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I'm trying to find a good way to finance the colonization of Mars. So, here's just a little poll.
Let's say I establish a fund to colonize Mars.
We all buy tickets to eventually emigrate, say for $1000 each.
We let the fund grow to $10 billion all the while selling more and more tickets.
We invest in the market and get a 10% return on average.
Once the fund reaches $10 billion we start sending people to Mars using only the yearly interest earned.
Tell me what you think.
I came up with a much more detailed plan. If you're interested just ask.
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So your plan is predicated on 10,000,000 (that's TEN MILLION) people putting in a $1,000 each? Or, conversly, you could simply say you are selling 10,000,000 shares at a $1,000 bucks a pop.
And it looks like you are planning on a return of investment of 10%. For the moment, let's assume you COULD maintain that rate of return over decades, that gives you $1,000,000,000 (as in ONE Billion) dollars to send some humans each year to Mars.
How many humans can be sent to Mars for $1,000,000,000?
Let's say you could send a thousand (even though Mars direct is 10 billion for SIX people). It would take you 10,000 years to send every single investor to Mars.
Well, you still might beat the US government to Mars, but I don't think I will buy a ticket just yet...
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I keep asking myself: What is it, that costs all that money to get to Mars-Direct and back? Materials and consumables are ordinary, catalogue bulk items. Electronics are essentially off-the-shelf. Information and reference data are Public Domain. Real estate, erection and launch facilities are available for rent, ditto transportation, at commercial rates.... Salaries and expertise--that's what costs! Do I have to say it...?
Okay: experienced, out-of-a job, pensioned-off-but-still-enthusiastic NASA, RSA, ESA, etc. v-o-l-u-n-t-e-e-r-s!
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I'm glad you guys have brains. I just wanted to get your initial reaction. Here's the plan in a little more detail:
First as dicktice mentioned we take advantage of our workforce. We don't ask them to work for free. We just pay them about half the going rate for their particular profession. The other half we put toward an emigration ticket. Let's say that an employee's ticket costs $500,000. An engineer putting $50,000 toward his ticket can be eligible to go in 10 years.
That way we can cut our labor costs in half, but we still owe these people a trip to Mars. No problem there. Instead of sending specialized astronauts we can just retrain these employees for whatever we need done on Mars. There will be a lot of engineering work so we really won't have to retrain them too much.
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Now, clark, for the financial issues:
First of all, the 10% interest I quoted is the average of the stock market over the last 100 years. Even with the great depression and two world wars the average has been 10%. Don't let the current ressesion scare you. 10% is a very conservative estimate.
Next, let's say we build some cycling Earth-Mars ships. These could be based on Zubrin's 24 person "habcraft" (Case for Mars p.231). But instead of landing them we can just unload and refuel them with Zubrin's NIMF vehicles. Each habcraft would cost around $1 billion.
Now, if we increase our production by only 18% per year (doubling the number of cyclers every 4 years) we can put 2 million people on Mars within 100 years. In the example below I've rounded up to 25 people per habcraft for simplicity.
year people
0 25
2 25
4 50
6 50
8 100
10 100
12 200
14 200
16 400
. .
. .
. .
54 204800
56 409600
58 409600
Just total the people column and you'll see what I mean.
I'll be back to show how we can keep the number of immigrants at around 2 million instead of 10 million.
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And what will your two million Martian colonists do on Mars?
Are you factoring in the cost of supporting and expanding the infrastructure on Mars to support and accomadate 2,000,000 people?
It sounds like you would be sendign a buch of engineer's- what will they be doing on Mars, just "engineering"? For who? For what?
Then there is the need for the school teachers, botanists, nutrionists, doctors, and specialists of every derivation- are you going to retrain people to do these things, when they were primarily engineers?
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You must have misunderstood me, clark.
The engineers would only come from a pool of several thousand employees. The doctors, teachers, farmers, hippies, etc. would come from the pool of 2 million non-employees. Mars enthusiasts, political outcasts, persecuted religious groups, prospectors... anyone could buy a ticket.
What would they do?
Asking what Martians would do is like asking what the Pilgrims would do?
They will export.
They will create.
They will invent.
They will pursue happiness.
They will LIVE!!!
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I get it.
good luck.
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You must have misunderstood me, clark.
