Finance is really the nub of the question of a Mars colony, so it is worth returning to. The Elon Musk colony proposal needs further consideration because it asks us to consider funding as if it were a single proposition. It is hard for outsiders to see it as such. There is the development of a transportation system and there is the establishment and development of a colony, The issue of transport is a natural one for what is essentially a spacecraft and rocketry business like Space X to address. But to make a case for carrying large numbers of people to Mars, as a commercial business you need to be able to forecast some means of eventually turning a profit. For this Elon Musk turns to his 80,000 tickets, but clearly you cannot sell tickets to a colony that does not exist. As I have said, Musk gets round this problem by treating the costs of developing a means of transport and constructing a colony as though they were simply a package deal. Again, that seems a little simplistic and , frankly, somewhat unhelpful. Given that spaceflight is becoming a competitive business, the idea that one party both develops a transport system and creates a captive market (captive in the most absolute sense possible) is a little unsettling. It is also not necessarily the best way of generating finance because the funding mechanisms available to the transport side and those possible for the colony itself may be different.
When I was involved in privatisation issues in the UK Treasury in the 1980s, one of the most crucial issues in creating frameworks for competition was to differentiate between delivery mechanism and product. Within the public sector these were often combined into a pure monopoly (and sometimes a monopsony as well). It can make economic sense to allow a single distribution provider but only when there is plurality in the supply of a product or service and careful regulation of the distributive function. In a sense what we are seeing with the competitive supply and crewing of the international space station that is underway in the US is the beginning of the privatisation of space. In this too we need to ensure that delivery mechanisms do not become monopolistic. And when we look at Mars we need to be quite clear that any colony is not solely a by- product of a delivery mechanism but a human entity and, crucially, a new and vulnerable market in itself.
This is not to be critical of what Elon Musk has in mind but just to suggest that the fundamentals need very careful thought. In particular, I think that organising the creation and development of a colony as an enterprise formally distinct from Space X's rocketry and spacecraft program could open up some important funding mechanisms for a colony.
The science fiction writer Robert Heinlein once wrote a novel about the first expeditions to the stars. He chose as the organiser of the flights a charitable foundation called, appropriately, 'The Long Range Foundation' (LRF). Amusingly the LRF had been set up to take forward research on projects which had no immediate prospect of profit but which might eventually prove beneficial to mankind in general. Embarrassingly for its charitable status, the LRF's research projects kept making money, so it opted for the star project as a means of getting rid of some of the loot! This is not just a sidetrack but a lead into the possibility of an additional means of funding the setting up of a Mars colony. I think a real LRF (or some such name) could attract finance from those seeking tax advantages and from genuine philanthropists for the development, design, and construction of life-support, radiological protection, hydroponics, soil farming, power supply, and habitat structures etc for a settlement. I cannot see that this charitable funding route would be available to Space X as the seller of tickets to Mars, though I see nothing to stop it from making donations to such a foundation itself.
On the funding of the transportation system, it has concerned me how much seems dependent on ticket sales, which can hardly be expected to roll in at a pace till the project is ready to start landing people on Mars. So I think it would be worth exploring the early sale of ticket options. The seat price quoted by Elon Musk is extra-ordinarily cheap, particularly when you consider the prices that wealthy tourists have already paid just to get into space (let alone the outrageous, highway robbery level, ticket prices Russia is now charging each NASA astronaut for a ride to the space station). There could be quite a market for early seat reservations for the trip to Mars, particularly if they could be on-sold. I think, say, $100,000 per reservation might generate considerable interest. The $100,000 would be part of the eventual cost of a seat, so no-one would pay more (except in opportunity costs). But some crucial up-front development costs might be met.
Enough for now. But more later I expect.....
No comments:
Post a Comment