This futuristic illustration shows a collection of starships on the Martian surface. Elon Musk and SpaceX introduce themselves to astronauts, who initially live outside of spaceships.
SpaceX
It's time to put some money into your vacation funding. SpaceX's interplanetary spaceship has not even left Earth, but Elon Musk is already speculating about the price of a ticket to Mars.
In a tweet on Sunday, Musk said he was confident the move to Mars would someday cost less than $ 500,000 (£ 390,000, $ 71
Very dependent on volume, but I'm confident that the move to Mars (round trip free) costs one day less than $ 500,000 and possibly less than $ 100,000. Low enough that most people in advanced economies could sell their homeland on Earth and move to Mars if they want.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2019
Musk believes the ticket price could ultimately fall below $ 100,000, cheap enough that "most people in advanced economies sell their home on earth and move to Mars if they want. "
Half a million bucks sound like a lot of money, but compare that to the price of over $ 200,000 in weightlessness on a Virgin Galactic flight, or $ 9.5 million for a vacation on a [459,023] proposed luxury space station .
One of the most important tidbits in Musk's tweet is that the return ticket is free. If you go to Mars and decide that you do not like the potatoes, you can return to Earth.
SpaceX's stainless steel spaceship is under development. The company built a "Hopper" prototype for testing take-offs and landings and also tests the Raptor rocket engine which will propel it.
Before SpaceX shoots Mars, he plans to send Starsacht around the Moon in 2023 with tourists aboard.
Musk himself has estimated his chances of moving to Mars at 70 percent. He flirted on Twitter with a Mars account so it's no surprise he might want to take his cosmic crush to the next level.
