Introduction:
The cost of space travel has been a major topic of discussion in recent years. Although most of us would like to know how much a trip to space, the actual price varies depending on what options are chosen. And while some people might feel uncomfortable asking some questions about this subject there is nothing wrong with wanting to know more when it comes to human achievements and discoveries like this.
It's hard to imagine the mind-blowing experiences that are available for a small price. You could go see the Grand Canyon, the Pyramids of Egypt, or the Great Wall of China. But what about above the clouds? This is where space travel comes into play. If you want to know how much your trip to space will cost, it is important to figure out how many years away from earth it is until you get there.
How much is a trip to space?
The average cost of a trip to space is about $150,000. It depends on how long you want to stay and what you want to do there. The longer your stay and the more experiences you have, the more it costs.
The minimum amount for a ticket to space is about $1 million. But this is just for one person. If you want a family or group of friends to go with you, the cost will increase even more.
We've all heard the number $200,000. But what if we told you that a trip to space costs just $12 million?
That is the price tag NASA has put on astronauts' flights into low Earth orbit, which includes docking with the International Space Station and other activities.
According to NASA's Astronaut Transportation System Roadmap, a trip to space starts at about $30 million for an astronaut's training and travel expenses over a period of four years. The total cost includes launch vehicles and spacecraft, which can cost up to $4 billion per vehicle alone.
In addition to training costs, there is also the cost of providing food for astronauts during their time in space. The food requirements for each individual astronaut are detailed in the document and include everything from wheat flour and barley grass — available on Earth — to freeze-dried foods like turkey stroganoff or beef stroganoff.
The cost of a trip to space is a complete mystery. NASA and the United Nations both have budgets that are known, but they're dwarfed by the hundreds or thousands of billions of dollars needed just to build rockets and spacecraft.
The best estimates we have come from the National Research Council, which looked at what it would take to send astronauts beyond low Earth orbit. They concluded that it would cost about $250 billion to put humans into orbit around Mars, and $350 billion to send them further out into deep space.
These numbers were based on earlier estimates of how much it would cost to get people off this planet. But they assume that things will get cheaper as we go from one planet to another — which is reasonable enough, given that rockets are getting more efficient all the time.
But there's another way of looking at costs: how much does it cost per pound? This is how we compare things when we talk about how expensive something is relative to other things.
Conclusion:
While we can't be certain as to the final price tag, there is no question that this will cost quite a bit of money. The current estimate for a suborbital flight, according to Virgin Galactic's Web site, is $200,000. If you want the full space-camp experience, including two weeks of training prior to your flight? That'll cost you about a million dollars.
Hopefully, the projects and leaders mentioned above will one day usher in a new era of space exploration – but we're still a long way from this future. And it's important to remember that even if spaceflight becomes commonplace, it won't be cheap. If you can afford the price tag, though, why not go? The experience is likely worth it.