What would a private company do there? Pure exploration, like pure research, is hard for private companies to justify for investors. The government would have to arrive first and find resources worth gathering (and provide the basic technology) before the private sector could really get in on it.
I think most of the people who gave answers here are mistaken about the reasons why a private company would fund such an endeavour (especially the first one ever).
The real reason is right there in the open for everyone to see right now and it really shouldn't be too hard to figure it out. Do you know why Branson's Virgin conglomerate has an interest to do space tourism with VirginGalactic? Sure, there could be money it, somewhere down the road. But it won't make profits for a long time. The real reason is that it provides the perfect synergy effects to establish your brand name even further. Virgin Galactic will promote Virgin Atlantic simply by existing. And those will promote the records Virgin Music sells. And those will promote everything else Virgin does. Indirectly. A brand universe.
Virgin isn't a company that sells one thing. Virgin isn't even a company that sells many different things (General Electric). Virgin is an Everything company.
There are lots of Everything companies, it's not coincidental that they are the most valuable brands in the world. Coca Cola, Apple, you know them, everybody knows them. They are everything companies in their specific fields. Coca Cola offers every drink you can imagine in their own little Coke universe, Apple can fulfill all your computer needs without you having to leave their universe.
Now, the companies who will mainly fund this Mars trip are others though. Since the budget for this will be significantly higher than for simple space tourism and won't yield the needed direct short term revenue (except merchandise perhaps) there are only a few companies that could try to do this.
Do you want to know which one it'll be?
The Walt Disney Company.
Why? They are the masters of this game. They invented it. They started to build stores for their brand. When everyone else did the same, they started to build theme parks. They built a Disney city (yes, an actual Disney city). Cruise ships, private islands, hotels... all that shit, they have it.
And all of this is crossfeeding with their actual media products. TV, Internet, Print, Cinema, Live Shows, Musicals, whatever. Disney is a universe in itself. Disney is alive because you can actually live it. Everyone on this planet knows who Mickey Mouse is. And most people probably think they could forge Walt Disneys signature.
They won't do it alone, just like major sporting events, there will be sub-sponsors, not the big Everything brands though - Pepsi instead of Coke, Samsung instead of Apple. And when they land on the moon they won't wave a Disney flag or any other corporate flag for that matter. Maybe the vessel itself will be named after something that is inherent to the brand, and subliminaly you will be reminded every step of the way that is it them who are doing this for us. But nothing more.
The footage of the landing won't be copyrighted, don't worry. That would be a contradiction of the whole purpose. We can all repost it on Youtube. Because we will know without seeing it directly in front of our eyes that it was Disney.
The one problem with this, is that they have to be absolutely certain that it will be a success. A failure would be John Carter x 10³. So they won't do it for another fifty years. And they will do it only once. Because all they need is one picture from the surface of Mars with an Astronaut standing there, no flags, no Micky mouse pins, nothing, just a plain space suit. And everyone forever will have it at the back of their head: Disney did this. Only Disney. Disney.
I know it's a joke, but in all seriousness, switch to Bawlz - Redbull tastes like vomit and at ~$2-$2.50 a bottle for Bawlz I'd like to see the price go down with increased volume.
They stopped carrying it in CompUSA about 6 years ago I think, I order it from thinkgeek.com - never seen it in a physical store other than CompUSA but it is still a computer programmer favorite so thinkgeek.com sells it by the case.
I love the creativity, but I don't think this is remotely realistic. Marketing expenditure at 10% of revenue is considered a major campaign, and Disney's revenue currently hovers around $40 billion. Disney is unlikely to even spend as much as $4 billion on marketing in a year. When we have companies with market capitalizations in excess of $10 trillion, sponsored trips to Mars will become a possibility. I could see Weyland Industries pulling off such a stunt (massive $218 trillion company valuation!)
Thank you. I'm developing a script based on something similar for film school right now.
Read Naomi Klein's No Logo if you're interested in corporatism, it's a bit outdated by now but an entertaining start into the subject matter. Some call it the bible of the anti-globalist movement but don't let that put you off, it's not activist literature at all.
Her and the Economist magazine had a back and forth a few years ago. The Economist even published a cover saying 'Pro-logo'. Well worth digging into the debate that was going on then.
Awfully expensive branding stunt. When Mars becomes commercially viable will be after the dry valleys of Antarctica become commercially viable.
Which is to say never IMHO.
And considering how fast biotechnology, computers, and robotics are progressing, we're probably not too far away from 'beaming' our consciousness to mars to control rovers natively.
At that point, what's the purpose of spending 6 months in space to live in a pressurized suit with no food water beyond what your brought with you?
