Elon Musk Says 'Almost Anyone' Can Afford $100,000, a Hypothetical Price Point for a SpaceX Ticket to Mars Musk aims to send about a million people to create a city on Mars in coming decades.
This story originally appeared on Business Insider
Elon Musk said that a $100,000 hypothetical price point for a ticket on his shuttles to Mars should be affordable for most people.
Musk's company SpaceX plans to build a self-sustaining city on the red planet in the coming decades.
In a conversation with the head of TED conferences Chris Anderson published Monday, Musk was asked about the price of a journey. Anderson asked if it could get as low as a few hundred thousand dollars.
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Musk said the price point would be determined partly by economics but also a need to make Mars travel affordable enough to attract around a million of the kinds of people needed to build a city on Mars.
"If moving to Mars costs, for argument's sake, $100,000, then I think almost anyone can work and save up and eventually have $100,000 and be able to go to Mars if they want," Musk said around minute 46.
"We want to make it available to anyone who wants to go," he said.
The scenario Musk described seemed predicated on people selling homes and other assets to go.
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In the interview Musk mentioned other possible funding sources, like being sponsored by governments or taking out a loan.
Musk previously ballparked a round trip to Mars between $100,000 and $500,000.
What are the estimated costs for tickets to Moon/Mars accounting for reusability?
— SPEXcast (@SPEXcast) February 11, 2019
In 2020, Musk said he hoped to build 1,000 of SpaceX's Starships over the course of 10 years in order to send 1 million people to Mars by 2050 to build a city on Mars, Insider previously reported. He later hinted that the first human on Mars might land in 2029.
