Privately Funded Mission--Get On With It!

deimopolitan · 2006-09-17 10:57:44

What other reason can you give people to do so, other than "to see the mission happen"? Could you at least promise property rights on Mars, or maybe one place on your mission for a tourist astronaut, a la Space Adventures, to be awarded maybe by a lottery to those who gave you money?

There are countless promotional strategies one could imagine, and numerous variations on each one. Giving up a seat directly would be a bad idea, since it would compromise the chances of mission success by not having the absolute best person in that slot. But, on the other hand, you might give donors a pass through the first few layers of screening if they're qualified or give them the edge in a tie. There's also naming rights: the program, the mission, the rocket, the various modules, the Mars injection stage, the habitats sent ahead, the lander, the ascent stage, the base, rovers, the landscape features explored by the astronauts, etc. Pledgers of a certain level could be entitled to half a gram of Mars rock, or (at a much higher level) have their names carved into a boulder. You might even make these variable according to dollar amount, so that x dollars = y grams of Mars material, and/or your name on a boulder with the letters a certain size. At the very top donor levels, you could deliver small photographs and trinkets, and send back pictures of them on the surface of Mars. As I say, the permutations are endless.

Great, but most will place more weight on stuff like a house, education for their children, health insurance than a vague promise of a mission to Mars which they'd only get to see on TV.

But we're not talking about most people. Most people are dull, unimaginative, cautious, and myopic, and the human species would never have gotten where it is if the cranks who make all the progress cared what most people thought. What I'm talking about are the concentric groups of people who seriously want this to happen: First, the fanatics (like me) who understand the true importance of human expansion, and would be willing to dedicate a large part of yearly disposable income and personal effort to see it happen. Then, the strongly enthusiastic, who are willing to devote substantial resources despite having other commitments. Next, the moderate enthusiast, who puts a decent amount on the table and is fascinated with the concept, but whose lives don't revolve around it. These are the people who would get the ball rolling, and in that order.

After momentum built up, other groups would get involved to a lesser extent; the common space enthusiast, who might pledge anywhere from ten to a few hundred dollars because they're excited at the boldness of the idea; then the general science- and technology-oriented public, whose interest would slowly catch on, and whose involvement could run the gamut; and finally, at peak momentum, you would have large-scale community support, kids sending in a couple dollars, corporations looking for sponsorship deals, etc etc.

I say you'd better convince some of those experts and co-opt them in your team from the beginning. They should also become public advocates of your idea, especially if they are known by the public. This should increase your credibility and fund/pledge-raising ability.

Yes, definitely. The key is to have at least a handful of people with credibility supporting the idea and being the public face of the core fanatics. Most leaders in the space advocacy community have "respected leader" syndrome, afraid to sound crazy because they're already part of a movement the general public sees as "fringy." So they want to protect their hard-earned status by taking unambitious routes to their goals--lobbying, conventions, and educating the public. But if you got leaders from three or four respected organizations on board, each would be less individually afraid of publicly advocating it. Unfortunately, I'm not juiced in with anyone, I'm just a member of various orgs--so all I can do is talk to people and hope it catches on in some way.

You need considerable real money before you can actually do anything that can show your competence - projects, designs, concept-prove tests. Consider the fact that they stand to lose reputation, time and money if they stand behind a doomed project. Can you convince them that the risk is worth it?

I don't think they'd actually be risking that much, and eventually they could be convinced of that fact. In whose eyes would they lose face if it failed? The members of space advocacy groups are bold people who get excited when others among them step forward to take bold chances--just look at the explosion in excitement that occurred after the X-Prize, and still going strong. And even when it doesn't work out, like with the Planetary Society's solar sail, people remain committed. As for the general public, who cares? They're not going anywhere. They'd still be sitting on their couches in the suburbs watching Idol no matter how far humanity spreads.

Also, since nobody would pay a dime until the whole amount had been pledged, failure short of that point would merely be discouraging--but so what? We'd be willing to risk billions of dollars and (many of us) our own lives getting to Mars, so the danger of floundering before a single dollar has been spent is laughable. Worrisome, but hardly intimidating. Furthermore, most of these leaders wouldn't have to stump for the program, just express support for it, and only those directly involved would take care of the rest.

Get this through your thick heads, stop arguing and instead let's focus on moving forward with going to Mars Direct, making it a reality

My sentiments exactly. What I'm talking about here is an outline sketch of a possible way of funding Mars Direct, and one that doesn't rely on convincing investors who've consistently shied away from even modest space proposals. People who won't invest in suborbital travel, with its relative simplicity and market research, are never going to even look at something this radical until it's already happening, so that leaves us with NASA or the space community at large. NASA I don't trust, and I don't believe we should rely on them even if they are successful. They have totally failed to expand access even to the regions they've been working for decades, so there's no reason to assume a NASA Moon base or Mars base would be any different. Furthermore, it's highly doubtful whether they will ever in fact make it to Mars, so it comes down to us.

