here's a little monologue entitled: "the future of humanity, and how i'd spent my money if i was as rich as bill gates".
one of humankind's top priorities should be to colonize other planets. why? well, besides being an incredible interesting and challenging thing to do for all involved, it's about basic survival. viewed from space, it's apparent that life on earth lives in a tiny little ecosystem that forms a super-thin layer around the planet; a layer that could easily be obliterated by a variety of causes such as a stray meteor, virulent biological weapons, world war iii, etc. it would be a shame if billions of years of evolution went down the toilet because of a single catestrophic event.
one obvious defense against this unpleasant end is to colonize other planets (followed of course by interstellar travel, but that's another story). this costs lots of money given the current state of technology. one day, breakthroughs in rocket motors and other related technologies will make space travel affordable in the same way that cars were initially expensive but then became much cheaper. in the meantime, earth relies on nasa to provide the leadership to move into space.
i think it would be great if the top 100 rich people in the world got together and decided to fund their own independent space initiative, independent of nasa, and hire the best people to create and implement a plan to colonize mars. not only would these people have a blast (literally) being part of such a grand plan, but they would go down in history as founding fathers of the first non-earth colony. and i bet with the resources and drive that such people would have, they'd do a far better job than nasa ever could.
my bet is that someone like bill gates would find a deep and profound satisfaction in being part of such a grand plan, and that a founding father of mars would be remembered in the history books far longer than a founder of microsoft.
wouldn't it be great to watch such a daring schema in action?
come on bill, go for it! ;-)
2:28:18 AM 
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