Stratford_2011abstr
Copyright © 2011 by Frank Stratford. Published by the Mars Society with
permission.
Multiple Ways to Fund Mars
Frank Stratford
President
Melbourne, Australia
ABSTRACT
This article by Frank
Stratford of MarsDrive discusses a response on how Dr Robert ZubrinŐs recent Dragon
Direct might be funded from alternative, non NASA sources and how the mission
itself might be modified to more completely satisfy the health and safety
concerns these history making missions would entail. In a point by point form
various ideas (including a Mars Consortium) are proposed for the purpose of
initiating better developed ideas on how the Mars advocacy community can do
more than simply lobby NASA or her congressional bosses by seeking private and
public means of funding in a strategic and far reaching plan that rests on
multiple ways to fund Mars missions, much like the individual threads of a rope
combined give it strength, so several of these ideas, if combined, could lead
to actual funding of a humans to Mars mission in the next decade.