We're the ones who want this to happen, so we're the ones who have to make it happen. The alternative is we wait thirty, forty, or maybe fifty years for NASA to plop a handful of astronauts on Mars, and at best create a sterile dugout that never expands, never becomes self-sufficient, and is incapable of seeding human settlement. Most of us won't be alive in 2056, and there is no reason whatsoever mankind can't be on Mars by the time NASA is laughably claiming it'll be back on the Moon. They're wasting our time, and so are we unless we get serious and make this happen.

Lots of money if you are talking about several million donators. Cash money, not paper pledges, cash. Where will you get this money from?

Well, let's see now. Say two million names, addresses, telephone numbers, email information, and pledge amounts--that's a tiny fraction of the information in Wal-Mart's personnel database--it only has to be entered once, and an email can automatically be sent reminding them to renew their pledge every year. There's no reason it couldn't be handled by one person through one computer, with the information stored on DVDs, so if that person is a volunteer your only data costs are the web site, the computer, professional versions of the required software, and perhaps special security measures to keep spammers from getting the info. My own computer could probably handle it with less than $1,000 in software upgrades, which I'd gladly donate. Once again, you've identified a problem that doesn't exist.

So, you want to take out an insurance policy where the insurer doesn't get paid if people don't fork over tens of billions of dollars to a private entity.

The number and scope of policies is arbitrary, each for a small percentage of the total shortfall, and their liability would only kick in after a certain amount of money had been delivered as specified in each. For instance, policy A guarantees $10 million after 75% of total pledges have been collected, if the value of that policy in remaining pledges is not delivered within x time. The due diligence stipulations should be relatively simple, especially since most insurers would consider it highly improbable their liability terms would ever come to pass.

Yes, borrow real cash money against stuff you are going to buy with little/no profitable use besides large scale spaceflight which you will purchase with imaginary money.

No, borrow money against the tens of billions in cash already delivered to make up for minimal shortfalls as a last resort--in the unlikely event you'd get that close and fail to generate institutional investments. There are so many diverse ways to make this happen, and so many possible backup contingencies, that you're getting confused and acting as if these are liabilities. It's the same old can't-do attitude that has NASA rotting from within, and blind to self-evident opportunities.

by "clearly spelled out" means doing the engineering to really lay out whats needed and how you will actually go about getting to Mars.

It's called Mars Direct, and it was clearly spelled out decades ago. That's the whole point of this thread: We have the technology, we have the plan, we have the desire, all we need is the money.

Not a vauge outline and rough mass or cost estimates like Bob and MSFC have cooked up, but something to show that you are serious and competant.

This remark is obtuse and ignorant. NASA examined Zubrin's numbers in detail and found them to be right on the mark, and that's when it was supposed to be a government operation; the organization that would be formed to implement the plan once the money is in place would be a nonprofit corporation with all the advantages of the private sector and a nation-sized budget. Which means the actual cost would probably be fully a third less, and the hardware more reliable because it wouldn't be compromised by mission creep or political contracting decisions.

And this would have to be done before people would make pledges of billions or donations of millions.

That isn't true at all. People understand that technology evolves, best practices are fed back into processes, and that any rigid bolt-by-bolt blueprint would be nothing more than a guess. They would have the primary details, a budget and schedule breakdown, and descriptions of how the mission would be built and planned, but not an exact model of the outcome. That's part of the excitement of working on space programs, as anyone who's ever been involved in one can tell you, and nobody who would pledge to something like this would be scared away by that--any rational person would expect it, and some would even find it an important part of the experience, watching the program grow and evolve.

And don't you have to have a credible plan before these men would sign on? But you need money to make a credible plan first!

No. The fact that you've convinced people to pledge billions of dollars, some of which would be secured, would have experts in the field beating down your door to be involved. And when the actual cash started pouring in, you would have to go out of your way to escape them. You don't seem to understand that money attracts people, even if there wasn't such a radically compelling vision behind it as a human Mars mission. Everyone with any sort of tenuous professional connection to what was happening would try to get in on the money for their pet projects, which means a Darwinian process would unfold leaving the most talented people in the world a place on the team. Government grants worth $100 million stir up feeding frenzies in business and academia; what do you think $20 billion in the hands of a private organization looking for the best of the best in every related field would do?

There is great beauracratic inertia behind NASA, and now NASA does have a destination.

Yes, the Moon. And if (mind you, IF) they ever get there again, why do you expect the NASA lunar base will be any different than ISS and Shuttle? They'll do the same old make-work experiments, with the addition of some ISRU research that won't significantly defray costs, and once again we'll be left pouring money into an infrastructure with no apparent purpose. It'll cost more than ISS to build, expand, staff, and supply, and the only purpose of being there will be....being there. They won't do anything significant to create a self-sufficient outpost, won'tattempt to transfer production resources to the Moon, won'tdo anything to expand humanity's access to the Moon, won't do anything but spend money and look cool, and eventually it will be cancelled. They'll pretend they're refocusing on Mars, but the money will never materialize, and we'll be back to going in circles. NASA can't be trusted to deliver on the human angle anymore--the politics will not allow it to succeed. We have to do this ourselves.

