"Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket - half a million dollars. It can be done!"

[Neil]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17439490 Rocket entrepreneur Elon Musk believes he can get the cost of a round trip to Mars down to about half a million dollars. The SpaceX CEO says he has finally worked out how to do it, and told the BBC he would reveal further details later this year or early in 2013. Musk is one of Nasa's new commercial partners, building systems to take cargo and crew to the space station. He has developed his own rocket and a capsule for the purpose. The Falcon 9 launcher and the Dragon vessel are expected to give the first full demonstration of their capabilities next month on an unmanned sortie to the orbiting outpost. Let's hope there's some truth to this!

[Mike70]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17439490 Let's hope there's some truth to this! the Dragon was launched tuesday. this is its second successful flight (so far). it is conducting manoeuvers to prove that it can safely approach the space station. actually, this is going on right now as i type. if that goes well, Dragon will dock with the space station. SpaceX is way ahead of its competitiors and the crewed version of the Dragon (holding up to 7 people) was built with going to Mars in mind. so is the rocket that will lift off the crewed version. http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/003/120523flyby/

[Christopher Jon]

It's good to see space exploration back on track. There'll probably be a Starbucks and Wal-Mart in orbit in 20 years.

[LouCipherr]

"Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket - half a million dollars. It can be done!" I want some of what that guy is smoking, 'cause it's apparent he's getting better stuff than me!

[AcesandEights]

Private industry taking over the heavy lifting on space exploration will definitely see some results...a number of them will be regrettable.

[Sammich]

I am curious to hear how he proposes to pull that plan off. Using current technology, it would take 9 months to get to Mars, then it would require a 3 month stay until the time where the orbits of Earth and Mars are the closest, then another 9 months to return- almost a 2 year round trip. This wouldn't be a problem for unmanned flights, but with manned missions the required amount of food, water, miscellaneous gear and amount of material for radiation shielding would make it a huge and very expensive undertaking. Estimates are that a crew of 6 would require something like 3 million pounds of supplies. Unless someone has come up with a working system of suspended animation for humans, I am not sure how this guy is going to send people to Mars and back for $500k. How long would a trip to Mars take?

[Mike70]

I am curious to hear how he proposes to pull that plan off. Using current technology, it would take 9 months to get to Mars, then it would require a 3 month stay until the time where the orbits of Earth and Mars are the closest, then another 9 months to return- almost a 2 year round trip. This wouldn't be a problem for unmanned flights, but with manned missions the required amount of food, water, miscellaneous gear and amount of material for radiation shielding would make it a huge and very expensive undertaking. Estimates are that a crew of 6 would require something like 3 million pounds of supplies. Unless someone has come up with a working system of suspended animation for humans, I am not sure how this guy is going to send people to Mars and back for $500k. How long would a trip to Mars take? i don't think it can be done for 500K either but i'd be willing to do it even if it cost 500 billion dollars. it's the future and that is all that matters. this country can spend trillions on its deathmachine it calls a military but won't spend a cent on shit that actually matters. a Hohmann transfer orbit to mars takes 214 days that is 7 months, give or take. that also assumes that you are carrying everything into orbit. that isn't spacex's plan. stuff would be pre-positioned, either in earth orbit or around mars for the use of the people going. using a more powerful engine or a nuclear powered craft, a Hohmann transfer orbit is not required and you can go straight from the earth to mars in about 4 months. the radiation question is a major problem. once outside of earth's magnetosphere you are completely exposed to the solar wind and would be getting doses of radiation equal to about 5 or 6 chest x-rays every day. heavy lead shielding still isn't needed though. there are ceramics that show great promise in blocking radiation. of course building a spacecraft that could generate its own magnetic field would take care of all of that. the biggest problems i see are the long term lack of gravity, the fact that you have to slow down (quite a bit actually) to be captured by mars would actually burn up more fuel than anything else on the spaceflight and landing on the surface would be interesting considering the atmosphere is only 1% of earth's, there's not much to slow you down. it all boils down to this: we need a nuclear powered spacecraft that can literally get out and go space truckin'. also, once you transfer the orbit you are pretty much done. there is a launch window to mars only once every 26 months. again, more powerful engines change all of this.

[Rancid Carcass]

The biggest problems i see are the long term lack of gravity... Actually, I think the biggest problem would be Hal Holbrook opening the hatch to the command module right before blast off and bungling the astronauts off to a remote hangar in the desert and have them fake the whole thing...

[LouCipherr]

Rancid - Hal Holbrook won't be the problem. THIS 'Hal' will be the problem:

[Mr. Clean]

I won't be getting on any aircraft that the first tickets to Mars is $500k-ish...not a chance...