Both Zubrin and Musk have said that a ticket to mars may cost about $500k per person some day. A more realistic number today would be more than $50m per person and even a billion per person if they only send a handful at a time. Costs like these make any human expedition to mars fail to pass the laugh test.
The rule of thumb is:
Government makes costs go up; Competition makes costs go down.
Commercial activities are incremental. Today, Russia has a monopoly in sending humans to the space station and are charging monopoly prices (about $65m per person.) In a few years they will have competition from the SpaceX Dragon which will immediately drop that ticket price to $20m or less per person (it's ready now, but Musk wants it to be safer.) More competition could reduce that ticket price further. It is very reasonable to see that price going under $2m per person making new commercial activities to LEO much more likely. Zubrin and Musk obviously see the cost per person to LEO going even lower than I do because getting to LEO is only the first of three steps in getting to mars.
The second step is the 6 to 9 month journey to mars orbit. A ship for this purpose could cost about $300m to LEO unfueled (about the same cost as a 747.) The cost of this ship could be amortized over many missions meaning the cost of the ship has little impact on the ticket to ride cost. The operational costs of this ship are it's fuel (everything else is lost in the noise.) The cost per person is lower when sending more people at a time. Competition again is the key to lowering costs and government does have a role. They can buy fuel in LEO (from any source) and sell it at a lower price. Update: The Aldrin Mars Cycler is a way to further reduce the cost of traveling to mars. The cycler would be a large ship which only has a one time fuel cost (long life ion thrusters may be included for minor adjustments.) It permanently travels between the earth and mars. A much lighter ship needing considerably less fuel would catch up as it left earth which would include landers that would leave it as it approached mars. Update: Sundancer is a better choice.
Is it a good idea for the government to buy and sell fuel in LEO? It's a subsidy. Subsidies are always a political football. Personally, I'd rather the government not be involved at all, but this would actually have a return to the taxpayers that other subsidies do not (how are all those green jobs working out for ya, Mr. President?)
The reason I structure it this way is it encourages commercial competition to sell fuel in LEO. Competition lowers costs so eventually these companies could be selling fuel directly to companies that provide transportation to destinations like mars. Competition lowers the ticket to ride cost.
The third leg is landing on mars. Although we've done it with rovers, nobody really knows how that's going to work for larger mass human landers. SpaceX has plans for a Red Dragon. Government has had a hand in financing that research and may do more in the future. But they shouldn't pick and choose winners. This would be crony capitalism which is the antithesis of free enterprise.
Mars isn't the only destination. We have an entire solar system and beyond. But you have to start somewhere and mars is the closest earth analogy with all the resources for life. Every passenger ticket sold is going to be to some specific destination. That's an unavoidable truth. It's not going to happen anywhere, including mars, if the economic justification doesn't exist. That eliminates flags and footprint missions. The only economic justification is expanding the economic sphere BEO with settlement.
With settlement we no longer need government involvement. Settlement is self financing.
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