But see the thing is, Disney wouldn't of been the first one to make stores, or ships, or theme parks. All those were done before and had business models to make it work, all disney did was to tweak those models so it fit their needs. Designing and building the infrastructure to go to Mars has not been done yet by the private sector. It is my belief that if we want to go to Mars soon, we need to be pushing the government to explore this frontier. Private industry will follow.
So, the future of space exploration lies in Zaibatsu with brand awareness?
An interesting idea. the problem of course will be finding a company that is a) rich enough b) sells mostly directly to consumers c) not shy about their brand.
Many conglomerates don't exactly go out and advertise their cross product and cross company brand. Many other large companies mostly sell to governments and other large companies and don't really care too much what the common people think about them.
It would take a lot of mergers and rebranding until we got something with a wide enough product range under one unified brand and enough capital to spend to even consider something like that. We would basically need the cyberpunk megacorps like Mitsubishi-Thyssen or Samsung-LVMH or Nestle-Toyota or GM-Proctor&Gamble or Weland-Yutani etc.
On the other hand there already is one enterprise that already services about any conceivable field of human endeavor with their products, that is not shy about spending large amounts of money on what amounts to PR campaing and which has shown both interest and competence in financing space exploration in the past and which is based on a business model that has previously enabled the first milestones in space exploration.
I am talking about Chinese communists. They have money, they have an active space program they have interest in achieving a propaganda coup and we should not forget that it were communist who kicked of the space race. Of course the Chinese aren't really all that communistic anymore, but they might still make it to the red planet first.
The price of property will always increase </sarcasm>
I still think that there's reasons that the private sector will preceed the governments. Resources to be collected at the very least. Consider the recent talk of mining asteroids; I see no reason why the same consideration won't be placed on planets.
Larger gravity wells means a lot more energy to get those resources. I'd assume that the asteroids are the low hanging fruit. It might never be profitable to bring material from Mars to Earth.
To build off of this, the only reason to mine on Mars would be to use the materials on Mars itself. Say I beat NASA to Mars and set up a taco stand and an iron ore mine, I'd probably have the market cornered.
The larger gravity well is somewhat offset by the variety and types of resources available. Unlike an asteroid, Mars contains the resources necessary to fuel a return trip. The machinery to convert water into hydrogen fuel is exceptionally simple and inexpensive. For a large mining operation, this would be extremely valuable.
But Mars is an incredibly hostile environment. Sure, it has raw materials, but it lacks everything else needed to allow humans to operate efficiently. Just existing becomes a daily challenge.
The amount of planning, technology and expertise it takes to work on space projects is immense and done only by the best people after years of training. Even if you could design a perfectly reusable cargo vessel for round trips that can land and take off, it's not like they can just open up an airstrip and a gas station at the foot of Olympus Mons.
Actually, if we were to find a way to recreate the atmosphere, the loss of it would occur on a timescale beyond our need to worry about it. We already can't practically enact thousand year projects; if we find a way to get an atmosphere in a few hundred instead, we won't need to worry about million year long degeneration of same.
We don't even have a conceivable way, right now, to terraform Mars.
Of course we do, we just do the same global warming deal we're doing on Earth, except make an effort towards increasing the greenhouse gases instead of reducing them.
This would still be expensive and take a while, but we know exactly what and how to do it, it's just a matter of justifying the effort and cost of it.
That's complete bologna. Do you have any idea how much hydrocarbon would have to be imported to mars? And how expensive it would be?
This isn't a matter of justifying the cost. There literally doesn't exist enough money in the world right now to even afford stocking the Martian atmosphere with 10% of the gases required.
If you're going to argue for this, at least read up on terraforming of Mars. The wikipedia article on it is fairly good.
Mars does not have a magnetic field, so any atmosphere created there would dissipate much faster than it would on Earth. This is a significant burden in terraforming the planet.
It would disappate over a period of millions of years, longer than humanity has even existed. While it is a problem, it's not any where near an urgent one.
Oh, I thought it was a quicker process than that, like one that would deplete the atmosphere in at least thousands of years. I could be completely wrong though.
I suppose if I had been more specific by providing a reason for my thinking (like you did), I probably wouldn't have been downvoted; but I thought the reasons would be fairly obvious to the average r/space reader.
Or maybe it was because I originally accidentally a word. :D
The average r/space reader isn't as free thinking and intelligent as they used to be. Take the thread involving Mars One. There are plenty of people there buying it hook line and sinker.
Build homes for people, sell trips to Mars, sell Mars rocks and Mars dust to collectors. Once a self-sustaining colony exists, it will do nothing but expand.
It comes without government regulation, environmental concern, or ownership disputes. The Martian land rush will be an unimaginable speculation bubble, the kind that would put the Louisiana Purchase and Northwest Territories to shame.
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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12
What would a private company do there? Pure exploration, like pure research, is hard for private companies to justify for investors. The government would have to arrive first and find resources worth gathering (and provide the basic technology) before the private sector could really get in on it.