Comparisons with the X-Prize or Howard "Screamin'" Dean's breif campaign prove that your grip on reality concerning the practicality of this funding method is less than tenuous.

The X-Prize was modeled on the Orteig Prize, which was about three orders of magnitude smaller. Your references to scale are, as I said, nothing more than can't-do naysaying based on the old standby of believing it can't be done because it hasn't been done before, and people who think as you do are constantly proven wrong and never learn their lesson. Who would ever have gotten anywhere listening to you? It's always too much of a challenge, always a fool's errand. We all might as well go home and sip lemonade on our lawn chairs until the stars burn out, because it's just too hard to do anything. Why exactly do you post on the Mars Society boards with an attitude like this?

Yes. NASA can't do any worse than the last thirty years.

Sure they can. And history can also repeat itself. Or, on the bright side, it's possible that after thirty years of continuously mediocre funding, NASA will be slightly closer to Mars than today, but I consider it very unlikely they will ever set foot on Mars, let alone establish a "presence."

and perhaps that we are more competant than crazy folk who want to raise tens of billions of dollars with pledges.

I don't see any hint of "competence" in the false excuses you keep making up for why it's impossible. In fact, quite the opposite. You seem to think recordkeeping that could be done by a single volunteer on an average home computer would be stratospherically expensive, that insurance companies are less inclined to accept policies for events most people consider highly unlikely, and that industry professionals wouldn't want a piece of a multi-billion dollar project unless they had every single nut and bolt detailed for them. Frankly, you give the impression of someone with no knowledge whatsoever of logistics, and a penchant for vastly inflating the difficulty of simple tasks. That isn't competence, it's bureaucracy.

cjchandler · 2006-09-17 12:14:10

I have only ever meet one man in person who was interested in going into space, and he had virtually no money. Any scheme for grass roots funding is going to be seen as a charitable donation which is not going to be good PR at all. Hum, save starving kids in africa or let some people build a giant rocket which might not work... The only way to get into space on private funding is to make money as you go. Even though Burt hasn't got great technology, incapable of even geting into orbit, he is already using it to make money, after the initial infusion of cash/venture capital, which will probalby be re-invested into designing the t/space capsule and so on. Take small steps and make sure they're all profitable. It works better and easier on one's pride then begging for small donations.

kaci_m · 2006-09-17 13:45:54

I'd just like to isolate this one part of the topic of fundraising and pledges:

Lots of money if you are talking about several million donators. Cash money, not paper pledges, cash. Where will you get this money from?
. . . Say two million names, addresses, telephone numbers, email information, and pledge amounts . . . it only has to be entered once, and an email can automatically be sent reminding them to renew their pledge every year. There's no reason it couldn't be handled by one person through one computer, with the information stored on DVDs, so if that person is a volunteer your only data costs are the web site, the computer, professional versions of the required software, and perhaps special security measures to keep spammers from getting the info. . . . Once again, you've identified a problem that doesn't exist.

I have modest experience with fundraising -- I volunteered to help my former private high school raise +$1 million in less than a year -- and so I understand that your fundraising idea can seem like a good idea, but it really is -- or should be -- a bigger deal than an email database. If you're aiming for the big money, though, here's some basic ideas on how to run a much more successful fundraising scheme:

--- If you're going to email people about their pledges, send out a semi-personalized email at least every quarter, to keep the issue in the pledgers' minds and give the program a consistant money flow. Another way to use email would be to send out a monthly mass-mailing -- more of a newsletter really -- that informs the pledgers about how their already-donated money is being used, keeps readers interested in donating more money, and gives them a little entertainment.

--- For pledgers who have or will donate a more significant amount of money, send out a mailing via the regular postal service. You get a LOT more money by snail-mailing your pledge reminders to people who are most likely to give you the most cash. This part of the program would require more targeting of the audience, because of course you wouldn't want to waste stamps on people who likely won't send you money. And be sure to update your address list as needed

--- Keep your project in the public eye. This includes having your own website with all the latest news, working with other magazines/newspapers/websites/etc. (in this case, perhaps working with Ad Astra, Popular Science, the major newspapers and newsmagazines, and other space-related websites). Have some sort of presence at conventions; even having a small booth staffed by a volunteer or two can make a difference.

--- Hold in-person fundraising events. This might sound crass, but the people who give away the most money enjoy showing off. Feel free to exploit this tendancy by hosting auctions, raffles, and other socially-oriented fundraising events. Try hosting your events at a country club, or other prestiegious place. Allow the wealthy to have fun, and they'll be glad to help however they can.

--- Charitible trusts: Wealthy people will create charitible trusts for tax purposes, which requires they donate a large chunk of their wealth upon death. It will be up to you to convince these people that your program is worthy.

