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NASA Boss Says Mars Colonization Will Be Corporate Only
99luftballon writes "The head of NASA Ames Research Center has said that he expects any colonization of Mars, the Moon or asteroids to be done by private companies rather than by NASA. There's some interesting parallels with the East India Company, although that was hardly a triumph of capitalism. From the article: 'Dr. Simon Worden, director at NASA Ames Research Center, told The Register that the agency was firmly enmeshing itself with the private sector, citing cooperation on the Dragon capsule being developed by Elon Musk's SpaceX team as a good example. NASA developed a heat shield material called PICA (Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator), capable of withstanding 1850 degrees Celsius (3360 degrees Fahrenheit), and gave it to SpaceX, who manufactured it.' The article also mentions Google's head of space projects, who has 'Intergalactic Federation King Almighty and Commander of the Universe' on her business cards."
There was a plan put forward a number of years ago to try and have a manned Soviet presence on Mars by 2017 (and the centennial of the October Revolution as a general goal). That would have been an amazing project if it had ever been pulled off so far as a really impressive and fitting accomplishment in terms of propaganda and publicity that certainly would have fit the old Soviet bureaucratic mentality. Unfortunately such plans ended with not just the death of Sergei Korolev, but also with the general collapse of the USSR, not to mention how the N1 rocket was shelved and officially disavowed that could have developed the technology necessary to pull off such an endeavor.
I certainly don't see anything that the Chinese are doing which could pull off anything close to that.