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Elon Musk reveals the cost of a manned flight to Mars


The colonization of Mars is becoming more and more real, and it is not surprising that in the next interview, Elon Musk was asked about the financial and engineering component of such a project.

During a Lex Friedman podcast published on YouTube, the head of SpaceX noted that today the cost of a “ticket” to Mars is about one trillion dollars.

Musk noted that for a flight to Mars is not enoughone rocket with people, several more cargo ships should be sent with medical equipment, life support systems and communications. Nevertheless, as always, an optimistic enthusiast said that a manned flight to Mars would be completed in the next 5-10 years.

SpaceX is currently working onoptimization of Starship-type spacecraft to minimize the costs of delivering payloads to orbit and then to the surface of Mars. Today, according to rough estimates, the delivery of one ton of cargo to Mars will be about $1 billion. The task of SpaceX engineers, according to Musk, is to reduce this figure by at least a thousand times.

Musk's plans include not delivering flags to Mars andcommemorative signs, as was the case with the Moon, but the construction of a full-fledged Martian colony capable of independently providing itself with everything necessary: ​​a landing system, deep-space communications, thermal protection and underground hydroponic farms to provide colonists with food. Musk also noted that the ships that deliver people to Mars must be reusable for multiple flights along the Earth-Mars route.