"Payload to Mars" Added to SpaceX Pricelist
One Apollo astronaut when criticised by a commentator that the NASA moon budget would be better spent on other humanitarian causes such as feeding the poor in Africa, his response was along the lines of:The money spent annually on cosmetics in the USA dwarfs the amount spent on the NASA space program.
(Can't find reference on the net.)In 2015, the global cosmetics market was $61B USD [1], that's a roughly the cost of one thousand trips to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) with a 5,500 Kg payload, or a grand total of 5.5 mega tons to GTO.We have the resources to become a spacefaring race (at least to the neighbouring planets in the solar system), we simply need to prioritise what's really important.[1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/259217/global-make-up-mar...