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Wanted: Sponsor for very cool expedition

Oct 22, 2004 22: 19 EST
Like any expedition, going to Space will take dogged persistence, ingenuity and involve serious risk. Plus an out-of-this-world sponsor pitch. Going to Mars is more expensive that going to Everest. "We cant afford it and neither will our kids," says the American media. "A mountain of debt stands between us and the plains of Mars." So national efforts are out - then what to do?

The Billionaries

"It was billionaire Paul Allen's $20 million that allowed Burt Rutan to build SpaceShipOne, the first privately financed manned rocket to reach space," writes AP. There you have it - a killer pitch to the new billionaires! But they won't do it alone - we're going public:

In a conference session on investing in what are being called "alternative space companies," the role of billionaires backing projects was seen as useful in attracting other investors, reports AP.

But Billionaire funding can't cover the development of everything required for commercial space infrastructure, said Thomas Olson, chief executive of the Colony Fund. "We're starting from scratch," he said, describing communication and data systems and the parts that go into spaceships. "There's not enough wealthy patrons to be able to build this stuff by themselves."

Going public

So there are funds set up. Junk bonds, Nasdaq - own your piece of heaven! Colony Fund is one such: "Now the general public can take part in a small way, investing in a tiny part of a larger portfolio for something that has a lot of risk to it, but possibly some great rewards over a long time horizon."

The first Colony Fund is intended to be a $500 million fund, a test model. "Future funds, whether we make them or other people get into the game and start making them, are going to attract a lot more money and they're going to attract institutional money at the same time, which kind of legitimizes things a lot for everybody." In the meantime, Olson said of the mutual fund industry, "There's nothing really out there investing in small entrepreneurial firms trying to break into those markets."

"It's been a pretty good month"

And it seems that Space funds have attracted good interest in the past month, thanks to SpaceShipOne.

Said the founder of the venture capital company Gold & Appel:

"It's been a pretty good month for this group because if all your friends thought you were nuts and commercial space wasn't real, you could watch the evening news and find out that there was some reality here," he said.

And there are other ways too:

In Oklahoma, a state tax credit was key to getting Rocketplane Ltd. funded to begin work on a reusable launch vehicle for space tourism flights that would originate from one of the state's old Air Force bases.

In California, meanwhile, Xcor Aerospace seeks government contracts to develop technologies that can be adapted to its real goal of developing its own passenger rocket.

"There isn't anything that is typical," Xcor President Jeff Greason said Friday in an interview with AP. "Every participant in the industry has gone down a very different path."

The typical part is instead the growing optimism in the private Space sector. SpaceShipOne and the Ansari X-Prize sure rocked the world last week. And now, there are money coming our way.

Image courtesy of Atomic.net

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