To summarize, creating a successful fundraising program would indeed require more than an email database. How much gets donated is affected by how much work gets put into the program, which will be up to you.

Marsman · 2006-09-17 20:52:32

Interesting thread this. On the one hand we have GCN crushing all opposition and on the other we have the so called "alt.spacer's" trying to beat his arguments. Any suggestions of privately funded Mars missions are always going to open to having flaws on many levels because the fact is such a thing has never been done before. Is a mission to Mars complex? Yes. Should we gloss over it or ignore the details of that complexity? No. If we really want people on Mars we can't afford to gloss over the barriers and problems. Doing so only wrecks our credibility further.

The logistics of inventing, financing and building new, man rated Mars mission components needs to be well thought through and fully costed but I don't really see that anywhere except in the vague descriptions of the various Mars mission plans we have all read about. The fact is, if we are to attempt private financing of a Mars mission it will need to be serious about the details, serious about costs, risks and solutions. I understand the complexity and difficulties of this whole Mars mission thing. The more I have learnt the more it has sent me back to the drawing board. Things are never as "easy" as we think they might be. I'll admit, I used to think it was all "easy" but as I have educated myself over time I have come to see just how incredibly complex a Mars mission really is. But with this understanding I have not abandoned my hope or work towards a privately funded mission. In fact it has just made my resolve stronger.

Enthusiasm is a good thing, and needed in this subject, but enthusiasm tempered with accurate knowledge of the facts is even more useful. I can't say if GCN has the enthusiasm/knowledge thing or if he really just is totally against alternative space plans/planners because of how he views their attitudes but my guess is he does want to see a Mars mission happen as we all do. What matters is not "who" does the mission, but that it is done correctly, taking into account ALL of the problems and challenges ahead. The fact is, for how costly and complex a Mars mission will be and for what it represents to humanity, we really don't have too many people working on it. No wonder our plans are so flawed so much of the time. If a Mars mission plan is going to presented to the private sector for funding consideration or for fund raising efforts from the wider general community it must be able to stand up under the harshest criticism at all levels if it is to stand a decent chance of being taken seriously, and so far this has not really happened.

So the first step is to come up with a decent and robust Mars mission plan, one that takes into account ALL of the problems and which explores all options and solutions. Such a plan would need many scientists and engineers to work on it(not just one or two), and would have to be well funded in its own right. That would be the first step. Usually NASA commission such plans like the DRM but for a serious Mars mission which we want to gain funding for we will need to go much further than even NASA have gone on such plans. This takes money, time and lots of the right people working on it- and that is just the plan. The actual building of systems, testing, precursor missions, etc will take much more money and the willingness of those providing the funds to allow for failures and setbacks etc. All of that said, I believe that it can be done. We do have the intelligent people(human resource) to build a real human mission to Mars successfully.

That is the foundation- people. Money is also a part of that foundation. And you won't raise a cent with a vague and half done plan that ignores various problems facing a Mars mission. I have come to see that testing and development is going to be crucial to all of this, and without no Mars mission will ever get off the ground. For example, we do not yet know what it will take to land 40 metric tonnes (EDL) and that is one aspect which will need to be tested with unmanned supply ships well before humans ever get there so we don't have our human cargo burn up on entry to Mars. That is just one of many problems. There are others like- what are the effects of the coriolis force long term on human physiology, or what will one third g do to us, or what kind of suits and systems will last long term on Mars, can we get a greenhouse working, what are the effects of artifical air pressures on our bodies, what is breathing the martian dust in going to do to us, can we protect adequately against the radiation, what kind of redundancies do we need, etc, etc.

If you are trying to raise billions then you will need to spend decent amounts of money and have many, many experts working on this. That is the way it works in the commercial world and it is going to be just the same(if not more so) for a Mars mission. Can a private Mars mission happen? Yes. But never by ignoring the details and problems of this type of mission. There are many more problems I have not even talked about, political, legal, etc which would also have to be handled seriously, and all of that takes money and people. But don't be discouraged. There is a growing number within the space and Mars community who are working on many of these issues and are gradually moving towards solutions.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-09-18 08:36:31

If the prize to be won is big enough, then the private money will come, because that money is out there. The trick is to make going to Mars profitable. Governments can do that without getting in the process of how to get there, that way we can let the efficiencies of the market drive the means to get their rather than government buerocracies.

deimopolitan · 2006-10-29 05:45:54

I have only ever meet one man in person who was interested in going into space, and he had virtually no money.

It all depends who you talk to. Our numbers seem small because we're so evenly distributed, but numerous surveys show we're a huge constituency.

Any scheme for grass roots funding is going to be seen as a charitable donation which is not going to be good PR at all. Hum, save starving kids in africa or let some people build a giant rocket which might not work...