The engineers would only come from a pool of several thousand employees. The doctors, teachers, farmers, hippies, etc. would come from the pool of 2 million non-employees. Mars enthusiasts, political outcasts, persecuted religious groups, prospectors... anyone could buy a ticket.What would they do?
Asking what Martians would do is like asking what the Pilgrims would do?
They will export.
They will create.
They will invent.
They will pursue happiness.
They will LIVE!!!
*I like your spirit, MarsGuy! Don't let anyone rain on your parade.
Interesting posts you've made; I'll likely comment more regarding them, later (pressed for time currently).
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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MarsGuy2012,
You have something going there. Thats good, it shows ambition. But couldn't you do the same thing but increase the price of tickets and get to same point quicker. Instead of 100 years, say 50 or so. Plus of course a screening of people would have to be done before they were sent to Mars. Not just if they could survive the trip itself but that they are going with good intentions of Mars in mind.
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I hesitate to even ask these questions, but here goes. . .
Are you planning to spend more than $1 billion? I ask because right now $1 billion will get you a few hundred tonnes of stuff in low earth orbit, with no money left to develop the hardware you will put there. Or maybe you were planning to design a new launching system for less than $1 billion that would also solve all our current problems of launching into LEO?
If, as I think you say, a habcraft costs $1 billion to make, how much will it take to develop? What about the NIMF at the other end; 10 billion?
Let's not forget we need to design habitats, greenhouses, life support systems, drills, rovers, science packages, and compact medical equipment you can haul up there. Will you use ordinary Maytag washers and driers, or specially built ones? How much will they cost?
How much mass has to be hauled to Mars per person? Initially I suspect it would be about ten tonnes each. A crew of six would need about 60 tonnes on the surface. How much will 100 people need? Maybe 3 tonnes each? At what transportation cost? Right now transportation to LEO is $2-10k per kilogram. Mars would be about double to quadruple that. That means the first six people at 10 tonnes each and $10k per kilo ($10 million per tonne) require $600 million in transportation costs alone, assuming the spacecraft are aloready developed and already launched and available.
And where will you get ten million investors? Right now, would all Mars Society members invest $1000? And how many million members does the Mars Society have?
Just a few questions.
-- RobS
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RobS: Please re-cost those items you brought up, using volunteer technologists, as per my previous (March 11) post. Then let's "talk."
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But how can anyone "recost" based on partial volunteers? How many volunteers can you get? How much of a discount will they give? Let's say the Mars Direct Cost is $20 billion and you recost with half time volunteers. That's $10 billion.
-- RobS
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Oh, I see you were assuming $10 billion. Sorry. The difficulty will be getting people to invest for decades for their money to grow to the necessary amount; and there's no guarantee $10 billion is that amount, either (though by 2050 it might be, as technology improves; so get started now).
-- Rob S
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The "volunteers," of course, are former space programme planning/design pensoners, frustrated by the cancelled Apollo/Spacelab/Mir/Lunar programmes, who while too old to become astronauts or cosmonauts (and never would have been anyway) simply donate their time and expertise at subsistance salaries (if anything) to carrying out the Mars Project. The erection, checkout and launch (non-pensioned) personnel will comprise short-term contracted organizations set up in rented facilities and headed by the talented (let-out-to-pasture) former rocket, etc. engineers and scientists, using existing techniques. I simply don't believe that money (the lack of which) is the barrier you seem to insist it is.. It won't take many convinced Mars-addicted former professionals to spend the rest of their lives to see the job through, and fast--since they'll want to live to see the first humans land on Mars. Use 'em while you've got 'em, and don't waste time "re-inventing the wheel" for gosh sakes. Then...all you crass-commercial and/or adventurous colonist types can have your turns!
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You're never going to find 10,000,000 people to turn over $1,000 to some no-name organization on the off chance that 50 years down the road it may be useful. Just isn't going to happen.
As far as 10% rate of return, that's optimistic. The true ROR is usually around 7%. Inflation is also a factor, usually 3%, so you are actually only growing the money at 4% per year.
You would be better off spending the money on advanced propulsion concepts, rather than use $10 bln for existing rockets, which won't buy you much. A few mln, or 10's of millions would go a long way for breakthrough propulsion, perhaps funding some sort of anti-gravity research, magnetic propulsion research, the "black light rocket", etc etc Then you may have cheap and routine access to space, for whatever that's worth.
