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It is not just a matter of financing for a mission to occur. You have the block by the Nasa, army and FAA regulator hurdles to climb and if you get though those then you have the launch site issues.
Then just importantly is the design and materials to make your vehicle from.
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So the next question is how would you personally go about finding solutions to these issues blocking a private Mars mission? How would you proceed and what resources would you need(besides money)?
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Scaled Composites with an engine by SpaceDev built and flew SpaceShipOne without trouble. SpaceX is currently working on a new rocket to launch satellites, they have a problem with the launch site at Vandenberg but that's an Air Force base. Lockheed Martin got a contract to build a new launch pad that will over-fly the SpaceX's pad, so SpaceX has been ordered to move. You can avoid that sort of thing by not using a military base or NASA site. Build a totally new launch site. Scaled Composites used a truck for mission control, and launched from an airport for experimental aircraft.
A rocket big enough to send a human mission to Mars will require regulatory approval. If that becomes too arduous leave the US. ESA has a launch complex called Kuoruo in French Guiana. Are their regulations easier?
As for design and materials, if you use a traditional rocket (not a rocketplane or other creative design) then design and materials have been pretty well established. It's just another big dumb rocket. So it really does come down to money. How much does it cost, how can you reduce that cost, and will a private venture be profitable?
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I read a figure of $5 Billion for a simple Mars Direct style mission from private sector sources. SpaceX have proven that the cost of a rocket can be brought down significantly and with the many efficent designs and groups working on such designs is the $5 Billion figure possible? Or maybe $10 Billion? I think for private missions $10 Billion could be feasible and as to profits, some profit can be made from television rights, sponsorships and the like but there will still be a shortfall for which there is at least one solution.
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Sure you could make some money by selling rights to Television companies and what not. If the landing on Mars was successfull you might even be able to turn it into a media super event, like the Superbowl. However even if all this was wildly successful you would probably be talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, not the billions and tens of billions you would need. It could surely help the funding of the effort, but it's not going to cover it itself.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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So it really does come down to money. How much does it cost, how can you reduce that cost, and will a private venture be profitable?
Sounds like you need the New Mars Venture Fund. You raise between $100m and $1b for a VC fund that invests in companies with profitable ideas that also lower the cost of exploiting off-planet resources. You promise standard returns and charge standard fees + 1%. The 1% stays invested, but is transferred to a Mission to Mars account. Investors get some sort of say over who gets to go.
Assuming you don't crash and burn, somewhere between 20 and 30 years later, the Mission to Mars account has $10b in it and you know the real capabilities of every significant player in the business. If it can be done for $10b, you can do it. In the mean time, one of your goals is to lower the cost of the mission by investing in smart companies, so you're doing everything possible to bring forward the mission date. If you recruit well and raise $1b initially and somehow your portfolio companies manage to get the mission cost down to $1b, then the Mission to Mars account can fund it in 10 years.
In addition, you are charging standard fees, making you and your partners rich, so you and a half dozen of your closest friends can bring the mission date forward with personal funds if you're still interested. No matter what, you've had a lot of fun and made certain that a manned mission to Mars will happen within a generation.
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So the next question is how would you personally go about finding solutions to these issues blocking a private Mars mission? How would you proceed and what resources would you need(besides money)?
':('
The best way to get private enterprise involved in a major moon or mars problem of a private effort would be to give NASA Charter to build a City on either the Moon And/Or Mars over the next forty to sixty year period and the funding to get it done. Baring that, even the money that Bill Gates could bring to the table would not be enough for a serious Mars mission and you can forget about a colonization program altogether. Even Bill Gates doesn't have enough money to that even.
Now I’m all for going to Mars, but you have to have a plan that will work or other wise your just dreaming and you will get absolutely nowhere with your dream.
To put together a serious mission to go to Mars it will cost tens of billions of dollars and to put together a serious colonization program will cost hundreds of billion to several trillions of dollars over forty to sixty year time frame to get it done. When we start talking about having to commit this amount of financial resources, it pretty much cut out any private effort to do what you want to do. Unfortunately only a major government like the United States or several major government acting together can come up with that kind of money to pull something like this off.
';)'
Larry,
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Specifically, as to the issue of a private Mars mission, there have been many price estimates but few of them back their figures up with hard evidence. Bigger colonization programs are not a go it alone deal, you are right, but I'm sure you must know that. The fact is no one person or group is going to come up with some utopian ideal for a Mars mission/colonization program. So from what people have said so far, would the idea of a combined, multi group effort work far better than one persons or one group's attempts? As the saying goes- Divided we fall.