That just isn't the case. People give big money to college football programs, art galleries, film schools, landmark preservation funds, and many other purposes that are trivial compared to feeding starving children. Human expansion beyond Earth isn't trivial in any way, shape, or form, and I think most people understand that when it's put to them clearly. Furthermore, while there would inevitably be short-sighted people who think it shows a lack of priorities, I believe it would excite and give hope to far more around the world. Just look at what happened after the recent Ansari trip: The people who belittled her for "wasting" her money on "sightseeing" were specks in an ocean of gratitude and admiration, and all she did was go to ISS for a week.

The only way to get into space on private funding is to make money as you go.

Definitely one way, but we better hope it's not the only way. There is nothing to sell between Earth orbit and Lunar orbit, and nothing to sell between the Earth-Moon system and Mars besides the infrequent NEO approach. The costs of going to Mars, which are our concern here, simply have to be swallowed by somebody to get there, and nobody with the institutional means is going to do it in our lifetimes. Nor do I believe commercialism will get us there all by itself; it hasn't even given us hypersonic civil air transport in forty years of having the core technologies available, and this is several orders of magnitude more difficult.

I'm not saying it's easy or guaranteed to work, but I'm actually being more realistic here than the contrary position: NASA will not get to Mars in our lifetimes if ever, that much is almost undeniable. All of the commercial, privately-funded space R&D from now until 2020 put together probably won't equal the money we're talking about, even under the most optimistic forecasts, so relying on commerce for this is a non-starter. That leaves us, so we'd better figure out a way to do this if we want to see it happen in our lifetimes.

Even though Burt hasn't got great technology, incapable of even geting into orbit, he is already using it to make money, after the initial infusion of cash/venture capital, which will probalby be re-invested into designing the t/space capsule and so on. Take small steps and make sure they're all profitable.

A point I forgot to make above was that the distances and difficulties involved in Earth to Mars are exponentially greater than Earth to Moon, and there are no intermediate steps on which to build a business case. Okay, so you've got your flourishing economy in orbit, Bigelow module hotels, research stations, cheap reusable rockets that launch every day, on-orbit refueling capability, etc. Now a human Mars mission costs $15 billion instead of $35 billion, and it's now 2030--effectively no closer to happening for the private sector, but if NASA, Congress, and the White House all happen to be in the mood at the same time, they could then decide to be on Mars by 2045. Which means, in practical terms, that if everything went perfectly in the interim, they would actually make their first attempt sometime around 2050. But since there's no guaranteeing the government would commit as soon as the cost became politically acceptable, the attempt could be five years, ten years, thirty years later than that, or never. As I said above, it's up to us, so we better get cracking.

My father grew up on a farm that had an outhouse instead of a toilet, and watched from his college dorm as human beings walked on the Moon. I grew up in a suburban house with cable TV, a computer, a washer-dryer, a dishwasher, and an automatic garage, and all I've seen come up are camera phones and iPods. The books I read as a young teenager showed me what was possible, and the history just before my time convinced me that mine would be even more amazing, but it hasn't happened. And the extreme difference between the promise and what actually occurred makes me physically sick. I see society turning inward, and feel a great sense of urgency about this.

I volunteered to help my former private high school raise +$1 million in less than a year -- and so I understand that your fundraising idea can seem like a good idea, but it really is -- or should be -- a bigger deal than an email database.

Yes, I do understand that. I was just saying that it's possible, as an extreme case, in order to illustrate that GCNRevenger's objections were illusionary. He seemingly wants to believe that you need a huge secretarial staff, file clerks, a dedicated office building, a giant Unix network, and a corporate accounting department to even begin taking pledges. Personally, I think NASA has brainwashed some people into thinking a cup of coffee should have a Critical Design Review and a committee attached to it.

As to your experiences, I find it encouraging that you could raise +$1 million in less than a year from such a limited donor set. After all, there can't be that many alumni or parents of students to solicit for donations, and I'm guessing their pledges weren't conditional or deferred. For what I'm thinking of, the initial resources would be relatively small and evolve with the effort--information could be kept on commercially encrypted DVDs while not in use, meaning there'd be no need for storage server expenses and security risks would be minimal.

But actually, details like this aren't really important at this point. I've let myself be sidetracked by GCNRevenger's absurd nitpicking, but what's important right now is sounding out the core concept and seeing if anyone sees merit. I'm perfectly open to other ideas about how to make (emphasis on make, not lobby for) a human Mars mission, but I've thought a lot about this and haven't come up with anything else. Commercial schemes only work if you already have a mission, funded, built, and ready to go--industry just won't take it seriously until you do. So deferred conditional pledges are the only option I see. But thanks for the advice anyway; I sure hope this goes far enough to put it into practice.

If we really want people on Mars we can't afford to gloss over the barriers and problems. Doing so only wrecks our credibility further.

I'm not trying to gloss over the complexities of the mission itself, or even what it takes to get a mission going, but I am trying to show that (a)this is the only way we could hope to get to Mars in our lifetimes, and (b)it is possible. GCNRevenger is not "crushing all opposition," but engaging in the kind of useless naysaying that demands detailed blueprints at a brainstorming session. The actual plan to set foot on Mars is Mars Direct, whose pros and cons have already been debated ad nauseum here and elsewhere; what I am talking about is funding, by the only method that doesn't have decades of failure behind it.

