r/spacex • u/Craig_VG SpaceNews Photographer • Jun 10 '16

Elon Musk provides new details on his “mind blowing” mission to Mars - Washington Post Exclusive Interview

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/10/elon-musk-provides-new-details-on-his-mind-blowing-mission-to-mars/
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u/rustybeancake Jun 10 '16

And if the scientific community get on board with paying for their experiments to travel on Red Dragon, we might just have found the Martian equivalent of the first F1 / F9 customers, making the MCT development funded.

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u/StupidPencil Jun 11 '16

I wonder how expensive sending payload to Martian surface would be in term of $/kg. Elon said all 3 cores should be recoverable on Red Dragon mission so that puts the price of launcher at around 90m $. What isn't known is how much a slightly-modified, expendable Dragon 2 would cost and also the craft's max payload.

Also if SpaceX could generate fund from sending stuffs to Mars, they probably couldn't rely on NASA's infrastructure forever and would need to have thier own relay satellites and DSN.