Ticket To MARS For Only HALF A MILLION? Head of SpaceX Says Word.

I want to go to Mars. I’ve oft mentioned that if we ever put one of us lead-footed mostly-simians onto that Red Planet I’m going to be weeping all over the televised (into ours skull-o-vision) broadcast. Now go there? My god. I can’t even contemplate it. According to the head of SpaceX I could be swinging such a dream for only half a million. Time to start rubbing some fucking pennies together.

Frreal.

io9:

You could go to Mars for just half a million bucks. That, at least, is the latest big proclamation from SpaceX entrepreneur and private spaceflight pioneer Elon Musk, who says a round-trip to Mars could be within reach of the “average” person in as little as 30 to 50 years.

Of course, let’s clarify a couple of key points there right away. For the purposes of this discussion, the average person needs to have $500,000 available to spend on the trip. Considering the median household income in the United States is currently about $50,000 per year, Musk’s definition of an average person may be a little different from, well, reality’s.

That said, a trip to Mars isn’t exactly a cruise vacation, and $500,000 would mean that even a decently well-off non-millionaire could, by making some serious financial sacrifices, actually afford the interplanetary trip of a lifetime. In this scenario, a trip to Mars might be pretty much the  only  luxury item a person buys in their entire lifetime, but I could totally see how that might be worth it.

Then there’s the question of timing. Musk has previously said he wants to use SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launcher and Dragon capsule – or at least their successor technologies – to put astronauts on Mars in twenty years. If that actually happens – and yes, that’s about the biggest  if  I’ve ever used on my time writing for this site – then Musk says they could begin selling tickets for commercial flights to Mars almost immediately.

The price would start out at a figure much,  much  higher than $500,000, but Musk says it would take just ten to fifteen years for the system to be mature enough that the price could come down to that relatively low number. As such, the first $500,000 ticket might buy you a seat on a launch in around 2040, with say 2060 being the upper limit if this all actually happens but hits some snags and delays in the process.

I’m not naive enough to miss the fact that this is most likely nothing more than Musk pumping up his own brand. He’d be a bit of a daft bastard if he said it was an improbable mission that would run an infinite amount of Imperial Credits. Noted and noted. However imagine if this shit isn’t more than conjecture? Imagine if we don’t blow ourselves up or talk ourselves of completely believing in science (we’re taking a fair run at this election here in the US) and commercial flights become real? Ah shit!, to dream.