The logistics of inventing, financing and building new, man rated Mars mission components needs to be well thought through and fully costed but I don't really see that anywhere except in the vague descriptions of the various Mars mission plans we have all read about.

Right now the issue is financing, by far the Mt. Everest of obstacles to such a mission. Most experts who've looked at the issue seem to agree that we've had the technology since the Reagan administration, but that cost was the deal-breaker. That isn't to say it won't involve a lot of engineering challenges, but the know-how is essentially there. And you can't even begin to really address the technical issues until you have funding; a few months on Devon field-testing spacesuits just doesn't cut it.

If a Mars mission plan is going to presented to the private sector for funding consideration or for fund raising efforts from the wider general community it must be able to stand up under the harshest criticism at all levels if it is to stand a decent chance of being taken seriously, and so far this has not really happened.

I don't know that this is a valid or even possible criteria. NASA has become notorious for being incapable of taking risks or making real progress, and one of the reasons is they're forced by the political leadership to please a monstrous array of constituencies whose interests have nothing to do with the mission. They end up taking no risks, achieving practically nothing, take five times as long to do it, and spend ten times as much money doing it, and we're still nowhere. And they still get hammered--even Apollo was considered a worthless boondoggle by certain people, and it was the most worthwhile space program we ever had. The reason private funding is necessary is because doing it like NASA or private business doesn't work--there are just too many unknowns and too many easier goals.

Even suborbital tourism is considered "wildly risky" by mainstream investors. So, having established what our options are (all one of them), we then find out how to go about it. I already presented earlier in the thread a broad outline of a phased fundraising structure targeted at increasingly broader audiences, which would benefit at each step from the momentum and credibility of earlier progress. The amount of convincing needed would increase with the breadth of the audience, but then so would the amount of support the effort would be getting to provide it.

And no, I don't believe for a moment anyone who'd support this would demand a 500-page Omnibus blueprint of the entire mission before they'd pledge. What they'd want is to see that it's credible, has some support among leading figures, and that the people running it believe in it and are seriously dedicated. If you plonked a telephone book full of technical details in front of them, even most space nuts would be driven away--they'd wonder, if you've already got everything so slick and detailed, why you aren't talking to Lockheed and Boeing instead of average Joes who want to play a role in humanity's destiny. For the overwhelming majority of people who want this mission, they don't care how it happens as long as it happens, and the way they'd decide if it's credible is by listening to the people who are selling it--not by reading the blueprints for the hab module's toilet.

So the first step is to come up with a decent and robust Mars mission plan

As I've said, it's called Mars Direct, it's been rigorously examined and largely vindicated, and it's been around for two decades.

Such a plan would need many scientists and engineers to work on it

The final plan would, but certainly not the preliminary mission architecture used in the early fundraising phases.

And you won't raise a cent with a vague and half done plan that ignores various problems facing a Mars mission.

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. You're saying people wouldn't pledge money to develop an existing mission plan because it isn't already fully developed. Also, who do you think we're talking about here? A bunch of NASA bureaucrats? The people who would contribute to this want to see a Mars mission happen, and will be looking at two very simple things: Are these people serious, and are these people credible? When they see both in the affirmative, and the plan for developing the mission is explained, they'll come on board. I can't imagine anyone who is serious about a mission being obtuse enough to be unsatisfied with that before even making conditional pledges.

There is a growing number within the space and Mars community who are working on many of these issues and are gradually moving towards solutions.

I know they think they are, and it looks like they are compared to NASA, but they really aren't. What they're doing is focusing their efforts on relatively small issues because the main issue (financing) is too hard and discouraging. But it wouldn't be so hard or so discouraging if they chose to focus on it, chose to do the hard thing instead of hiding in the minutiae of a mission that won't even happen until they get serious about it. Finding out the number of particles of toxic oxides that penetrate a space suit seal doesn't make a Mars mission more likely to happen, no matter what it contributes to the success of a hypothetical one. But if you have the money, then tests like that actually mean something.

If the prize to be won is big enough, then the private money will come, because that money is out there.

Unfortunately, the government has no intention of offering such a prize. The pork-hungry wolves have been warned to the threat posed by prize competitions, and are now trying to move in against even the modest Centennial Challenges. A Mars Prize is out of the question. It's all up to us if we want humanity to get there.

Martin_Tristar · 2006-10-30 07:20:55

deimopolitan,

The prize would be property and ownership rights for builders, settlers, and miners of the colony on Martian Surface. The only way to develop the expansion of space within our solar system is to answer the property rights and ownership rights issues for other solar bodies within our solar system. The most complicated question is who does the auction of land and who does the mining and exploration leases ? ,

Possible Answer - I think it should be an International body created for the sole purpose of land sales and land disputes and land title management. The agency will value all land including asteroids, or any other stellar body within the solar system out to 150AU in all directions. Then they will manage the auctions for the land sales for each world or body and the funds will be supplied or held in trust for government bodies for each planetary or colony within the solar system in the future.

