repeated reuse of Starship and Super Heavy is the key to Mask's dream of an ambitious but affordable spaceflight. In this sense, according to him, the recent change in Starship also helps: the design of the ship is made of stainless steel, and not from the more expensive carbon-composite material, as originally planned.


“It may sound implausible, but I'm sure we can build Starship / Super Heavy for less than the Falcon 9,” Musk wrote in a different tweet on Sunday night, citing SpaceX's workhorse, the Falcon 9 rocket. Then he replied “Yes,” to a question on Twitter, is the switch to stainless steel an important factor in this potential price cut.

SpaceX plans to launch its first missions to Mars with Starship and Super Heavy in the mid-2020s. But the Starship prototype could take off very soon. SpaceX has already built a small mockup and plans to launch it on its first test flight in the coming weeks or months.

The layout will not come close to Mars; it will check the design of the ship on small flights in the Earth’s atmosphere.

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