Million-Man Mars Colony by 2050?

Introduction

You likely know someone who has absolute faith in Musk. They expect a one-million-person Martian colony by 2050. The colony is as unlikely as finding little green men on Mars. We will do the math. Let’s begin by determining the minimum number of trips to Mars he needs to make.

The Math

Musk has proposed a one-million-person Mars colony by 2050. He has said that SpaceX will use the Starship launch vehicle for this purpose. SpaceX listed Starship’s crew capacity as 100 people¹. Divide the colony size by Starship’s crew capacity. We divide one million by one hundred:

That requires 10,000 Starship launches. That is a vast number of launches!

What does a launch cost, and what does that cover? Costs include rocket construction, testing, launch infrastructure, fuel, and labor. We will focus on launch costs.

How expensive is a Starship launch? Musk has claimed Starship launches cost up to $100 million each. SpaceX launching 10,000 Starships at present costs yields this calculation:

This gives us an astronomical figure of $1 trillion. SpaceX will not have $1 trillion soon. That vastly exceeds its private funding, contract revenue, and other income combined.

SpaceX made an estimated $13.1 billion in revenue in 2024. Let’s assume SpaceX can sustain similar revenue levels going forward. How long to earn $1 trillion?

SpaceX would need over 76 years to pay for the $1 trillion. This assumes SpaceX dedicates 100% of revenue to the campaign! Musk’s 2050 timeline appears unrealistic; 2100 is more plausible.

An illustration of the proposed $1 trillion coin.

Someone proposed a $1 trillion coin in 2011. If only Musk could get one, he could reach Mars!

But you say that $13.1 billion is its revenue from operations. What about the money it gets from investors? What does that amount to? According to this website, SpaceX has received 30 rounds of funding, with all but three of the amounts publicly disclosed. The disclosed funding amounts add up to under $11 billion between 2002 and 2023. That averages out to how much per year?

Let’s add that $550 million to its supposed yearly revenue of $13.1 billion. How long to reach $1 trillion?

Counting all known investments, raising $1 trillion would take about 74 years.That’s unrealistic; a trillion-dollar raise would consume all revenue and investments. This cannibalization of resources leaves nothing for operations and leaves it with no ability to generate the $13 billion of revenue it needs to generate every year!

Musk says he hopes to reduce the cost of Starship launches down to $10 million. They would still require SpaceX to find $100 billion. How SpaceX will finance this project is uncertain. That equals roughly seven years of revenue. Were SpaceX to use all of its revenue, it could do this by 2032. It cannot plausibly spend all revenue on Starship launches. How would it keep funding Starship if it was not spending money on money-making things like launch contracts for the government and so forth?

Musk has said he hopes to reduce Starship launch costs down to $1 million. A launch cost of $1 million is 1% of the current price. I am dubious about this assertion. Should he do this, SpaceX needs $10 billion to launch the Starships. $10 billion is an amount of money they can more realistically hope to find somewhere.

Unfortunately, $10 billion is approximately equal to the total amount of funding they have received during their entire lifetime at the time of writing. It is unclear where SpaceX would secure that money while funding other programs like Falcon research.

To travel to Mars efficiently, one needs to consider the Mars launch windows. Mars launch windows are the most energy and time-efficient routes between Earth and Mars. They occur when Mars and Earth line up in their orbits to be massively far apart. Earth–Mars windows recur about every 26 months and last 7–9 months. Why is this important? It is important for SpaceX to reach Mars using a launch window, assuming it wants to take the optimally efficient route.

Musk’s goal is to send a million people to Mars by 2050. I write in 2025, and he has 25 years to complete it. That seems doable, but trips must fit the launch windows. How many launch windows does SpaceX have before 2050? They are every 26 months. Multiply 25 years by 12, then divide by 26:

We get 11.5 transfer windows. Let’s say he has 12 transfer windows to use. That sounds promising! Not so fast.

To meet the 25-year goal requires 10,000 Starship launches. How many launches per window does that imply?

I will be generous and round down to 833. So, he needs to launch 833 Starships within each 7 to 9 month window.

One Starship lifting off from its tower. Now imagine 833 of these in nine months. Photo: Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Where to put your multi-trillion dollar colony?

This is impractical. How many Starships per month? The best-case scenario is a 9-month window, so let us assume that for every launch window.

Our math gives us about 92 Starships per month (I am being generous). How many per day?

SpaceX would need three Starship launches per day for nine months. This is the best-case scenario for nine-month windows. Seven-month windows require more Starships a month:

That is 119 launches per month, or about how many per day?

