The Mars Society and/or The Planetary Society come to mind as good examples of how space enthusiasts can achieve results. Establishing a consortium of some sort to advocate for the ICT plan might be the way forward.
What can WE do? What could YOU do?
Funny, The Mars Society and The Planetary Society come to my mind as good examples of how space enthusiasts can fail to achieve anything of substance.
Buy a bunch of Teslas.
I like the kickstarting idea. But for a lot of people to donate you have to capture their imagination and make them passionate. Nobody shells money without expecting anything in return without passion. Certainly Elon does a lot to show where his hearth (and money) are, and surely his message is stronger and more widespread than NASA's #JourneyToMars. But that doesn't suffice. I noticed NatGeo has covered the IAC speech on Twitter and I read SpaceX is deeply involved with their new TV series 'Mars' about future manned missions. It's clear from the trailer that SpaceX provided them with an early insight on ITS design. Maybe we will see other collaborations of this kind in the future?Personally I bought 100$ worth of swag on their store, it's a drop of water but as a student I can't really afford more than that. And that terraforming mug is awesome
Quote from: AbuSimbel on 09/29/2016 09:19 amI like the kickstarting idea. But for a lot of people to donate you have to capture their imagination and make them passionate. Nobody shells money without expecting anything in return without passion. Certainly Elon does a lot to show where his hearth (and money) are, and surely his message is stronger and more widespread than NASA's #JourneyToMars. But that doesn't suffice. I noticed NatGeo has covered the IAC speech on Twitter and I read SpaceX is deeply involved with their new TV series 'Mars' about future manned missions. It's clear from the trailer that SpaceX provided them with an early insight on ITS design. Maybe we will see other collaborations of this kind in the future?Personally I bought 100$ worth of swag on their store, it's a drop of water but as a student I can't really afford more than that. And that terraforming mug is awesome well when the first ITS comes back, it could bring quite a lot of mars material, including stones. I would be willing to pay quite a lot to have my hands on some of the first martian rocks brought back. rocks would be by far the cheapest way to reward donors. But then again: I think the first ITS cargo back will be fully purchased by nasa, all agencies, universities, etc..........
Quote from: francesco nicoli on 09/29/2016 12:59 pmQuote from: AbuSimbel on 09/29/2016 09:19 amI like the kickstarting idea. But for a lot of people to donate you have to capture their imagination and make them passionate. Nobody shells money without expecting anything in return without passion. Certainly Elon does a lot to show where his hearth (and money) are, and surely his message is stronger and more widespread than NASA's #JourneyToMars. But that doesn't suffice. I noticed NatGeo has covered the IAC speech on Twitter and I read SpaceX is deeply involved with their new TV series 'Mars' about future manned missions. It's clear from the trailer that SpaceX provided them with an early insight on ITS design. Maybe we will see other collaborations of this kind in the future?Personally I bought 100$ worth of swag on their store, it's a drop of water but as a student I can't really afford more than that. And that terraforming mug is awesome well when the first ITS comes back, it could bring quite a lot of mars material, including stones. I would be willing to pay quite a lot to have my hands on some of the first martian rocks brought back. rocks would be by far the cheapest way to reward donors. But then again: I think the first ITS cargo back will be fully purchased by nasa, all agencies, universities, etc..........There will have been many other flights before that will have returned mars material long before the first ITS flight.
Theoretically, ITS could bring back 25 tons of Mars rocks or so. 40 kg for every donor if there are 1 million of them... (realistically, it will be less, but you get the point).