New Mars Forums

El Guap

InActive

Registered: 2002-04-25

Posts: 2

Re: Treat a Mars mission like the Olympics. - Generate revenue by getting sponsors.

This is an idea I have, why not get money for a mission to mars by treating it like the olympics. 

NBC payed 3.5 billion dollars for Oympic broadcast rights!!!!  The total cost of the Nagano games was around 10 billion dollars!!!!  Just sell the mission and all the TV and movie rights.  If a network gets exculsive content, who knows how much they'll pay.  Then you can get soda companies, car makers, and electronics companies to sponsor it.  Who knows how much Coke or Pepsi would pay to be the official soft drink of the first manned mission to mars.  You just have to make it a big event and fill it with pomp and circumstance.  Have big launch and landing ceremonies and other shameless promotional whoring.  The companies who put in the most money get their logo on the spaceship and we can give them a couple million acres of martian land if they put in enough.  Just like the olympics part of the cost will be paid by the government (NASA) and the other part will be paid by the corporate sponsors.  If you need to scrounge up a couple of billion dollars, theres no better way to do it.  I'm interested in any of your ideas.

Bill White

Member

Registered: 2001-09-09

Posts: 2,114

Re: Treat a Mars mission like the Olympics. - Generate revenue by getting sponsors.

I do like this idea - so much so that I am already quite close to finishing a full length novel that uses the grant of exclusive media/marketing rights as one significant funding source for humans to Mars.

Besides the Olympics, in 1999 CBS signed a multi-billion dollar deal for 10 or 12 years of exclusive rights to the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament. (Was it $8, $10 or $12 billion? - I do not recall exactly)

In the late 1970s, the NBA Finals were broadcast on tape delay *until* David Stern, Nike's Phil Knight, Michael Jordan and MJ's agent Brad Falk turned the NBA into a multi-billion dollar media/broadcast/brand name powerhouse. Anyway, what would CNN or ABC-Disney pay for exclusive world wide broadcast rights of the first men and women stepping foot on Mars? IMHO, many, many billions of dollars.

If you wish to know more, I suggest David Halberstam's book "Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made" - - The popularity and profitability of American basketball was not an accident nor was it inevitable. Some very smart people worked very hard to create the seemingly spontaneous growth of public enthusiasm for the NBA.

Another more critical view of the rise of "name brands" as the business focus of multinational corporations such as Nike, Sara Lee etc. . . can be found in a book titled "No Logo" - I forgot the author's name but she is a committed anti-globalization activist. Despite her "anti-brand" and "anti-logo" thinking, I came away more convinced than ever that money for Mars could indeed be found in this way.

This funding source does raise political questions. Should "humans-to-Mars" be an opportunity to oppose the globalizing forces of world capitalism or should space advocates merrily hop aboard the globalization express so they can siphon off the needed billions of dollars from the multi-trillion dollar world economy?

I have encountered other space advocates who support the sports marketing/media angle however engineering types frequently look with disdain on marketing and fail to understand the extent to which successful logo-making, branding and marketing is a very tricky and sophisticated business.

MJ needs to carefully balance his contracts and appearances to avoid over-exposure which would damage his value as a brand name. A bad marketing campaign can easily doom a product to early oblivion.   

(I feel the Hollywood made Mars movies released a few years ago were a disaster for space advocacy. When Val Kilmer opened his helmet visor and exclaimed "I can breath!" - - I got up and left. 

Also, the prevailing subliminal message of all these movies was simply this: "Go to Mars - and DIE!" If I were Oliver Stone, and believed in conspiracies, I might conclude that the Hollywood moguls were bribed to dampen space enthusiasm as much as possible.)

Finally, IMHO, engineers and space scientists are as little qualified to accomplish a multi-billion dollar, world wide media/marketing campaign as bank clerks are to perform heart surgery or lawyers are for calculating the proper trajectory needed for successful Mars aerocapture and orbital insertion. 

Canth

Member

Registered: 2002-04-21

Posts: 126

Re: Treat a Mars mission like the Olympics. - Generate revenue by getting sponsors.

I imagine coverage of a mars mission in a Survivor like fashion could produce a good deal of money, two and a half years of non stop usually interesting programming. I don't like the idea of a corporate mars mission (seems like prostitution) and the government would not sell rights to it. The US government dosn't sell exclusive ad rights to fund its projects. A private venture capitol style corporation along with the use of exclusive ad rights and the offer of a substantial prize could get people to mars much more effectivly (in my opinion). You could also use company specific talents to help support your mission. Food companies could use their developement departments to provide food for the mission, a car company could develope the rover for the mission. This could be carried all the way from their seats and beds to their medical supplies etc. Could save a load of money.

Phobos

Member

Registered: 2002-01-02

Posts: 1,103

Re: Treat a Mars mission like the Olympics. - Generate revenue by getting sponsors.

Are the contestants who get voted off introduced to a depressurized airlock?  I'm not sure networks would go for this kind of thing considering that they'd probably make more profit just covering Madonna's hang nails in prime time.   The general public is probably to shallow and disinterested to think anything of a Mars mission.  But then again maybe I'm just a backward thinking cynic that should be launched into a permanent solar orbit.

---

To achieve the impossible you must attempt the absurd

Bill White

Member

Registered: 2001-09-09

Posts: 2,114

Re: Treat a Mars mission like the Olympics. - Generate revenue by getting sponsors.

I would advise *against* a Survivor type theme.

Rather, IMHO, we would want to portray astronauts as heroes. Heroes who actually do something meaningful with their life rather than earning astronomical salaries playing sports or trying to sing while showing off their anatomy.

