Road trip to Mars

Driving up the East Coast is so 2012. For our next trip we’ll be planning to go much further afield.

As scientists ponder the possibility of sending a manned spaceship to the lonely little red planet, Carsguide decided that driving one of our beloved earth-based vehicles (i.e. a car) would be more enjoyable.

We’ve been inspired by a Nissan US comparison that looked into how much it would cost to get there in their Altima – which is not available here. So, we tweaked their infographic with some local research, thinking the results might point the way to the right vehicle for our own interplanetary road trip.

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We’ve calculated the costs for some popular cars based on an average fuel cost of $1.40, and used the official highway fuel economy figure for each – reasoning that while it might take some extra fuel for lift-off, once we’re out there in zero-gravity the fuel economy should be considerably better than on a choked Friday afternoon Highway 1.

So we figure that – compared with the cost of NASA’s Mars program, estimated to be somewhere north of $2.5 billion – this might be a pretty economical way to get there. However our calculations soon revealed our planned trip is probably going to suck the Carsguide petrol budget dry in a matter of minutes, with a fuel bill starting above $4 million.

Of course fuel economy won’t be the whole story. We also have to factor in living in the car for the entire trip – at 110km/h that’s about 57 years. Without a single supermarket or cafe. So we’ll have to balance fuel economy against having enough space to pre-pack half a century’s worth of pizza and enough coffee beans for 20,805 espressos. 

Houston, we have a problem.