So SpaceX must average four launches per day for seven months. Can SpaceX sustain 3–4 launches per day for 7–9 months? Can he repeat this every 26 months for 25 years? If you think that’s doable, I have a bridge that might interest you.

Since its 2002 founding, the Falcon 9 has flown 487 times over 22 years. If we take the mean number of flights from this, we get 22 rockets per year, or 1.8 flights per month.

This understates recent launch activity. In 2024, SpaceX launched 134 rockets. That averages 11 per month, or 2.75 per week. That is an impressive number of launches. However, it still falls well short of what they would need.

How much better must SpaceX perform? Assuming it does 4 launches a day, we need to find the number of launches per month and divide that by 11:

To properly use the upcoming Mars launch windows, it will need to launch rockets at 11 times its current average. No evidence supports an eleven-fold increase before the window.

This puts the nail in the coffin for any 2025 deadline. I am going to nail the coffin shut and set it on fire. SpaceX states Starship requires in-space refueling after launch. Starship must wait in orbit for refueling before heading to Mars. Each Starship launch requires multiple fuel launches. Fuel rockets connect to the Starship rocket in orbit and inject fuel into it. Musk has said it needs 8 such launches. NASA estimates it is closer to 16. Assume ten refueling launches per Starship.

We no longer need to launch merely 3 or 4 Starships every day during the launch windows. That implies ten fuel launches per Starship each day.

SpaceX would need 30–40 fuel launches per day for 7–9 months. Those numbers imply 33–44 daily launches for 7–9 months!

Assume 33 daily launches over seven months. How many launches in seven months?

That is 6,930 rockets spread over seven months! SpaceX launched 134 rockets in 2024. That averages out to one launch every 3 days. That falls short of 33 daily rocket launches.

During that seven-month launch window, it will need to launch 50 times as many rockets as it did in all of 2024! How workable does that sound?

Those launches are expensive. What will they cost? Assume SpaceX cuts costs to $10 million per launch. SpaceX needs to launch ten fuel rockets for each of the 10,000 Starships, or 100,000 fuel rockets. How much will that cost?

That will cost $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 costs $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?

This does not seem workable to me. Does it seem workable to you?

At current costs of about $50 million per Starship launch, it would cost $5 trillion. That equals ~18% of 2023 US GDP, 1.4× India’s 2023 GDP, and ~3× Australia’s 2023 GDP.

These numbers are astronomical! SpaceX is a space company, and its reaching the stars is its business. However, SpaceX cannot raise the GDP of developed nations, such as India or Australia. $5 trillion is nearly a quarter of the GDP of the United States, the wealthiest nation on Earth! Can SpaceX find between $100 billion and $5 trillion to spend on this one aspect of the Martian missions? No, why would anyone believe that? If you do, I have some prime bridges and skyscrapers to offer you.

An artist’s concept of a Mars base. The price tag is not shown.

What will this cost? Likely hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.

Optimism

What about optimism? Aren’t you being pessimistic? What if SpaceX proves this analysis wrong? Everything seems impossible until geniuses like Tesla, Bell or Edison prove everyone wrong and they change the world with revolutionary technology.

Unfounded optimism is faith. Optimism is rational when grounded in evidence. I hope future phones will outperform my laptop. Current trends support that possibility. 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. Computing took off like a rocket in recent decades, and its destination is anyone’s guess.

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 a factor of 50. 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 were 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.

Remember Elizabeth Holmes offering tiny little machines to do blood tests? Musk is the Elizabeth Holmes of rocket technology. Offering impossible dreams and burning money as efficiently as his rockets burn oxygen.

Conclusion

The debate ends here! Basic, high-school level calculations expose the claim’s flaws. I made it look easy because it is. Musk likes to pretend he is an engineer. If he’s an engineer, why not run the numbers? SpaceX engineers should speak up. I assume they know Musk will not listen to reason on this issue. If he knows it’s impossible, then he’s misleading the public.

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. SpaceX lacks a credible path to raise the required trillions.

Suppose someone says they need $1 trillion to do something. It is best to assume they cannot do it. They are lying, scamming you, 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 considers only 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 an 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. This plan is out of this world. This is not how a professional space company should reach for Mars.

He is unlikely to achieve this within most readers’ lifetimes. Sorry, Musk, case closed, pending further evidence. You cannot do this, so stop telling everyone that you can. I am all for aiming beyond this Earth. To do that, design a scheme anchored to Earth. You can’t get to Mars if you are floating around aimlessly in space. Start somewhere. What about somewhere in this reality? That would be a good start...

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1 SpaceX used to list this number on the Starship website before removing it.