Those launches are expensive. What will they cost? Let’s assume cuts SpaceX gets the cost to $10 million. SpaceX needs to launch ten fuel rockets for each of the 10,000 Starships, or 100,000 fuel rockets. How much will that cost?
$$ 100,000 * $10 \; million = $1 \; trillion $$
That will cost them $1 trillion. That is $1 trillion for the fuel launches, not the Starship launches. Just above India’s 2006 GDP of $940 billion and roughly 60% of the $1.746 trillion 2024 GPD of Australia.
Suppose Musk reduces the cost down to an unrealistic $1 million per launch. SpaceX will require $100 billion just for launching fuel!
Let’s suppose each of these rockets cost $50 million to launch. $50 million is a little less than the $67 million it costs to launch the average Falcon 9 rocket. How much would SpaceX need to spend?
$$ $50 \; million * 100,000 = $5 \; trillion. $$
At current costs of about $50 million per Starship launch, it would cost $5 trillion. Or, approximately 18% of the 2023 US GDP of $27.4 trillion, 1.4 times India’s $3.55 trillion 2023 GDP and almost 3 times the $1.73 trillion GDP of Australia in 2023,
These numbers are astronomical! SpaceX is a space company, and it reaching the stars is literally their business. However, SpaceX cannot raise the GDP of developed nations, such as India or Australia. $5 trillion is a nearly quarter of the GDP of the United States, the wealthiest nation on Earth! Can SpaceX is to find between $100 billion and $5 trillion to spend on this one aspect of the Martian missions? No. Why would anyone believe that?
Optimism
What about optimism? Aren’t you being pessimistic? What if SpaceX proves you wrong? Everything seems impossible until geniuses like Tesla, Bell or Edison prove everyone wrong and they change the world with revolutionary technology.
Optimism without reason is faith. It is rational to be optimistic if that optimism is based on evidence. Someday, I hope to own a phone exceeding my laptop in processing power. Evidence suggests that may be the case. My current phone is far more powerful than my first computer. The pace of technological development suggests that this may happen again within my lifetime.
Should I believe SpaceX can get one million people to Mars by 2050? The evidence suggests SpaceX cannot do this. It is quite obvious that SpaceX does not possess sufficient funds. Nor do I have any reason to think it will increase its launch rate by 50 times. No, the evidence suggests it cannot do either of these. It would be irrational to ignore the facts and pretend the evidence supports the possibility of either option.
If I was to believe this, I would do it on faith. It is not based on evidence. That may be optimism, but it is irrational optimism. I will have no part in it. It seems absolute faith in Musk’s ability to do this is unreasonable. One should not accept everything Musk, or anyone else, says without question. Especially when the claims are this absurd…
Musk obviously cannot get one million people to Mars by 2050. If you see a problem with my math, show me. It is safe to assume Musk cannot launch 33 rockets a day or 6,000 rockets a year by 2050. I have no reason to believe SpaceX can launch so many rockets in such short periods. Am I to take that on faith? As a rational person, I take nothing on faith.
Rational optimism is not taking things on faith.
You can be optimistic about Musk getting to Mars. However, that is irrational. Optimism requires evidence, not foolish dreams. It is based on your assessment of the evidence. there is no evidence Musk can do this and considerable evidence that he cannot. Therefore, any such optimism is irrational in this instance.
Conclusion
The debate is over! I have used simple math any high school student should be able to employ to discredit Musk’s claims. I have made it look easy; but it is very easy. Musk likes to pretend he is an engineer. As an engineer, why can’t he do this simple math? SpaceX engineers: why the silence on this? I assume they know Musk will not listen to reason on this issue. Musk might know this is impossible. In which case, Musk is lying to everyone.
Reality check: Musk won’t achieve this by 2050. Why not? Starship’s crew capacity of 100 is a serious problem. It requires ten thousand crewed launches. And each of those needs another ten fuel launches! SpaceX needs to launch over 100,000 rockets to get one million people to Mars. This price point prohibits SpaceX from affording this project before 2050. SpaceX likely lacks the resources for this endeavor. How is SpaceX going to get the trillions of dollars it needs? It is not.
In general, if someone says they need $1 trillion to do something, they cannot do it. They are either lying, scamming your, or both.
Perhaps SpaceX will release A Starship design that does not require it to launch at least 10 rockets of fuel per launch. It still needs to launch 10,000 rockets. It would need to make rockets with a greater crew capacity. However, launching heavier ships would cost more.
This article only considers the cost of sending people to Mars. It has not considered the cost of constructing habitation, food, medical resources or any of the other costs. Such costs would obviously be considerable, and we might explore them in a future article. To give you some idea, food costs for the trip to Mars would cost over $2 billion.
What conclusion should a rational person draw from this? Musk cannot establish a colony of one-million people by 2050.
Nor is he likely to achieve this within your lifetime. He will likely never achieve this. Sorry Musk, case close, pending further evidence. You cannot do this, so stop telling everyone that you can.