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Specifically, as to the issue of a private Mars mission, there have been many price estimates but few of them back their figures up with hard evidence. Bigger colonization programs are not a go it alone deal, you are right, but I'm sure you must know that. The fact is no one person or group is going to come up with some utopian ideal for a Mars mission/colonization program. So from what people have said so far, would the idea of a combined, multi group effort work far better than one persons or one group's attempts? As the saying goes- Divided we fall.
No!
Unfortunately, that won't help much either, if at all.
The reason you have to have a major government involved is there is at least two reasons why.
1. They don't have to make a profit building a Lunar City or Martian City.
2. They can build the needed infrastructure that needs to be build to have functioning economy on either or both the Moon and/or Mars. You can't have someone counting the beans to decide which needed infrastructure get built or putting the colony on Mars in harms way, because of those bean counters that are doing the accounting. An example of these counter screwing things up would be the New Orleans disaster and the refusal to finish or upgrade those levee's around New Orleans, because it was cheaper not to.
When you have a profit motivated free enterprise system making all choices on profits alone bases, you run into these problems like that. They might be OK for running air lines or possibly space ship between the Earth and Mars once the technology been developed. But, you don't want them owning or running those city on Mars or on the Earth either for that matter. You want a government owning things like the sewer and water plants, the power station and subways system and will make repair or expand the system when it needed. You don't want some cutting corners on you and needlessly endangering people for the sole purpose of saving some money like what they did in New Orleans where we lose almost a thousand people there.
Don't blow this off, because you can go into any city in the United States or Europe and see what kind of infrastructure that the government built either city, country, state or federal and that should answer your question why you need a major government involved, because there the only ones that can build that kind of needed infrastructure. It unfortunate that that is so, but that the way it is. It doesn't matter what kind of effort you put together, if you don't have a major government behind you that can control there own money, then sooner or later you operation going fold, because it ran out of money and collapsed. You have all the private space organization, space industries and even millions of people involved all working for the same goal and over time they will all collapse one by one. But, you get "ONE MAJOR INDUSTRIAL COUNTRY LIKE THE UNITED STATES" that decides that it wants to build a city on Mars in forty to sixty time frame and controls it own money supply. Like giving the Treasury Department the right to generate long term low interest credit again like FDR did. Then generate 100 billion to 200 billion dollars per year for that 40 to 60 year time frame with a government charter to NASA to build those cities, then it not going to happen.
I have never seen any plan by any one that has preaching Free Enterprise by Private corporation that has ever answered this question of how there going pay for it or build the needed infrastructure or even maintain it once it built even.
Larry,
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The idea of government and private groups working together is well established and I am not against it. If you read my comments carefully you will see I never ruled that out. The fact is governments like private groups taking the initiative and if there is an angle in for government then they will partner with such groups. So, if the government side of things was on board for such a mission and there was good private involvement AS WELL, do you think a mission to Mars would stand a chance then?
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The idea of government and private groups working together is well established and I am not against it. If you read my comments carefully you will see I never ruled that out. The fact is governments like private groups taking the initiative and if there is an angle in for government then they will partner with such groups. So, if the government side of things was on board for such a mission and there was good private involvement AS WELL, do you think a mission to Mars would stand a chance then?
Do I think that if the government were on board a development program for Mars after there short exploring with private involvement as Well?
Yes, I do think it would have a chance then, but only then!
Not only that, If we were to get another President like John F. Kennedy that had a long range developing the Planet Mars Mission plan like his Moon Mission as a National Goal, but a whole lot bigger in scope. Assuming that he could back it up and could get the American People behind it, we could have a city on Mars in two or three generations. It will look like an FDR rebuilding program for Europe after World War II, but this would be a John F. Kennedy type program for Mars instead. At that point, it wouldn't make difference whether the private sector was involved or not. They see billions of dollars a year of government contracts going to the project of exploring and then developing Mars for a forty to sixty year time frame, the private sector will get interested and will want to get involved get some of those contracts. Let take GM and Ford who have to cut back on there work force, because no ones buying there cars along with those states where those cars are made, there tax base is collapsing too. If such program were announced and put out right now. Don't you think that GM, Ford, the employee, those states aren't going to start Yelling at the Federal Government to look over here. WE HAVE FACTORIES THAT CAN BUILD THAT INFRASTRUCTURE OVER HERE. They will be jumping up down and frantically trying to get the attention of the Federal Government. Instead of heading for the unemployment line, there heading back into those factories to build this stuff. You will have an economy instead of a collapsing economy. That why the Federal Government should engage in massive projects like this or build subways, super trains down here also. Only the Federal Government can cause this kind of economic turn around down and create the business climate to develop space too or to build that city on Mars.
Larry,
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