Well I'm always happy to help out on specific projects where I can.
I have friends who work on the design, development and research of new space vehicles for a number of agencies, private and government and while I don't think they'd want to get directly involved (sort of a busman's holiday), I know they'd be happy to act as sounding boards for specific projects as long as I buy them a beer or something.

Equally on investment matters, I know a number of senior investors in different investment companies who I can bounce ideas off while my own company which is focussed on software development could lend some support on IT matters.

I'd be personally happy to help on software and web matters although I'm a Microsoft man myself so if it's .NET, systems software or web application or services built on .NET then I'm sure I could be of help.
If of course it's all PHP and MySQL then it'll take me a bit longer to pick up but then I've always fancied looking at PHP so I can set up a server and do some gradual development work on the side.

I do originally come from a physics degree background though so I would also be able to help out on some research projects although I suspect my expertise may be a little rusty and not as specialised as many users of this site.

Generally it pays to be quite bold and far looking though. A range of projects which are accessible to members of the group and builds on the expertise of different people can only be a good thing.

Does Mars Drive have a panel to look at suggested projects? How do members of the site suggest new projects?
On the same topic, how do members of the site find and contribute to current projects?
How are new projects managed and who determines any scope or deliverables?
I expect there are answers to all of these questions, I’m just new to the site and so still trying to work out how everything pieces together and how I can best get involved. I do find the idea of private research and missions to mars to be so bold as to be worth the effort though.

What’s vital is that projects are visible and made accessible. This not only brings in more support from within the group but equally people writing research papers will be able to identify practical projects applicable to their research and be able to feed that into projects being run by the team.

That sounds like a good approach. At the current scale there would be no point in running formal panels but all going well in the future when the numbers are there then panels can form when and where needed.

I guess things that often hold other groups back include...

* Too heavy on the science. Not everyone is a professor so some groups can scare all but the hardcore researcher away.
* Unable to see how personal involvement can help. By that I mean people may think they can't make a valuable contribution so never even join so it's showing that everyone can play a part.
* Worry over the geek factor still. I've had people before say that space advocacy groups are just for trekkies so they stay away so we need to raise the profile to something more attractive. If I was to say "I'm into exploration and I'm planning to go to the north pole" then people would say "wow, cool" but if I said "I'm into exploration and I'm planning to work on missions to Mars" I'm more likely to get raised eyebrows and a "any way...." response. The reality is I can no more go to the north pole than Mars at the moment but the North Pole is a more acceptable and even sexy answer to many people.

I guess as you say, that's where this group fits in. Good science but accessible but more importantly raising the profile of space exploration, educating and showing people it isn't just a fantasy for Trekkies and UFO fanatics.

I guess clarity is always important, allowing people to donate to a central fund or to specfic projects is always going to be a win win situation.

Hi Darren, first a little history. When MarsDrive came out in its very first version some 4 years or more ago, it was built by a professional web designer and I had a team of people who could edit and maintain the site. As volunteer groups go, those people eventually left and I was left with maintaining the site. That first version for which got such great reviews was completely lost (database and all) because I had trusted other people that it was taken care of. Thankfully it was still early enough to bring back in our first Joomla version and that came about because Dale Rogers was available to build alot of it, though by his own admission it wasn't up to the standard of the first site.

Our goal was to raise the bar in space advocacy websites, and back in 2005 we did just that. Today many of them have upgraded in similar ways, even NASA has. The first Joomla site we built was hacked last year, and because Dale was away/busy with other things, it was next to impossible to get anything restarted. Hal did a massive amount of work to get us back and for that I'm thankful.

But our dream for this version wasn't what we wanted but I had to make the decision to launch with bugs in the system still as our absence was killing all the hard work we had done in the past. For example, one thing that really bugs me is loading times for pages. Also, important to our group, we don't have a paying membership page like we used to and I'd like to get that fixed too.

Right now, one of our main projects is our mission design which has been brought back to life by David Gooding for which we need alot more technical minded people to work on. It might interest you to know we are the only group (including NASA) actively working currently on humans to Mars designs, and I think this will remain the case. The guys over there told me that it needs a more prominent place on our main site with regular updates and a real effort to attract more support, and I agree. I just don't have the resources to do it all myself or with Hal. We are both spread very thin.

