A manned mission to Mars is ostensibly the next giant leap in human exploration, but government timelines put estimated landing dates decades into the future. What if the private sector got involved – could a manned Mars landing happen sooner?
In part 1 of this thought experiment, I appealed to the world’s wealthiest people to leave the ultimate legacy by funding humanity’s first foray to another planet in one fell swoop.
But let’s assume an exploration-minded benefactor doesn’t step up; how might we leverage the market to fund what is essentially a speculative, risky endeavor with no real product? Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to get creative. Here are a few.
1. Sponsorships / Product Placement
Corporate logos are the wallpaper of the globalized world; they cover much of our built environment and are among the most recognizable symbols on the planet. Naming rights for stadiums regularly go for millions of dollars, topping out at $20 million per year for Citi Field (home of the New York Mets) and Barclays Center (home of the NBA’s Nets franchise). So what about the Google landing module, propelled off of the Red Bull launch pad by the sleek, powerful BMW rocket engines?
A slightly more germane mode of advertising is product placement, offering companies a chance to show how their products are fit for the demanding environment of space travel. If an electric toothbrush is good enough for the first person to walk on Mars, it’s good enough for you! Car makers Ford and Aston Martin reportedly paid $50 million to have their vehicles in James Bond films; with all the eyeballs that the mission would attract, surely product placement revenue can approach a cool billion.
Sponsoring a Mars mission is a strategic balancing act. On the bright side, you’d be linking your company to cutting edge science, innovation, exploration, and an overall sense of optimism and possibility. But there’s a disastrous down side: no one wants their logo forever associated with a tragic explosion on the launch pad or fatal malfunction in space.
2. Reality TV
Sure, reality TV is associated more with the dregs of society than the leading edge of human accomplishment, but a show tracking astronaut selection, training, and the mission itself would make American Idol – winner gets, wait for it, a record deal – look like a kindergarten play.
If we’re calculating conservatively and drawing Survivor-type ratings, the numbers might break down something like this, according to a reality TV insider:
$1.50 million: Cost to produce each episode.
$125k: Cost of a 30-second ad during broadcast. Of course, advertising revenue depends on the viewership and can be roughly approximated to a rate of $11,400 per million viewers for a 30-second spot. American Idol charges $502,000 per 30-second spot, while the Super Bowl airwaves go for $6 million per minute.
30: Ads aired during an hour of TV
$3.75m: Net revenue per episode
$2.25m: Approximate profit per episode, subtracting broadcast and marketing costs from the net ad revenue. This is the profit for the network – the ABCs, CBSs, or NBCs of the world. How some of this money would be invested in the mission, through some sort of revenue sharing deal trading exclusivity and high ratings for cash, for example, would require a bit of tinkering. Nonetheless, these figures give a sense of the magnitude of money at play: tens or hundreds of millions of dollars could likely be generated by a reality TV franchise.
A Dutch group called Mars One is already all over this idea, aiming for $6 billion of funding from reality TV alone and a 2023 boots-on-the-ground date.
3. Yard Sales
Right now, the going rate for a chunk of Mars is about $2000 per gram. The price would be depressed, of course, upon the introduction of more martian rocks, but selling off a portion of the return payload could net tens of millions of dollars.
Mission hardware would likely be popular among collectors. Why settle for a “my 2nd grader could do that” Rothko when you could hang a piece of the spacecraft’s heat shield above your desk? It’s hard to predict how much money this avenue could generate, and most of it would be contingent on mission success, monetizable only upon return. But as long as someone is willing to pay $28,000 for a grilled cheese sandwich, surely there must be millions in a Mars spacecraft’s seat cushions.
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What did I miss? How else can we get creative to fund a mission to Mars?
