Summary
One of humanity’s significant existential dreams is to find a planet suitable for the continuation of life, with the presence of water and the possibility of atmospheric transformation. Although Mars is not an Earth-like planet, it is one of Earth’s neighbors with water, among other things. Therefore, travel to Mars can be seen as one of humanity’s most critical global goals. In this paper, the budgeting of such a trip will be detailed so that the reader will know the total costs of this type of transportation.
Current Data
Discussing the current spending by companies and nations on space exploration programs is paramount. In the context of primarily tourist-oriented suborbital missions, the cost per space shuttle seat has been as high as $500,000 (Venditti, 2022). Meanwhile, SpaceX’s launch of a commercial spacecraft into low orbit averaged $67 million per launch (Chow, 2022). It costs about $50-60 million for a 12-day stay on the ISS by Russian space forces (Starlust, 2022). Thus, sending one person into space or paying to launch an entire shuttle is critically expensive.
NASA is a major player in space exploration, actively collaborating with other companies and nations. According to the fiscal year 2020 data, NASA spent about 44.9 percent of its total budget on human-controlled space exploration programs, the equivalent of $11.1 million (Dreier, 2023). This number is expected to grow in the coming years as managed space exploration programs are a top priority for NASA (Smith, 2020; Dreier, 2023).
NASA’s high spending on human-related programs may be intimidating in size, but in reality, it is not that high. As of 2022-2023, NASA was only about 0.5% of the spending ($25.4 billion) of the federal budget (Dreier, 2023). Given the upward trends in both the NASA and federal budgets, this share is unlikely to change significantly in the coming years.
The U.S. and other countries spend federal budgets on space exploration, building spacecraft, and sending humans to the ISS and beyond. Table 1 shows the amounts and shares of countries’ budgets involved in space programs. At first glance, no patterns are found between a country’s total spending and the percentage of the federal budget. However, the Pearson correlation coefficient shows a strong positive relationship (r = 0.85), indicating that those with significant spending on space exploration tend to allocate a larger percentage of the federal budget. The total amount spent on exploration programs for the 11 countries cited that are actively exploring space was $97.1B.
Table 1: Details of space exploration program costs and shares of federal budgets by country
Cost of a Mars Mission
After estimating the approximate cost levels for space exploration and considering that predominantly countries and companies operate at suborbital altitudes, it is clear that the cost of a manned Mars mission would require a much larger investment. Sources tend to report different figures depending on what factors are considered. For example, Smith and Spudis (2019) report that the estimated cost of such a trip in 2035 would be $230B, about 2.4 times the combined budget of the 11 countries cited above. Other reports suggest that a trip to Mars would require between $100B and $500B (Swanson, 2019).
Elon Musk calculates that the cost of sending humans to Mars will decline rapidly and may one day reach below $100,000, but such optimistic projections are hardly feasible in the next twenty years (Clifford, 2019). In other words, the average consumer should not expect to have affordable financial opportunities to travel to Mars within the next few decades. Such programs would likely require the involvement of multiple countries.
References
Chow, D. (2022). To cheaply go: How falling launch costs fueled a thriving economy in orbit. NBC News. Web.
Clifford, C. (2019). Elon Musk: Moving to Mars will cost less than $500,000, ‘maybe even below $100,000’. CNBC. Web.
Dreier, C. (2023). Your guide to NASA’s budget. The Planetary Society. Web.
Smith, M. S. (2020). NASA’S FY2020 budget request [PDF document]. Web.
Smith, O. G., & Spudis, P. D. (2019). Op-ed | Mars for only $1.5 trillion. SpaceNews. Web.
SRD. (2023). Government space program spending of the leading countries in the world 2020-2022. Statista. Web.
Starlust. (2022). Space tourism: How much does it cost & who’s offering it? Starlust. Web.
Swanson, S. (2019). Are astronauts worth tens of billions of dollars in extra costs to go to Mars? The Conversation. Web.
The GE. (2023). Government spending, in dollars – Country rankings. The Global Economy. Web.
Venditti, B. (2022). The cost of space flight before and after SpaceX. Visual Capitalist. Web.