The Golden Spike Company reduces it's Moon Landing Ticket Prices

Good news for all you frugal Space travelers out there: A private startup's manned moon missions could end up costing around $500 million per seat instead of the originally advertised $750 million.

The Golden Spike company, which aims to start flying paying customers to the lunar surface and back by 2020, has pegged the cost of these two-person trips at about $1.5 billion. But the company plans to bring the per-seat ticket price down considerably by staging an Olympics-like media spectacle around each mission.

"We think that we can lower the effective ticket price, by selling the air time, the naming rights and the merchandising rights to these missions, by between 20 and 30 percent — by creating that other revenue stream and sharing it with our customers," Golden Spike president and CEO Alan Stern told reporters Thursday (April 11) at the 29th National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.

An artist's illustration of a Golden Spike Company moon lander on the lunar surface.

CREDIT: Golden Spike Company