We are one step closer to a private, for-profit, libertarian utopia on Mars as NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories has requested private space companies to outline how they would complete one of four different missions to the Red Planet, as reported by Ars Technica.
The missions would include delivering a small payload of miniature satellites to Mars, delivering a larger orbital spacecraft, delivering an orbital image servicing spacecraft, and establishing a years-long communications relay between Mars and Earth. Companies would receive $200,000 for studying one of these missions or $300,000 for studying two of them.
NASA has been increasingly utilizing private capital to reach orbit. Since 2020, the agency has been sending its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) via rockets owned and operated by SpaceX. The first Crew Dragon mission marked the first time a private spacecraft had carried humans into orbit. Private human space flight, once a headline-grabbing event, has now almost become routine, as evidenced by the lower profile of each subsequent SpaceX launch. In the latest development, SpaceX recently carried its first all-European, all-commercial crew of four people to the ISS in a mission.