With the sales we could use the funds to start the movement of resources, including human resources for the expansion of human society upwards into space and beyond earth into our solar system.

cIclops · 2006-10-30 09:37:17

Possible Answer - I think it should be an International body created for the sole purpose of land sales and land disputes and land title management. The agency will value all land including asteroids, or any other stellar body within the solar system out to 150AU in all directions. Then they will manage the auctions for the land sales for each world or body and the funds will be supplied or held in trust for government bodies for each planetary or colony within the solar system in the future.
With the sales we could use the funds to start the movement of resources, including human resources for the expansion of human society upwards into space and beyond earth into our solar system.

This won't work even if such an International body can actually agree on anything. However let's assume it does, what will happen to the money raised by this "International Body"? It will flow straight into UN or government coffers and almost none of it will go into anything space related, except for what is needed to administer the system. See what happens to auctions for oil exploration rights or radio spectrum usage - they are simply extremely efficient tax raising systems. The bottom line is it will cost even more to explore space, you'll have pay rent!

Martin_Tristar · 2006-10-31 01:20:12

cIclops,

The moey raised by the sales would be for the planet or colony government not the earth based governments. Secondly, as land owners you are also the ruling citizens of the colony or planet thus could form a government and create an embassy on earth thus control the funds for the planet or colony expansion and then take control or leave to the international body to continue future land sales.

Also it provides the legal, economic and structure framework for the expansion of the planets , moons and colonies within our solar system. The earth bound embassies act within the United Nations regarding the rights of their colonies, and worlds, including landing rights for space vehicles and mineral usage rights as well.

We could expand the Space Treaty with additional clauses providing controlled property, mineral rights and the mechanisms to management those rights for the benefits to humanity in a sustainable and commerical way.

RobertDyck · 2006-10-31 01:41:25

I know GCNRevenger is going to argue, but...

No no, you ignore history...
Airplane FCS systems don't have star trackers or ring laser gyros

As someone who has bid on a couple NASA contracts, and has worked on control systems for UAVs, I think I know something about this. Things like high-tech gyros are already developed, commercial developers can treat them as off-the-shelf components.

Some history, since history is such a big thing. The Wright brothers flew the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903. The first commercial airlines were established for mail and passenger service in 1920. The first jet airplane was the British Comet, flown in 1952, but the first commercial jet airliner was the 707, flown in 1954. That's 51 years from cotton fabric with wooden spars held together with wire to a modern jet airliner. Yuri Gagarin flew Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. Alan Shepard flew the first Mercury mission on May 5, 1961. Today is more than 45 years later but only 3 commercial passengers have flown in space. The DC-3 passenger airliner was carrying 21 passengers in safety and comfort with commercially profitable flights that long after the Wright Flyer.

I believe pledges and donations are not the right direction. Commercially profitable private enterprise is. The first commercial airplanes carried mail with just one pilot, government subsidy supported that industry. It's embarrassing to admit we're still at the phase where we need government subsidy, but we are. Once industry momentum builds, government can withdraw. Government has paid for military satellites and scientific probes, it's time to slowly back off from government support. That means not controlling or supporting launch vehicles at all. Government payloads are enough at this point. I hate to abandon the Shuttle, I would have liked to see a NASA SSTO, but it's time for commercial industry to take over. Time for the US government to stop subsidizing EELVs. I suggest giving Boeing and Lockheed Martin notice, that government will continue to purchase launch service but will not directly support launch vehicles. To make it fair, have this occur at the same time as the Shuttle is decommissioned. You realize what that would do to the Ares I and V.

This raises a big question for American voters. Do you want to abandon government exploration of Mars in favour of supporting commercial space development? You can't have it both ways. Are you willing to abandon an Apollo style exploration of Mars for an aircraft style commercial development of space? One or the other. Heads or tails. America is still a democracy, you the voters rule. So which is it going to be?

serj · 2006-11-01 05:12:39

Particular donations - this is the only real way of the advance of cosmonautics and solzdaniya of space colony, since no states to this will give not cent! This as in Archimedes - community - fulcrum on which it is possible to overturn entire terrestial globe! But hopes for the fact that many will give on thousands of dollars - completely useless, good so that although on hundred would give, and that be sufficient must for us. Is then necessary advertisement very strong in the newspapers and on the the tele-formnew, and to advertise intensely by all should we, in the newspapers it is necessary much to write, I attempt this to make 4, but it is unsuccessful and almost, newsmen are disposed intensely and against this project! With great difficulty possibly that to print only that! But as in you? Did write you into the newspapers? And in the bank a calculation do have you? But it is compulsory to open we should fund charitable for the expedition to Mars, and otherwise us they can accuse of the swindle, and similar yes, already and they speak! I attempted to open fund, but it does not be sufficient to me one founder in all! I propose to you joint company to create for the expedition to Mars, separately we are powerless and almost, and together let us be able more to make, than we are separate! And a cheap rocket we can rapidly make, and it is already possible to fly, and otherwise, if we not are hurry, then completely we can not have time, then possibly that to fly no one will be able and entirely!...

