CASPER
THE FRIENDLY GHOST
NASA scientists and their colleagues are now proposing corporate financing for a human mission to Mars. This raises the prospect that a spaceship named the Microsoft Explorer or the Google Search Engine could one day go down in history as the first spaceship to bring humans to the Red Planet.
The proposal suggests that companies could drum up $160 billion for a human mission to Mars and a colony there, rather than having governments fund such a mission with tax dollars.
The plan covers "every aspect of a journey to the Red Planet — the design of the spacecrafts, medical health and psychological issues, the establishment of a Mars base, colonization, and a revolutionary business proposal to overcome the major budgetary obstacles which have prevented the U.S. from sending astronauts to Mars," said Joel Levine, a senior research scientist at NASA Langley Research Center.
Money could get raised from the licensing of broadcast rights, clothing, toys, movies, books, games, and so forth. Perhaps even selling the mineral and land rights on Mars could generate money.
"The solution is marketing, merchandising, and corporate sponsorships, which is something NASA has never done before," Levine said. "It's a whole new economic plan for financing a journey to Mars and what will become the greatest adventure in the history of the human race."
Selling Mars
The plan, which the researchers detail in the book, "The Human Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet," published last December, suggests that such a project could add 500,000 U.S. jobs over 10 years, boosting the aerospace industry and manufacturing sector.
"A mission to Mars would motivate millions of students to pursue careers in science and technology, thereby providing corporate America with a huge talent pool of tech-savvy young scientists," said Rudy Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who edited the book along with Levine. "Then there are the scientific and technological advances which would directly benefit the American people. Cell phones, GPS devices and satellite TV owe their existence to the space programs of the 1960s. The technologies which might be invented in support of a human mission to Mars stagger the imagination."
"There can be little doubt that a human mission to Mars will launch a technological and scientific revolution, create incredible business opportunities for corporate America, the manufacturing sector, and the aerospace industry, and inspire boys and girls across the U.S. to become scientists and engineers," Schild said.
Levine noted the idea of funding a human mission to Mars through corporations and private companies "is a major departure from the way we've done things in space up to now. A lot of things will have to be worked out — NASA in the past has not sold advertising time, television rights and so on."
It could be argued that NASA and other government space agencies should spearhead a human mission to Mars instead of corporations because of cost and safety.
Astronauts have never set foot on Mars, and like the Apollo missions that sent men to the moon, the mission to Mars would need teams of engineers and other scientists working together over many years, with cost concerns more about staying under a projected budget than earning big profits.
Governments also pioneered space travel due to the risky and untested aspects of venturing into such territory. Only after pushing boundaries to make voyages into space safer, more routine and less expensive, could business go where they once feared to tread.
"I think it likely most people would find it difficult to conceive there wouldn't be any government involvement in such a mission," said space-law expert Timothy Nelson at New York-based law firm Skadden. "The possession of a rocket alone would probably trip you up on the military regulations that govern the ownership of missile technology in the United States. Not to sound too cynical, but space rockets were built as a byproduct of the arms race."
There is no ban on putting ads on the sides of spacecraft or for licensing TV broadcast rights on such missions in the existing law regarding outer space, Nelson added. "The question becomes, economically, whether you can generate enough license fee revenue to pay for what you're trying to do," he said.
In addition, "how much can one get exclusive rights to cover something as newsworthy as a human Mars mission?" Nelson asked. "I could imagine other media outlets arguing they had the right to report on it as news. Also, I can't help but think that if only one company in the world had the right to broadcast the mission, that would lead some people to view the mission as a hoax and a conspiracy. There was a movie about that very idea, called 'Capricorn One.' To quell those kinds of doubts, you want to make such a mission as transparent as possible."
The proposal suggests that companies could drum up $160 billion for a human mission to Mars and a colony there, rather than having governments fund such a mission with tax dollars.
The plan covers "every aspect of a journey to the Red Planet — the design of the spacecrafts, medical health and psychological issues, the establishment of a Mars base, colonization, and a revolutionary business proposal to overcome the major budgetary obstacles which have prevented the U.S. from sending astronauts to Mars," said Joel Levine, a senior research scientist at NASA Langley Research Center.
Money could get raised from the licensing of broadcast rights, clothing, toys, movies, books, games, and so forth. Perhaps even selling the mineral and land rights on Mars could generate money.
"The solution is marketing, merchandising, and corporate sponsorships, which is something NASA has never done before," Levine said. "It's a whole new economic plan for financing a journey to Mars and what will become the greatest adventure in the history of the human race."
Selling Mars
The plan, which the researchers detail in the book, "The Human Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet," published last December, suggests that such a project could add 500,000 U.S. jobs over 10 years, boosting the aerospace industry and manufacturing sector.
"A mission to Mars would motivate millions of students to pursue careers in science and technology, thereby providing corporate America with a huge talent pool of tech-savvy young scientists," said Rudy Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who edited the book along with Levine. "Then there are the scientific and technological advances which would directly benefit the American people. Cell phones, GPS devices and satellite TV owe their existence to the space programs of the 1960s. The technologies which might be invented in support of a human mission to Mars stagger the imagination."
"There can be little doubt that a human mission to Mars will launch a technological and scientific revolution, create incredible business opportunities for corporate America, the manufacturing sector, and the aerospace industry, and inspire boys and girls across the U.S. to become scientists and engineers," Schild said.
Levine noted the idea of funding a human mission to Mars through corporations and private companies "is a major departure from the way we've done things in space up to now. A lot of things will have to be worked out — NASA in the past has not sold advertising time, television rights and so on."
It could be argued that NASA and other government space agencies should spearhead a human mission to Mars instead of corporations because of cost and safety.
Astronauts have never set foot on Mars, and like the Apollo missions that sent men to the moon, the mission to Mars would need teams of engineers and other scientists working together over many years, with cost concerns more about staying under a projected budget than earning big profits.
Governments also pioneered space travel due to the risky and untested aspects of venturing into such territory. Only after pushing boundaries to make voyages into space safer, more routine and less expensive, could business go where they once feared to tread.
"I think it likely most people would find it difficult to conceive there wouldn't be any government involvement in such a mission," said space-law expert Timothy Nelson at New York-based law firm Skadden. "The possession of a rocket alone would probably trip you up on the military regulations that govern the ownership of missile technology in the United States. Not to sound too cynical, but space rockets were built as a byproduct of the arms race."
There is no ban on putting ads on the sides of spacecraft or for licensing TV broadcast rights on such missions in the existing law regarding outer space, Nelson added. "The question becomes, economically, whether you can generate enough license fee revenue to pay for what you're trying to do," he said.
In addition, "how much can one get exclusive rights to cover something as newsworthy as a human Mars mission?" Nelson asked. "I could imagine other media outlets arguing they had the right to report on it as news. Also, I can't help but think that if only one company in the world had the right to broadcast the mission, that would lead some people to view the mission as a hoax and a conspiracy. There was a movie about that very idea, called 'Capricorn One.' To quell those kinds of doubts, you want to make such a mission as transparent as possible."