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.
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“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.
