That's definitely neat, but why not aim higher? Depending on your age?
I'm in my 30s: My goal here is to live on Mars. SpaceX's colony is aimed at being able to support 1M people, with something like 80,000 leaving Earth each Mars transit window on a BFR/Starship. Save some money now, wait 20-30 years for them to get the initial hard colony built and then buy my ticket.
Might not work, but I think I'll at least get close. You can definitely aim higher than watching them send people to ISS! That'll happen in the next few months/years, but so much more is happening after that, like the 7 people going around the Moon, or the first Mars launches on Starship, etc!
Woo!
(and lol that this is at -3, I'm just excited about stuff okay? no need to bury it deep underground and hate it so much!)
I don't know why you're getting so downvoted. I mean, living on Mars for people in their 30s is probably a stretch goal, but getting to space is realistic.
Realistically, Starship won't fly regularly until around the mid 2020s and even that beast of a ship won't be cheap enough to commercialize space properly. I think you'll have to wait until Starhip's successor or the Blue Origin equivalent (~2040, ~15m diameter) for any chance to go.
If SpaceX manages the feat of launching the Starship for $50 million (unlikely, probably 2-3x more) and carry 100 people, it still means 500k/ticket. And that's just launch, for actual missions you'd need operational support, extra space (ie fewer passengers) for life support etc. So maybe around 2030-2035 you'd be able to ride around the moon for a few days (like the pre Apollo 11 missions) for $1.5 million.
If the successor rockets manage to lower the cost further, maybe around 2045 you'd be able to spend a week on the moon for 500k, or a weekend in low earth orbit for 200k? Maybe that rocket will make it possible to take a trip to mars for $1 million? I'd imagine rent would be pretty expensive there as well.
These are certainly not middle-class prices, but if you sell your house instead of leaving it to your children, or don't have children, or are pretty very well-off it's not unrealistic. You'd also have to make sure you're in tip-top health at 60-something though, so some luck would still be required.
I like you ambition. However I seem to become more conservative and nostalgic with age. The thought of going on a one-way trip to Mars when you are 60 is scary. It is probably too cold and monochromatic for my taste.
But thank you for the idea of longer term goals - "Experience zero-gravity and see Earth from outer atmosphere" is now on the list.
Oh my it's not a one-way ticket! Those people selling 1-way tickets were scammers. A key tenet of SpaceX seems to be that you can come home to Earth whenever you want, or at least when the planets align for a fast journey. They will need to transport a lot of Starships back to Earth, and as long as they are like 30% empty it works out for people to come home any time at all. I'm banking on that too, coming back to visit Earth in the future.
> when you are 60 is scary.
Yeah okay, it is a bit scary to think about now. But I don't think it will be scary then. Should be just like airplanes now - that's the goal for SpaceX anyway.
> But thank you for the idea of longer term goals - "Experience zero-gravity and see Earth from outer atmosphere" is now on the list.
Starship is supposed to carry a couple hundred passengers. That would be a few hundred ships all launching at once; while I share the enthusiasm I’m not sure that’s realistic due to the [lack of] economic incentives involved.
> That would be a few hundred ships all launching at once
Yes, that's the plan as described by Elon! Maybe not "all at once" but over the course of some days/weeks, yes.
> I’m not sure that’s realistic due to the [lack of] economic incentives involved
Every Mars thread someone pops in to say this, but it simply isn't true. There are major economic incentives to go to Mars, and selling tickets is #1 of hundreds. There are basically infinite ways of making money by going to Mars and I'm really upset that the HN crowd is so dedicated to the line that there's no money on Mars. There's trillions of dollars on Mars.
With tickets priced at $200,000 or so as Elon has described, each Starship should have launch-day revenues of $40,000,000 if each ones carries 200 people. Wowza that's solid, no? And it's just tickets so far we're talking about, no science research or other goods or services or plans or anything at all, just consumer tickets.
There's plenty of money to be made.
----
Edit: I guess I've been banned? I'm no longer allowed to post on HN this morning. Here's my response to the post below.
I think we are on different pages here. I'm not talking about tourism, I'm talking about people who will build libraries, write books, dig for oil or whatever, innovate new solar panels, build houses, create industries, make movies, build new spaceships to the stars, go to the poles and think about philosophy, create new electronics, work on particle physics, etc.
Not tourism!!
> (a) people who can afford 200k and (b) people willing to risk a possible one-way trip.
Yes? There ought to be tens of millions of such people in 20-50 years. Why wouldn't there be? Elon gave us half a century notice to save our money. We're doing it. If they build it, we'll be ready to come.
> curious to hear examples
Okay. The Mars Colony seems like the first stepping stone into future solar system exploration. There will be significant opportunities there to build new products and drive new frontiers. I'll come back and write some specific examples soon, but I see it as far more economically interesting than Europe coming to North America in the long run: the possibilities are seriously endless, given the resources available, the lack of commercial claim to them, and the incredible rarity and quantity of those resources can change our ideas about what can be reasonably built by humans/robots in our lifetimes.
You may be right that there are many ways to make money beyond tickets (I don’t know—curious to hear examples), but I don’t think your ticket math quite adds up.
200k might be an ok ticket price for some, but you’re talking about the overlap of: (a) people who can afford 200k and (b) people willing to risk a possible one-way trip.
You’re talking about tickets as if this is space tourism: space tourism is a loop around the moon. We’re not going to have Mars “tourism” in the near future. These proposed hundreds of passengers are in for high-risk exploration.
"Musk thinks the ticket price could eventually dip below $100,000, cheap enough that "most people in advanced economies could sell their home on Earth and move to Mars if they want."
Ok, Falcon 9 costs 62M$ just to bring something on earth orbit.
Why you would ever think that 40M$ worth of tickets to bring a BFR on Mars would be profitable?
> Ok, Falcon 9 costs 62M$ just to bring something on earth orbit.
That is false. Where are you getting your info? Falcon 9 costs a lot less than that to deliver cargo to LEO! And the price is dropping every day.
> Why you would ever think that 40M$ worth of tickets to bring a BFR on Mars would be profitable?
There's no need to be condescending. First, I did not state at any point that $40M per launch would be profitable! Please don't make things up and say I said them. I merely stated a large source of revenue. I said there would be other sources as well, I made a big point about that!
Elon has stated many times that the Starship/BFR would cost less to launch than the Falcon 1, amortized over many reusable launches. Falcon 1, not even Falcon 9. So the cost of launching a Starship would be dramatically lower than your made-up numbers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9
If you have a better source feel free to update the page.
However I think that it will be much more costly a travel of more than 50M km rather than less that 50K.
I'm in my 30s: My goal here is to live on Mars. SpaceX's colony is aimed at being able to support 1M people, with something like 80,000 leaving Earth each Mars transit window on a BFR/Starship. Save some money now, wait 20-30 years for them to get the initial hard colony built and then buy my ticket.
Might not work, but I think I'll at least get close. You can definitely aim higher than watching them send people to ISS! That'll happen in the next few months/years, but so much more is happening after that, like the 7 people going around the Moon, or the first Mars launches on Starship, etc!
Woo!
(and lol that this is at -3, I'm just excited about stuff okay? no need to bury it deep underground and hate it so much!)