I also like to bring a reality check once in a while, for all the dreamers like myself. Why would you want to live on desolate, freezing mars? Why not save a few bln dollars and set up a dome in Siberia or the south pole? Both are warmer, and more friendly to humans that mars is. Also easier to come back when you realize how much it sucks and the novelty wears off....
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Resources, available land, science value, terraformation can moderate climate, possible advertising and other revenue return, reputation, etc.
There are many possible reasons to go to Mars.
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However, I don't think you'll find that many volunteer workers. There aren't that many engineers that can work without pay for an entire mission!
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tim_perdue: The point of it all is, to spread out a.s.a.p. into the Solar System (before it's too late).
Soph: Just how many would it take...? (Let's compare notes.)
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How many engineers did Apollo take? How many work on the Shuttle? You have to base it on what's out there now. These engineers can't be miracle workers-it's proven economic fact that paid workers work harder over longer durations.
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No comparison, Soph. That which has successfully been done need not be done again from scratch, but only copied as required--using today's computer-aided techniques--imagine! One team of volunteer experts (like von Braun's), over-aged but still capable experienced astronauts and cosmonauts of both genders, one expedition consisting of minimum two launches (Mars Direct, as proposed by our M.S. founder / president) using whatever international facilities, wherever available, at local commercial rates. Time-scale, max ten years (which by strange coincidence is about all I have left to offer). Forget all those topheavy bureacratic old programmes, except (as someone famous, said) to use as "shoulders" to stand upon.
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The volunteer laborers will be dwarfed by the paid laborers (production, launch costs, shipping, supplies, and so on). So what you are saying is that there are a few thousand unpaid laborers?
Let's see how much this saves-assuming a salary of $60,000 apiece:
5,000: $300 million. Not the "cutting in half" estimate you had mentioned.
Any more laborers,and it becomes the bureaucracy that you say it isn't.
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Define "laborers," please. If you mean scientists and engineers, they are the out-to-pasture volunteers. Contracted fabricators have their own production personnel, as do the launch facilities their launch checkout, etc. teams. I get the feeling I'm in contact with someone out of Dickens!
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Define "laborers," please. If you mean scientists and engineers, they are the out-to-pasture volunteers. Contracted fabricators have their own production personnel, as do the launch facilities their launch checkout, etc. teams. I get the feeling I'm in contact with someone out of Dickens!
What do you think you pay for when you pay a contractor? You pay for the labor cost, material cost, and then profit. So you still pay for your labor.
Laborers=workers, including whatever staff that exlusively work for you.
Your relatively small directly "employed" staff saves little money, and certainly doesn't cut cost in half as you suggest. You still pay the cost of most of the labor put into the project via contractors, launch, etc.
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This is one of the main concerns to my proposition:
To raise $10 billion by selling tickets at $1,000 each you need to sell 10 million tickets.
Here are just a few numbers I worked up to address this concern:
1. Let's say I'm an excellent salesman. I sell $15 million in tickets the first year and increase my sales by 45% anually. And I get them all to reinvest $1,000 each year. (Whoever has the most invested in their ticket gets to go first.) After 15 years I would have raised $10.8 billion and only 2.5 million tickets would have been sold. Of course, if they didn't add $1,000 every year 8.7 million would be expecting a ride. (All examples assume a 10% yearly return using 1% to pay for the fund raising.[9% actual yearly return])
2. What if I'm a mediocre salesman or not many people even want to live on Mars? Let's say I can only sell $30 million worth of tickets per year. Even at that, in 40 years I will have raised $10.1 billion. And since I used 40 years of interest accrual, I only need to send 1.2 million people. The original ticket holders will probably be too old to go themselves but they might still be around to see the start of colonization.
3. Let's say I'm just a loser and can't sell worth a darn. I only enlist the support of 5,000 Mars Society members the first year. After that I don't sell one single ticket. Well this makes good news and bad news. The good news is - I will only have to send 5,000 people to Mars. The bad news is - the original purchasers will be dead. In 88 years the $5 million will have matured to $10.2 billion. But hey, at least someone will be assured of a ticket to Mars. (Assuming this world isn't torn apart by war before then. But that's for another discussion.)
So, 10 million tickets will never be sold, unless I sell them all in the first year (highly unlikely). If that happens though, I will simply open the bidding for who gets to go first. If people were excited enough to buy me out in one short year, they will easily spend 10 to hundreds of times more. And if businesses start backing them, just imagine what kind of money that would bring in.
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