Elon Musks $100 000 Ticket to Mars: BUSTED!

With mining hardware that does not exist, from asteroids that are not towed to where mining them would be of any profit, with solar panels that would have to be placed on them or the ships. Towed by ships that don't exist, using a mechanism that doesn't exist, because attaching a rocket to an ice rock is rather hard proposition. All to mine substance that is extremely abundant so far on Earth. Also, Starship is powered with methane not hydrogen. Cool for science fiction, extremely bad for business. It's nigh impossible this could be done cheaply enough even with hydrolox rocket, without having seriously big self-sustainable space bases strewn all around, or extremely cheap rocket engines that would make Starship immediately obsolete.

C’mon guys. Thunderf00t displayed the source and highlighted it. In that highlighted text, Elon wrote the word “maybe.” For the rest of us, we are held accountable for what we say, even if we preface it with “maybe.”

I think he should talk about NASA's super heavy rocket the SLS about how its actually the more superior rocket compared to the Starship. I'm always sick of people criticizing that the SLS is a waist of money and it should be scrapped and have NASA use the Starship instead (even though by technicality, the SLS is finished while Starship is still in developement). I think a video of defending the SLS would be a good video.

The FoE Three

I agree he hasn’t promised $100K trips in ages I think he was when he was building up SpaceX to try to get the money to take people to the ISS but I can’t think of a clip off the top of my head. I think the $500,000 thing is aspirational I don’tthink he means it is supposed to be that cheap before the 2030s after their reusable ships have done a few runs at higher prices and payed off their construction prices so that the main costs will be the fuel used to get the big ships from earth orbit to Mars orbit and the people from earth to orbit and Mars orbit to Mars. As TF pointed out if he is intending to use rockets most of that will $500000 always be spent getting people off earth and out to the moon’s orbit or wherever the ferry ships are supposed to be.

Glen Collins

The last time I heard him talk about that $100000-$500000 wasn’t the cost for the first group to get there he was assuming there was already cities on Mars for them to move into. That said the only way I can see that price range being achieved is enormous space infrastructure like a space elevator on Mars (which may be possible with current materials but will probably be really difficult for at least the next 20 to 30 years. As well as sky hooks or something to get objects off earth. Or for the people to be the only thing that has to be lifted up to orbital velocities. Given enough time we could have farms in orbit, be collecting water and metals from asteroids and producing hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis or farming even more stuffy make ethanol. (Or possibly using the hydrogen to run ion drives using solar.) Musks reusable rockets would be a lot more reusable if he doesn’t have to land them in a significant gravity environment as long as they stay more or less in free fall they can do all their acceleration over much longer periods of time. There are a heck of a lot of people with houses worth over (US) $1M if a fraction of a percent of them wanted to go you would need a fleet to get them there. (Assuming they really could get the cost down that much)

Glen Collins

Like most of these videos, I really appreciate this, and it makes great points, BUT, as often happens, it tries to push it just a little too far. It starts out with the statement that Elon has promised Mars rides for $100k - which he clearly hasn't, even in the text highlighted on the screen. He says he MIGHT be able to do it for less than $100k. Stick to what he DID claim, that he will do it for less than $500k, that's crazy enough!