Unfortunately, the ISS is just plain boring. However, I do not think going to Mars would be seen as boring.

One way I might play an ad campaign was made obvious by a segment aired Thursday night (4/24) on CNN's Crossfire. Ten minutes were spent on the South African who just went up in the Soyuz.

An older fellow from Univ. of Maryland argued that this whole thing was a travesty - how dare we waste precious space resources on tourists. It soon became apparent that he pretty much opposed people in space in general - one of those robotic exploration guys. Humans to Mars? No way! Send robots - its safer.

On the other side was a fairly attractive younger woman (she once worked for NASA and wants a ride on Soyuz herself). She argued for the challenge and romance of space and pointed out that using Soyuz for tourists did not cost the US taxpayers one penny. The 3rd Soyuz crew was dead weight in any event, so why not make some money.

Anyway, I would play a 30 or 60 second TV ad like this:

Get some old fart geezer to whine about how space is ooohhh so very dangerous, and why not send robots, and by the way make sure to eat your broccoli - and floss regularly. . .

Counterpoint with energetic younger people who are eager to actually do something in space - not growing crystals in LEO - but exploring and settling a new world. IMHO, people would be very, very excited about the prospects of sending permanent settlers to Mars if it were hyped in the right way.

Recall my point out that in the late 1970s CBS broadcast the NBA Finals on tape delay - the games were played at 7:30 pm but not put on the air until 10:30 pm. CBS got better ratings from some swarmy sitcom. The public did not care about the NBA or pro basketball - until - it was packaged and hyped in the right way.

Now, the NBA is the crown jewel of NBC Sports. Why? Because of the marketing and artistic skills of David Stern, Brad Falk, Phil Knight and Spike Lee and the charisma of Michael Jordan.

IMHO, the general public is not enthused about space because we have engineers trying to explain about the romance and excitement of space and those guys are, well, engineers.

After 9/11 NYC firefighters have become heroes because they did something important and they did something real. What could be more "real" and more significant in long term human history than founding permanent settlements on Mars, with the intention of starting new families and thereby establishing an entirely new branch of the human species?

For me, becoming a space-faring species has always been more about extending and continuing the story of human life than about purely scientific discoveries and IMHO writing a new - and heroic - chapter in the story of humanity could "sell" very well indeed.

Canth

Member

Registered: 2002-04-21

Posts: 126

Re: Treat a Mars mission like the Olympics. - Generate revenue by getting sponsors.

When I said survivor style, I meant a reality TV series. Obviously it is completely ridiculous to vote people off part way through. I intended to show a way such a mission could be made into entertainment rather than just news. It would have to be piched right but there is no reason I can see that people wouldn't watch a half hour of the highlights of a mars crew's day every day. If it was pitched right and properly made it could be as popular as many TV shows that draw consistent viewing for years.

El Guap

InActive

Registered: 2002-04-25

Posts: 2

Re: Treat a Mars mission like the Olympics. - Generate revenue by getting sponsors.

It's good to see there is some action on the board.

Just wanted to add some more thoughts.  Like you said, the key to getting people interested in Mars is hype.  Scientists and engineers aren't very good salesman.  If the market it right, the general public will be begging the government to raise taxes to fund a Mars mission.  Someone said that the public is to shallow and disinterested to support a Mars mission.  That's the whole point, the public is shallow and they can be told what to think.  Everything that's cool is marketed on Madison Avenue.  Trust me, if they can make the "Macarena" a popular song they can make Mars seem cool and trendy.  I don't think a corporate exploration is that bad, it's probably the only way.  We forget that the greatest explorations in human history were corporate or trips for profit.  The Dutch East India company was responsible for most of the routes to India and Asia and for the colonization.  Marco Polo's trip to the orient was a pure merchant/commercial trip.  The most successful colonization trips by England and Spain in the New World were a result of private enterprise.  And if that doesn't work we can always send our prisoners to the moon and mars and start prison colonies, that's how Australia started out.  The exploration of Mars should be paved with hype.

Canth

Member

Registered: 2002-04-21

Posts: 126

Re: Treat a Mars mission like the Olympics. - Generate revenue by getting sponsors.

Exactly. If they could get some pop culture figures interested in mars and space exploration in general that could start quite a popular space movement. Perhaps if Lance Bass (n-sync guy) gets the fall soyuz seat to the ISS it will get such a movement started. It will be really great if he gats a lot of publicity and tells his fans how much space exploration means to him etc. I don't enjoy pop culture very much but by definition it gets people wild about things, people are voters, and politicans are gonna do what the voters want. Also with popular support it would be much easier to drum up money for private space exploration.

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: Treat a Mars mission like the Olympics. - Generate revenue by getting sponsors.

a very old topic worth talking of again?

Lunar rover racing
https://thespacereview.com/article/4777/1

When NASA returns astronauts to the Moon later this decade, they will be hoofing it. On the Artemis 3 and, perhaps, Artemis 4 missions, the astronauts will be limited like the early Apollo missions to terrain they can access on foot. That also means they will be limited in the equipment they can carry, and the samples they can gather, to what they can hold in their hands.

That will change with later Artemis missions. Indeed, by the early 2030s, if plans announced this month come to fruition, they will have their choice of vehicles for traversing the lunar terrain. One vehicle, to be developed commercially, will be an analog to the lunar rover used on the later Apollo missions, although with substantial upgrades in capabilities. The other will be the lunar equivalent of an RV to be provided by Japan, designed for long-duration expeditions far from the landing site.