Mars tickets will cost less than $ 500,000

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

SpaceX ships will ship all comers to the Red Planet and back, if everything goes according to the plan of Ilona Mask.

The price for space aboard the SpaceX Starship interplanetary spacecraft will eventually fall to such an extent that it will be accessible to most of the population of the industrialized world, the entrepreneur wrote.

“It depends on the number of people, but I’m sure that moving to Mars (a return ticket is free) will one day cost less than $ 500,000. Or maybe less than $ 100,000. It’s more than enough that most people in advanced economies can sell their home on Earth and move to Mars, ”wrote Musk on Twitter on February 10.

(Return ticket is free), it will be one day cost less than $ 500k & maybe even below $ 100k. If you want.

- Elon Musk ( elonmusk ) 11 February 2019

A starship of 100 passengers will go into Earth orbit at the top of a huge rocket called Super Heavy, and then head for Mars (or the Moon, or whatever its final destination - the ship can visit many places in the solar system, Musk said). Super Heavy will return to Earth, make a vertical landing and fly again - many more times.

The quick and repeated use of Starship and Super Heavy is the key to Musk’s dream of an ambitious but affordable space flight. In this sense, he says, the recent change in Starship also helps: designing a ship from stainless steel rather than from a more expensive carbon composite material, as originally planned.


“This may sound implausible, but I’m sure that we can assemble Starship / Super Heavy for a lower price than Falcon 9,” wrote Musk in a different tweet on Sunday evening, referring to the SpaceX workhorse - the Falcon 9 rocket. He then answered “Yes,” to a Twitter question, is switching to stainless steel an important factor in this potential price reduction.

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

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