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#26 2003-02-07 10:14:16

soph
Member
Registered: 2002-11-24
Posts: 1,492

Re: Mars: A business plan - lets get at it

I think I mentioned earlier that a company that builds the vehicle can then sell it to NASA or other space organizations.  With protective patents of course, to ensure it isnt stolen.

If I were to build it, i would refuse to sell it to anything but a global space agency, combining the ESA, JSA, Russian Space Agency, and NASA. 

Advertising on the spaceships is something I mentioned as well, and selling the rights to equipment (i.e. IBM wants their computers, they have to pay to have exclusive space).  Long term contracts are a bad thing, because they discourage innovation, and reduce competition.  I would make 1-2 mission contracts, and maybe 3-5 mission contracts for things like hardware.

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#27 2003-02-07 19:51:17

Roark
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From: 48°N, 97°W
Registered: 2003-01-08
Posts: 15

Re: Mars: A business plan - lets get at it

If there are a lot of initial R&D costs involved, then a long-term contract is the only way a company could expect to make a significant profit.  Why would my company spend millions of dollars developing Mars mission hardware when it would be guaranteed only a few government sales?  Such R&D diverts resources from other projects within the company.  Contracts must be competitive enough to make taking them more profitable than whatever a company is currently working on.  Short term contracts will therefore be much more expensive than long-term ones.  For example: The government could pay $5 billion for a 10-year, 20 hab contract, or $3 billion for a 3-year 6 hab contract.  In this situation, its the taxpayers who won't be getting their money's worth.

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#28 2003-02-07 21:37:09

soph
Member
Registered: 2002-11-24
Posts: 1,492

Re: Mars: A business plan - lets get at it

initial R&D could be done by a NASA think tank, and then the contracts sold to anyone who best combines the cost and application of the concepts.

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#29 2003-02-08 23:00:16

Roark
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From: 48°N, 97°W
Registered: 2003-01-08
Posts: 15

Re: Mars: A business plan - lets get at it

NASA could provide quite a bit of initial research data, but one cannot expect NASA to hand a perfect blueprint of a piece of hardware and then have Boeing or some other company just whip it out without any additional research and development costs.

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#30 2003-02-09 10:01:05

soph
Member
Registered: 2002-11-24
Posts: 1,492

Re: Mars: A business plan - lets get at it

yes, but the point is that you are making companies compete to provide the best applications,or costs.  The military does it all the time.

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#31 2003-02-10 09:40:11

MarsGuy2012
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Registered: 2003-01-22
Posts: 122

Re: Mars: A business plan - lets get at it

O.K. soph,
If you're making a business plan why are you going to depend on a NASA think tank?  Is this a business plan or a government plan.  Using NASA will cause problems because NASA depends on congress.

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#32 2003-02-10 09:50:09

Josh Cryer
Moderator
Registered: 2001-09-29
Posts: 3,830

Re: Mars: A business plan - lets get at it

Depends. NASA scientists are just regular scientists who have been given NASA grants before. It shouldn't be hard to get a NASA grant about this particular thing, ?A Study on the Commerical Development of Space.? I'm sure there are a lot of grants like that which go out each year.

If NASA is handing out the money, why not take it? That's why Highlift Systems did...

All soph would have to do is get himself some scientists who were willing to go for it.


Some useful links while MER are active. [url=http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html]Offical site[/url] [url=http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html]NASA TV[/url] [url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/]JPL MER2004[/url] [url=http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html]Text feed[/url]
--------
The amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth totals some 3.9 million exajoules a year.

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#33 2003-02-10 13:42:37

soph
Member
Registered: 2002-11-24
Posts: 1,492

Re: Mars: A business plan - lets get at it

Right, it doesn't have to be NASA scientists-a lot of the "MIT" projects are done by outside scientists/engineers who simply get MIT grants, and so MIT gets to put their name on the research.  From my observation, NASA operates in a similar fashion,

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#34 2019-12-14 13:07:45

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 29,431

Re: Mars: A business plan - lets get at it

Was searching for the ERV for mars and came up with this topic to fix.

Seince the ship is in a parking high mars orbit does it make sense in the skeme of BFR with the amount of fuel needed to create on mars to have a ship with storeables to make mars departure with fresher foods waiting for the journey home?
GW has worked out some of the ships characteristics in the Phobos topic.

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#35 2019-12-14 13:30:49

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 29,431

Re: Mars: A business plan - lets get at it

Josh Cryer wrote:

If space was profitable, where are the space hotels?

Also, I find it disturbing that people would want to sell scientific data. Not that it's not done, it's just a terribly sad business practice.

Refreshing the topics posts...
Since this post ISS has been completed and Bigelow has sent up BEAM but we are still no closer to seeing more perople in space with the current agencies running the show even with Space x and others pushing the launch systems required for mass transport in recycled vehicles.

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