- Elon Musk Reveals Future Price Plan for a Return Ticket to Mars by Inverse. $500,000, maybe as low as $100,000 depending on volume. One can only hope for reasonable award rates.
- Map of Marriott Category Changes Effective 3/5/2019 by DEM Flyers. For those who like maps.
- Hacked Amazon gift cards at Safeway by Miles Per Day. This is part of the reason why Amazon has been trying to push ‘Amazon Cash’.
Deals expiring at the end of today or starting today (view the full deal calendar here):
- AmEx Offer: Shipt grocery delivery, Spend $99 & Receive $50 Statement Credit
- Hy-Vee: Spend $50 On Happy Giftcards & Get 20¢ Off Per Gallon
- Delta Flash Ski Sales: Flights From 9,000 Miles One Way
Deals expiring at end of tomorrow:
We are trying something new where we also post some of the most popular posts from the previous day (this includes all posts from Friday, Saturday & Sunday for today’s edition):
Sure, Elon, sure. I swear, some of these “bright” people can be really dumb. There is absolutely no sense in predicting values a decade from now, because you have no idea what the crises/climates/events will be then. I’d be just as valid at guessing that by then, Musk will have no money or may not even be alive.
In addition, good luck getting people with money to go. You’re asking folks who have grown accustomed to the creature comforts to give up the internet, good food, pretty much all forms of entertainment, hobbies, etc. You’re better off asking people with no luxuries in life to go for free, because they’d have nothing to lose. Oh, and how will these people have children and raise them?
Sustainable colonies will not exist until they offer something better than the current environment, or until they have to exist out of necessity.
That and Mars dust is dangerous to human health and we don’t know the long term effects of being in space.
It’s cheaper if you book a flight to Jupiter with a layover in Mars, and then just skip the second leg.
Skiplagged Galactic
READ the fine print. There are severe penalties for doing that including but not limited to a night in Klingon’s dungeon.
I guess this is National Hotel rewards Devaluation week.
I just don’t like that valuation for a Mars ticket; I value the Mars redemption at closer to $4 trillion, and here’s why (sneak peak – it’s got nothing to do with fuel surcharges!):
NASA contracted with the Russian space program in 2017 to send astronauts to the International Space Station at $70.7m per seat. (I assume they received some sort of volume discount for purchasing 6 seats, but I’m still using that as my baseline). The distance to the ISS is on average 400 km, so ISS travel costs $88,375/km for a round trip adventure. Assuming we would reach Mars when it’s at its closest to Earth (55.8m km, rather than an average distance of 254.4m km — I can’t imagine the additional fuel fees attached if we reached it at its farthest point of 400.4m!), a trip to Mars would be at least 636,000 times as far as an ISS trip. If I just purchased a one-way trip to Mars for 254.4m km, it would cost $22.45 trillion, but I certainly would need to come back to Earth to brag about my stellar redemption on TPG forums, so I’d need to buy a round trip. Therefore the straightline value of a trip to Mars compared to the ISS would be $44.9 trillion dollars.
But we all know we look for bargains, and we don’t pay flat rates per mile for redemptions (at least not yet, despite the Big 3’s efforts!). If I can find a roundtrip from Chicago to Dallas (1300km) or Singapore (15,000 km) for the same price, I’ll take Singapore every time. That means I can go 11.50x as far for the same ticket price. Using this logic, I’ll assume I can find similar savings on a ticket to Mars vs ISS, which means it would be just $3.9 trillion for that round trip ticket – what a steal!
Now being the good travel hacker that I am, I’m hopeful that I can get a $500/point valuation out of this trip, so I’m willing to use up to 7,800,000,000 points or miles to get to Mars! This will make a Neckar Island redemption look like a Cleveland Quality Inn on Lake Michigan during February!
Now which credit cards should I sign up for?
I just want a one way ticket to Mars
What is the best card to put the Mars ticket on?
What are the Mars rates in the opposite direction?
Came here for the “how many point/miles…” jokes….none yet….
Hope they will issue churnable CC
Safeway is a shit show.
How much for one-way?