They will charge $100 million per ton.
SpaceX is going to try to get refueling and launches of the SpaceX Starship developed so that they can send an unmanned test mission in 2026.
This test mission will require using about 8-12 launches of refueling missions to get enough fuel to send a Starship to Mars around the end of 2026. This will need to have at least two or three Starship launches each month in July to December 2026.
If they are able to take 100 tons to the moon and to Mars with each fully fueled Starship, then they are trying to generate $10 billion in revenue for each mission. If they can get 200 tons for each mission then they could generate $20 billion per Mars and Moon mission.
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What is the business case for cargo flights to Mars? Does Mars have anything worth mining and bringing back to the earth in economic quantities? Would Mars be a practical base for asteroid mining missions? What do we need on earth so badly to spend 100s of billions to go to Mars to retrieve it?
Can’t speak for Mars, but the lunar cargo is virtually self evident when you consider some obscured factors:
1) Orbital access from the moon is trivial compared to Earth. Lower g means anything manufactured there can be sent anywhere else in the solar system for a fraction of the cost. In fact, a working space elevator is science fantasy on Earth but viable with existing materials on the moon.
2) No lunar atmosphere gives you better solar conversion with 100% daylight in polar regions and no atmospheric conditions to worry about in many manufacturing contexts.
So a lunar supply chain that was sufficiently capitalized would be a more expedient supplier of other space supply chains (microgravity manufacturing, orbital data centers, atmospheric engineering, etc). Most of the elements are there and the energy is rather abundant with existing tech. If we’re able to move cargo up at a rate of $30-40m / 100 tons, we’re in the lunar colony business. Surveys, early mining, low level refining. For a fraction of the defense budget we can splurge on something that’s obviously going to be a early feature of interplanetary civilization.
If I had a lot of wealth (on Earth), would I exchange a part of it for an “investment” on Mars and become the 21 century version of Penn? You know, the owner of “Penn-sylvania”.
I could colonize/own/control 10% of Mars (and its resources) or 0.0001% of Earth resources.
I would not need to deal with Earth governments and taxation and regulation every day.
The people able to pay, willing and wanted to Mars are not the usual “migrants” living of welfare and borderline criminal (on the side of the crime).
What is so scarce on Earth is freedom from governments and it can not be taken back.
Can we hold on the Mars commercial cargo mission plans until Starship actually has a test flight where something doesn’t go seriously wrong?
And no, I am not a rabid Elon hater and I while I don’t doubt Space-X’s commitment to getting to Mars, it’s not set in stone that they will succeed or won’t be hit with a major delay. It could be that Starship is too ambitious and that they may have scale everything down or go all the way back to the drawing board and go with multiple smaller reusable Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy launches and maybe utilizing solar electric propulsion for unmanned spacecraft or even the Mars cycler and that could add another decade to Elon Musk’s plans.
So until they work out the bugs in Starship, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Who’s getting ahead of themselves?
Todays test flight had nothing serious go wrong despite deliberate, borderline reckless weakening of the heat shield.
They are proposing the first commercial Mars flights in 2030, 4+ years from now.
Their first subscale hop test was 6 years ago. Their first full stack test was 2.5 years ago. In this time they have had multiple “major” delays of basically every type imaginable.
In 2030 they will have at least 4 operational pads, and likely 100+ operational flights under their belt, including landing on the moon.
I’d say they’re well on track to deliver.