With more private companies entering the space race, aerospace tourism is laying the groundwork to become a reality. Just a few weeks ago the first private trip was completed where civilians visited the International Space Station for the first time in history, indicating that transporting tourists to other planets or to the Moon could be part of the everyday future. The question is how much it would cost to fly in a spacecraft and it seems that Elon Musk has put a price tag on the tickets.
Musk has been known for his extravagant ideas about the use of science in different areas but especially in space. With his company SpaceX, he plans to make interplanetary travel possible not only for research purposes but also as a tourist pastime and has even said he plans to build a self-sufficient city on Mars over the next few decades.
Musk’s exact plan to complete this task is not known, but in a conversation with TED’s head of conferences, Chris Anderson, he hypothetically talked about the price of tickets to access a SpaceX spacecraft and in that sense to be transported to the Red Planet. Anderson asked the tycoon if the cost could be as low as a few hundred thousand dollars and the answer surprised everyone.
An ‘affordable’ trip for everyone
Musk explained that on the very first stages, the cost would be determined by the contextualized world economy at the time it all becomes a reality. But he also mentioned the need to make travel to Mars affordable enough to attract at least a million people, the amount needed to build a city on that planet.
“If moving to Mars costs, for the sake of argument, $100,000, then I think almost anyone can work and save and eventually have $100,000 to be able to go to Mars if they want to,” said the Tesla and SpaceX CEO.
According to Elon Musk’s perspective, anyone who wanted to move the planet would have the purchasing power to buy an interplanetary ticket with such a value.
It seems that his model of a citizen with such a socioeconomic level is an average American who is involved in real estate sales, or at least that is what he said in the talk. Although he also mentioned other possible sources of funding to be able to afford a trip to Mars such as government sponsorship or an interplanetary loan.
For a few years now Musk has mentioned on more than one occasion his plan to build a self-sufficient city on the Red Planet. Thus, he said he planned to build about a thousand Starships, the spacecraft designed to travel to Mars, over the course of 10 years to transport a million people to the neighboring planet by 2050.
Of course, this is only a speculative price; other issues directly related to the technical aspects of interplanetary travel must be resolved before a value can be stipulated.
Story originally published in Ecoosfera
