Private Donations to Help JPL Build Spacecraft

[FleaSharp]

<p>I was just wondering this the other day and wanted to get feedback from the community. We all would love to see more spacecraft sent to various exotic worlds; such as Europa, Titan, Triton..etc, yet NASA / JPL are obviously constrained by budgets and can only do certain projects. </p><p>&nbsp;What if JPL accepted private donations to help fund more spacecraft, would you donate? Would people donate? For example, lets say JPL wanted to send another probe to Titan, that was designed to last longer and do more work and they included a <strong>donate now button</strong> to collect donations from all over the world to help pay for it; do you think people would go for it and help?&nbsp; Sure, a mission like that might cost $1 billion dollars; but what if $200 million was raised; that's better than nothing right?</p><p>What are your thoughts?</p><p>Thanks,</p><p><br />Flea# </p>

 

[Carrickagh]

<p>They may be limited by the law. Although I believe Planetary Society may have, via some loophole, contibuted at one point to the VIM's data analysis project.</p><p><br /><br />&nbsp;</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[aphh]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>They may be limited by the law. Although I believe Planetary Society may have, via some loophole, contibuted at one point to the VIM's data analysis project.&nbsp; <br /> Posted by Carrickagh</DIV></p><p>Most of the money would just go to support the red tape and very little ended up in flying a mission.</p><p>Instead of NASA, why not donate to the folks that actually desing and build hardware and missions? Being a investor in one of the emerging "Space 2.0" companies, I can almost guarantee the money would be better spent.&nbsp;</p><p>There are great plans outside the government bureaus, like ILO's observatory on the Moon. Just to name one: http://www.spaceagepub.com/ilo/ilo.overview.html</p>

 

[Bytor_YYZ]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'> Being a investor in one of the emerging "Space 2.0" companies, I can almost guarantee the money would be better spent. <br /> Posted by aphh</DIV></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Yeah, right.&nbsp; It would be more likely to be wasted.&nbsp; New companies are more likely to fail.&nbsp; JPL does fly real spacecraft to real planets.&nbsp; Nuspace can't even get to LEO </p>