Hi Joe2700 -

One again, it's a pleasure to chat with you, though our views do differ -

I myself don't mind the MERs, as they are proving the market. And when you get right down to it, these were built by private capitalist companies (at least parts of them were), so you can't really say that it is all government -

I also don't think that private Mars rovers will necessarily provide the data that NASA needs for its science missions - this is one problem with prizes. What will happen is everyone will lobby the government to have the requirements set to something their firm might be able to provide, and science goes out the window. (We've seen that in the small launch marker.) Another thing about prizes is that you can end up with too much of what you might want, unless the prize is first come first served, and then you end up with a lot of private firms out the cash they put into their development effort - so you end up wasting space dollars -

My model back in the day (at the time of LunaCorp's initial proposal) was the IMAX film model - of course, its a different world now, one with an internet - still, the capital expense is something less than that for a motion picture film - these hopefuls bleat about Gate's deep pockets, instead of looking at Cameron's - strange - perhaps someone like Disney or Paramount might undertake the effort -

For the reasons above, I don't like prizes. I think that the profit - cash reward - generated by true prducts should be sufficient in and of itself -

My top priority is dealing with the impact hazard - few realize exactly how bad it is right now, but one thing is certain: it can not be dealt with with Prizes - what is needed is cold hard cash to professionals, and large amounts of it, the kinds of cash that only governments can provide - I am sick of watching David Packard paying for computer resources for this out of his own pocket -

You brought up looking for life on Mars. Clearing the back contamination hurdle is going to require exploring large areas of Mars. Just one more lander after the MERs will not do it. The bottom line about doing this privately is just how great is public demand, and that is something no one knows - space enthusiasts generally assume that everyone enjoys and values these images as much as they do, and that assumption is with certainty not true - I would hope that NASA would make available the JPL "hit" numbers to any private firm seriously looking into private rovers, but that is not my problem right now -

On planetary orbital images, I keep waiting for something like "Flight Simulator" to make its appearance - the private effort so far seems limited - here I think Gates or Jobs could make some money, and I'd like to see them try to do it -

But all of that is not high priority right now -

once again, a pleasure
EP