Some folks hope to jumpstart human expansion into the cosmos by privately funding bases on other worlds. One serious approach is by Dr. Charles Polk who recently founded The Martian Trust (J. British Interplanetary Soc., Vol. 62, No. 5, pp. 187-197, May, 2009) with the sole intent of financing a self-sustaining outpost on Mars.

The Martian Trust, a new INGO founded by Charles Polk, bills itself as “The Virtual Society Building A Real World.” Click .

Polk has a PhD in economics from Caltech and is a former aerospace engineer who worked on Space Shuttle main engines. Frustration with the funding processes of public space programs led to his interest in economics. According to Polk,

The Martian Trust introduces a key principle to space exploration: An endeavor is best accomplished when it is conducted directly between people who can and want to buy it and people who can and want to sell it. I believe that there are tens of millions of people who will want to imagine, design, and finance, a Mars outpost through the processes of The Martian Trust. These people, these millions of patrons, with a hugh trust fund under their direction, will command the interest of industries capable of selling them a Mars outpost.

In case you’re new to this blog, The Martian Trust is a superb example of what we call “early ebullience.” Early because Polk’s visionary concept precedes the 2015 Maslow Window — the next major pulse of ebullient human expansion into the cosmos — by about 6 years, and ebullience because it marvelously symbolises the fundamental force — energized and focused human curiosity — driving near-term space colonization. Inspirational endeavors like The Martian Trust are exactly what we would expect to see as we approach the 2015 Maslow Window, an ebullient 1960s-style decade with a Camelot-like zeitgeist.

Currently, space-themed media including movies, TV programs, novels, and games, reach hundreds of millions of consumers but have no direct connection — neither the consumers nor the creators — with a real space program. Polk intends to change this. His international non-governmental organization (INGO), will focus on the Mars outpost goal, “The precise meaning of this goal and how to attain it are left to those who hold stakes in the INGO. Stakes are allotted based on the revenue supplied to a trust fund, which may come from two sources: donations and media businesses.” Polk is basically adopting and expanding the media revenue model of The National Geographic Society.

Even if The Martian Trust cannot ultimately generate the tens of billions of USD needed for an initial Martian outpost, it still might play an important role by financing one or more key systems (e.g., habitation modules) in a much larger international, governmental Mars initiative. This is what Otto Steinbronn and I were envisioning in the INTELSAT-style organization that we called InterMoon (or InterMars, depending on the destination); see P. 291, Figure 3 in “Interspace…”; Space Policy, Nov., 1992.

In winter of 2008, Dr. Polk formed a non-profit corporation in Washington state to initiate the development of The Martian Trust and validate its business model. The Trust’s motto is “The Virtual Society building a Real World.” To avoid any suspicions that The Martian Trust was formed to promote any particular aerospace industry or any specific country’s economic aspirations, Polk chose to base the INGO in New Zealand. Formal establishment of The Martian Trust in New Zealand awaits the concurrence of “high net-worth space exploration and science fiction enthusiasts” who will form the INGO’s cornerstone of patrons.

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