NASA space budget

If we were to ask the members of the Mars Society to each contribute $500/yr to put people on Mars, do you think each and every one would do it, or do you think there would be a certain percentage who would decline?

Wikipedia says the Mars Society has 6,000 members. So we're 3 orders of magnitude away from 10 million.

>From what walk of life are we going to find more people more enthused and committed to Mars than the Mars Society?

Regards,

Mike Combs

From: spacesettlers@...m [mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of sraj
Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2011 6:05 AM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [spacesettlers] : NASA space budget

President Barack Obama has proposed a five-year budgetary freeze on NASA's spending keeping it at USD18.7 billion levels annually till 2016.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article1457664.ece

I don't think we are going anywhere with this kind of budget. May be the way forward is to request the public to directly fund programs.

Eg. Let's say it will take an investment of five billion $ / year for 10 years to put men on Mars. This will require 10 million people to contribute 500 $ / year.

People may contribute if someone trustworthy can come up with a good plan.

Maybe a philanthropist will have to fund the study phase.

(Personally I would be prepared to contribute some money if there is an ambitious program to create the world's first CELSS system having say 90%
efficiency)

Regards,

Selvaraj