NASA means business.
That's the message being sent to university students across the country in a
national competition that's intended to elicit fresh ideas for a business plan for Mars exploration.
In all likelihood, NASA won't be able to foot the entire cost of a program for exploration of the Red Planet, so it's hoping to take a lesson from the private sector and consider private financing. The space agency is taking ideas -- and strongly considering them -- from undergraduates and graduate students.
"NASA realizes that it needs to draw on more expertise than it currently possesses in-house, and it recognizes that it needs to draw on fresh ideas and fresh perspectives," said Burke Fort, manager of special programs for the Texas Space Grant Consortium, the administrator of the program. "What better way to do that than to go to American universities."
MIT students suggested that NASA commercialize the mission to Mars, capitalizing on the enormous publicity such an event would generate.
Georgia Tech engineering students proposed a new microgravity manufacturing process to turn sound waves into construction machines.
"By reducing the cost of manufactured components to a fraction of the cost of earth-built or machined components," their plan says, "[it] will provide an enabling resource for human exploration of the solar system."
Competition for the program, which is funded through the National Space Grant Program, starts up again this fall.
It was spun off another student competition geared more towards science, with a microgravity flight in a KC-135A aircraft as the prize.
But although the stated reward for this business competition is $1,000 and a trip to a conference with NASA bureaucrats, the real prize is having your idea in NASA's official business plan for Mars exploration.
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