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Comment by ppaattrriicckk | Hacker News Reader

Personally I think it'd be interesting to compare the expected price/weight to how much it cost to cross the Atlantic back in the 1600s. Does anyone happen to have any good references for goods/people crossing back then?

For instance, one person writes on Quora[0] that between 1600 and 1800 one could cross the Atlantic from Europe by becoming an indentured servant, working 4-7 years for someone. By looking at the average US income, this corresponds to roughly $2-300,000 per one-way "ticket".

This is somewhat comparable to Musk's aspirational price for a one-way ticket to Mars, no?

On another note, I'm sure there were discussions back then about why bother to spend months crossing the Atlantic..!

[0] https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-it-cost-in-today%E2%80%99...

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I imagine indentured servitude path should be dramatically more expensive by the end of it than paying straight up -- it's like taking money from a loan shark; it's not actually a good deal -- but you don't have the resources to get anything better.

I imagine the actual cost of buying a ticket would probably be like 50÷ the cost of indentured servitude

The slavers businesses gotta make up their money somehow /s

> like taking money from a loan shark

A loan shark that owns the air you breathe.

Yes, a bad deal. But if it's the only offer on the table...

That's a good point. Though it's worth remembering that the Americas held valuable resources just ready for collecting (eg furs, timber). So far, that's much less true of extraterrestrial lands (yeah yeah, He3).

I'm incredibly curious as to how much that cost will be vs. a mid-career employee's 401k. If a middle class family with a decade or so of experience could cash theirs in, would they be able to afford to go?

Why the heck would anyone want to do this?

"Hey honey, let's cash in our retirement plan and doom our children to a life where they'll never see the sky except through a visor or viewscreen and never again feel the wind on their face."

Not everyone wants to be pioneers, but thankfully for humanity, a small fraction of us do. And on a planet of 7.5 billion people, that fraction is pretty substantial...

I'd like to help maximize the opportunities for that small fraction, personally.

I would do this, no question; but I'm not having children, either.

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