In the past years many technical proposals were submitted concerning a human mission to Mars. Such proposals were important since, due to the current hiatus from the official space agencies regarding Mars exploration, they pushed the state of the art, at least conceptually, concerning such event and, basically, kept alive the idea of human colonization of the planets and the solar system, unavoidable event if man wants to be an important player in future history.

But the several proposals had something in common, they were generated by private organizations and not by the official space agencies or governmental entities that have two negatives features:

· lack of financing

· lack of official backing

Such events lead to a basic conceptual understanding and obvious conclusions.

At the moment the possibility of a government-financed Mars mission through national space agencies is a very remote and improbable event since most urgent priorities are been considered. These facts lead to an inevitable conclusion: new ways of financing such mission should be explored by utilizing private participation. Private financing should reasonable come only through a profit making operation and not from improbable individual or company sponsorship system, also due to the magnitude of the money involved. One possible and profit-making proposal is to transform the entire Mars mission into a global media event to be submitted to international media networks.

In our media-hungry society such a plan, through its high global appeal and visibility for the specific historical and unique opportunities could help in obtaining the needed financing from sponsors of different type and interests. We can summarize the above in three easy concepts:

WHY- the need to privately finance the first manned mission to Mars through a profit making self-supporting operation

WHAT-The Mars mission as a global media event to be financed through its media rights

HOW-transforming the mission in a audience rich package to be sold to networks who will profit by selling commercial time in a highly popular global media event

Private Funding and Commerical Investment