How can a man top the creation of X Prize, X Prize Cup, X Racer and Zero G Corporation, International Space University, Starport.com, Students for Exploration and Development of Space and Space Adventures?

As keynote speaker at the International Space Development Conference last night, he forecast that he would be making a major announcement this year about a private foundation to support spaceflight to Mars. His expectation is that he could privately raise $3 billion dollars from 10,000 people willing to commit $100,000; 1,000 people willing to commit $1 million and 100 people willing to commit $10 million. He thinks with the right fund managers, this could earn 15-17% returns and double every 5 years. Within 10 years, the money would be sufficient to finance two or more human Mars missions.

These people would then play a game to determine who would be in the 100 person astronaut corps. That corps would be rigorously trained and tested and down-selected into 12 colonists for the first crew. These crew would then undertake a one-way colonization mission to Mars.

Earlier would come private exploration missions. Later would come private pre-placement missions pre-placing supplies, power generation equipment and habs. Then a cycler would take colonists to Mars who would use a lander to get to their pre-placed equipment. The bulk of the mass would head back to Earth to be refurbished, resupplied and reused if economical.

He calls it the ‘Mars Citizenship Program’.

Peter, I said it last night. I am in for $100,000. I am also willing to run a game for you to select from 100,000,000 people putting in $10.

Peter also motivated his goals for space development by saying that the world was running out of things. For example, “iron”. Nope. I rolled my eyes at the geophysicist sitting next to me. 5% of the Earth’s crust is iron. Steel production in 2002 was 900 Mt. Edison perfected a way to pull high grade iron ore out of low grade ore, even beach sand in 1891. It was not economical then and not the way ore is mined now, but we could easily do so if the price when up. Why go for plentiful deposits of ore containing 30% iron when there are deposits with 50% ore and higher? Pig iron cost $400/ton in today’s dollars in 1900. In 2002 it cost about $600. Per capita GDP in the US has gone up by a factor of 10 in the same time from about $4,000 to about $40,000 in current dollars. We can afford more iron every year, not less.

Peter also said that there are “trillion dollar checks” flying around in the asteroid belt. That is moot. Extraterrestrial minerals will have extreme difficulty competing with high value cargo. It would only cost $100,000 per pound to get the asteroid mass to the Earth. We need to get that down to less than $1/lb before it is competitive for iron. Even platinum sells for only $20,000/lb. Until the price to orbit gets much lower, those “trillion dollar checks” will bounce.

Stick to Elon’s “Back up the biosphere” message and our drive to explore and expand.