Rich people are supporting their own space program: one to find the cext piece of C*** from space before it hits and kills a lot of people. Bill Gates, $25 million for PanStarrs, Charles Siimonyia, the same. Discovery network $35 million for a telescope near Flagstaff.

Intel founder Grove has pledged millions for the largest earth based telescope, and you can bet this will be used for NEO analysis and tracking as well as for physics.

That's what the bright folks are spending their private space money on.

Now if James Cameron wants to try to make money with a private Mars rover, I could sitll point him in the cheapest direction