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Elon Musk has long expressed his ambition to take humans to Mars on a SpaceX rocket. He promised that this travel ticket would be made pocket-friendly so that it could be reached by many people.
In a conversation with TED Conference head Chris Anderson, Musk was asked about the cost of a trip to Mars. Anderson asked if the ticket prices could be made cheap, in the hundreds of dollars.
Musk replied that the price of tickets to Mars would be determined not only by the economy, but also by the need to make travel to Mars so affordable that it could attract the millions of people needed to build life on Mars.
Musk also assumes the price of a ticket to Mars can reach USD 100,000. According to the richest man in the world, that price should still be affordable for many people.
"If the cost of moving to Mars is, for argument's sake, $100,000, then I think almost anyone can work and save and then have $100,000 and can go to Mars if they want," Musk said, as quoted by Business Insider.
"We want to make it affordable for anyone who wants to go."
From the scenarios that Musk mentions, he seems to expect people to sell their homes and assets to go to Mars. In the interview, Musk also mentioned several other sources of funding, including government sponsorship or applying for loans.
In a tweet a few years ago, Musk said the estimated cost of a trip to Mars is between $100,000 and $500,000.
"Cheap enough that most people in the developed world could sell their home on Earth and move to Mars if they wanted to," Musk wrote in a 2019 tweet.
By 2020, Musk hopes SpaceX can build 1,000 Starship rockets over the next 10 years to send one million people to Mars by 2050. He then indicated humans would land on Mars for the first time in 2029.