How serious or legitimate is Elon Musk's quote about charging people $500,000 to get to Mars? It seems that he came up with that price by estimating what people will be willing or able to pay, based on their willingness to sell their home to pay for a ticket.So in saying that, is he then implying that he will work to get the price of space travel down to that level of affordability?Right now, what would a ticket on Dragon cost, based on SpaceX's current expenditures? And even if it's apples and oranges, how far away is that from the $500,000 price target for a Mars trip? How much more does Musk have to improve costs in order to get to the $500,000 target, and is this feasible? Would his investors and backers find this idea acceptable?
He said that the Japanese auto industry seized the lead back in the day by setting themselves ridiculous goals that required them to completely rethink the old way of doing things and generate new processes that didn't just lead to incremental improvements in build times, but orders of magnitude improvements.
one of his criticisms of SpaceX is that they weren't aiming low enough on launch costs at the time.
I think the $500.000 price is for an 80.000 people colony. Can't recall where I read that... So definitely not for the first hundreds of customers.
Quote from: IRobot on 11/26/2012 04:33 pmI think the $500.000 price is for an 80.000 people colony. Can't recall where I read that... So definitely not for the first hundreds of customers.Ok, so that is $40 B transportation price and 80,000 times X kg/ticket. I can't guess kg/ticket, but 200 kg seems very low because the passengers will need consumables in route. Try 500 kg/ticket, 80,000 tickets times 500 kg/ticket gives 40 Mkg (40 k tonnes) then end to end transport costs are $1000 per kg. This will be spent in 3? parts, ie. LEO, LEO to low Mars Orbit, and EDL. I'm still trying to determine the size of the Earth to LEO rocket, so how much does that cost, and what % goes to the other two phases?
I don't think it includes the price of a home and car on mars! It is likely just the launcher capability and an estimate of the mass needed. Eg: $500 per kilogram and one tonne of person,spacesuit and supplies.
Quote from: aero on 11/26/2012 05:17 pmQuote from: IRobot on 11/26/2012 04:33 pmI think the $500.000 price is for an 80.000 people colony. Can't recall where I read that... So definitely not for the first hundreds of customers.Ok, so that is $40 B transportation price and 80,000 times X kg/ticket. I can't guess kg/ticket, but 200 kg seems very low because the passengers will need consumables in route. Try 500 kg/ticket, 80,000 tickets times 500 kg/ticket gives 40 Mkg (40 k tonnes) then end to end transport costs are $1000 per kg. This will be spent in 3? parts, ie. LEO, LEO to low Mars Orbit, and EDL. I'm still trying to determine the size of the Earth to LEO rocket, so how much does that cost, and what % goes to the other two phases?80,000 person colony not 80,000 per rocket trip, thats pure madness. We're not shipping the entire population of Earth to Mars. Think small airliners as max size, with increasing rates of travel driving larger craft as needed.
...If we're speaking of cost of transport only, then 500,000 for the ~500 kg that represent you and your immediate "luggage" is indeed extremely cheap, and not in any way related to the current generation of hardware.
Casual Mars tourism or Mars retirement will not be possible this century.