Revenue Model: Branded Media

[100 million members] x

 

[Average member spends $100/year on branded media] x

 

[10% brand license fee] =

 

$1 billion/year

Financing Vehicle: Accumulate Revenue in a Trust Fund

Identifying a Path: Members choose how to spend the Fund.

We can go to Mars -- we’ve understood the basics for decades. But what's the goal: Boots on the Ground or Search for Life or Humanity’s Next Home?

Given a goal, we have the ability to design a path to attain the goal. What’s kept humanity in low Earth orbit since 1972 is how to finance a path – any path – to Mars.

The Martian Trust is a social process designed to identify and finance a path to Mars. Identifying a path amounts to answering the question, Why go?. Financing a path comes down to whether those with an answer can amass the money to implement their answer.

* C. Polk, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol. 62, pp. 187-197, 2009.