Ian Flint · 2006-11-02 18:10:48

Robert,

How in the world is space traffic supposed to keep up with the air traffic of the early 1900s? There are no destinations. Early airplanes could take mail back and forth between cities. No interplanetary mail for us. Air travellers back then shaved hours or days off their intercity travel. No space cities out there for us.

Once we get stable bases or colonies on Mars or the Moon private interests will have a market for their services and space travel will really take off. We need governments or super-rich space philanthropists to start those bases and colonies.

I do agree that the pledge idea just won't work. Maybe if a multibillionaire got the ball rolling and actually built some hardware...

publiusr · 2006-12-08 15:53:08

I view the Alt.spacers as dangerous to the cause of spaceflight.

SpaceNut · 2020-11-27 11:47:11

tahanson43206 wrote:

If traditional members could do the job, they would already have done so.
If this were a for-profit enterprise, and had the budget to match, the Personnel Department would post a bid for an employee to meet the requirements of the position. The Personnel Department would work up a description of the skill set needed to fulfill the requirements of the position, and the Requesting Officer would assist as needed to insure the candidates interviewed are indeed qualified and suitable to blend into the existing culture of the organization.
Since this (Mars Society) is a non-profit organization, the rewards for participation are non-monetary. Instead, they consist of feelings of worthy contribution to a worthy cause. The power of such motivation is superior (by my observation ) to the motivation of putting food on the table.
The kind of person to be invited to help has achieved a higher level on the Maslow Hierarchy. For such a person, the flow of income is assured, and worries about food, shelter and medical care are receding in importance compared to the enticement of making a useful contribution to the advancement of the human endeavor.
On the ** other ** hand, there are alive on Earth today young people who are going to be among early Mars settlers, and many more who will be among the later Mars settlers. For such persons, this forum (and others like it) provide a way to gain knowledge and contacts that will serve them well during academic preparation and early employment.

Self funded versus group versus corporation versus government, when trying to build something that is even only obtainable to the very rich as an individual puts projects out of the reach of the ordinary person that is fighting just for a living to be able to enjoy ones life.

So can a nonprofit have employees, yes they can but those that contribute need to know whom is being paid for there activities.
Can they fund projects, would also be a yes as directed by the steering committees in control of the funds.

At one time Mars Society was more world wide but something happened to the elements not of the US a while ago and only now is it in a rebuilding mode as a group.

So what can be done to generate a funding means for Mars society that still keeps it in the nonprofit status is the issue going forward.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2021-05-31 01:49:52

Maybe the next step is for a Private Sector like the Planetary Society to fund a Rover to Mars and the Private Sector like Musk's SpaceX gets to launch it

LightSail 2 was launched on 25 June 2019 and deployed by the Prox-1 carrier satellite into a much higher low Earth orbit than LightSail 1, at over 720 km (450 mi) orbital altitude. It was to demonstrate controlled solar sailing in low Earth orbit. By controlling the orientation of the sail relative to the Sun, the flight team hoped to raise the orbit apogee and increase orbital energy following sail deployment. Prox-1 and LightSail 2 were secondary payloads aboard the second operational SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch, which carried the STP-2 payload for the U.S. Air Force.
Researchers received the first pictures from LightSail 2 on 7 July 2019,and its solar sails were deployed on 23 July 2019. On 31 July 2019, The Planetary Society stated that they had raised LightSail 2 orbit by a measurable amount, although it has spent a significant amount of its time randomly tumbling.
Though initially planned to reenter Earth's atmosphere after approximately one year, an extended mission was approved on 25 June 2020. The Planetary Society estimates that at the current rate of orbital decay (20–34 meters per day depending on the level of active sail control) LightSail 2 is expected to remain in orbit until the second half of 2021
https://spacenews.com/solar-sail-spacec … d-mission/

Startup Phantom Space wants to be the Henry Ford of rockets
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/0 … -cantrell/

' 4th planet from our Sun, once had liquid water on the surface and could have supported life. We don't know how it changed to the cold, dry desert-world it is today.'
https://www.planetary.org/worlds/mars

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-04-18 12:52:13

Mars scientists look to less expensive missions

https://spacenews.com/mars-scientists-l … -missions/

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-06-15 02:46:51

NASA Satellites Lost as Astra Rocket Mission Goes Awry

https://www.cnet.com/science/space/nasa … goes-awry/

Mars_B4_Moon · 2024-03-29 06:18:57

Boeing sues Virgin Galactic over mothership project

https://spacenews.com/boeing-sues-virgi … p-project/

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