We wanted a site that was much better than what we have, we wanted to build colony style games, have active updates and newsletters for our projects, chat features, special guests, etc etc but the logistics of doing all that takes time and money we don't have.

I know that people like to watch, they like to be entertained and inspired and I guess those are the areas I'd like to see us excel at. You are right in all you say Darren anyway.

We have had offers to create informational video clips presenting our ideas, but our one CG artist is another person who is hard to pin down and for this I think we need a team, not just one person. What I'd like to see is a site where every click is seamless, where polished doco videos/short films present our projects and visions to the public and where members can vote, contribute and have a say in all we do. A place where people can learn, be inspired and work on our dream.

The website is but one half of this though. The other half is real world efforts, life conferences, actual technology/science experiments, etc. I believe we can't have one without the other, and you are correct there Darren. So I guess as a first step if we can make the website the best it can be, create something of value- like a library of resources that could serve the Mars community for example, then fix our SEO- which is terrible right now by the way. No one can find us since our relaunch and all the old links to us are dead, so it's like we are starting over. I will give you admin access to the backend Darren, take a look around and whatever you can do there, by all means you have our full support.

Also, let's talk on skype when we can, there's a bit to go over to give you the complete picture.

There is a mute button for the woman just underneath her picture frame. But thanks for the feedback, and action is being taken.

I have one suggestion, I think a better template for this site can make it look better. More of a space template.

Thanks for the suggestions Kevin. Basically we try to keep our website attractive and user friendly and to be honest, those typical dark white print on black background space websites are hard on the eyes and not very popular for that and other reasons. Reasons like too much technical content cluttering up space etc. So we try to keep it streamlined and easy to look at etc. New versions of the site will continue to come out anyway and we will continue to improve the look and functionality and content.

As to a Mars Consortium website, well at this stage we do have a forum section here on it and I'm pretty sure almost no one has said anything in there so a specific website for that would be a waste of our resources at this stage.

We are planning on a consortium conference in the next few years to bring together potential players who might fund a Mars mission but the work to make this happen is only in its early stages. Making an economic case for Mars is perhaps the biggest challenge we have right now. You can help out by bringing new people to register here Kevin, spreading the word and becoming a paying member as every bit helps.

Actually we have 3 groups on Facebook with around 800 members. Unfortunately most of those are "silent" members. I sometimes wonder why they join or if anything will get them more active. We also have groups in myspace, youtube, twitter, second life, etc and in fact we were pioneers of outreach in these areas well before other larger groups jumped in.

Really it's quite simple- if we want to run projects and be a success at out our goals we need active volunteers, paying members and donations. If 10% of our current "free" membership became paying members we would have a base budget to help us do many more things. The real issue I'd be interested to hear feedback on is why people won't join as paying members if they want us to be successful? Without adequate resources (money and people), our goals will always remain far off and unreachable.

People don't vote for third political parties because they don't believe that they have the experience, resources, etc to achieve their goals.

Basically people are saying- "You get the money, the resources, etc first, and THEN I'll think about supporting you".

The problem with this view? It's lazy thinking. At some point in history even the mainstream parties were little more than discussion groups if you know what I mean. They all had their start in obscure political ranting and small scale meetings. Rome wasn't built in a day.

It's also a slap in the face to all of us who are actually spending our time, money and resources on things like Marsdrive. When we say things like "If we had 1000 members at $30 a year we could accomplish X" we are only stating the obvious. If I had to sum up why people should support us?

Unlike the U.S government, the private sector and other wealthy people, we actually have the WILL to do what we say. We can see the benefits, even if others cannot.

So can I take the lack of support to mean that basically, even the space community sorts of people that frequent sites like ours really don't believe we can accomplish anything?

It seems that way to me. But on the other hand, if we somehow landed a rich supporter who gave us enough funds to conduct space missions and other areas of R&D, suddenly people would switch on? I doubt it. Even the largest space groups suffer from a lack of support. If people do not choose to put their faith in their own worth as valuable supporters of a greater cause, and if they continue to think that we will amount to nothing, then that's exactly what will happen. On the other hand, if they engage with us, we might start getting somewhere.

Having a sound business plan for Mars is the key if you want humans to be sent there. I say this quite frequently on NewMars, and all I get in response is 'but we aren't going to Mars for the profits, we're going to build a new civilisation'.

But they also accuse O'Neill and Drexler of being money grubbing capitalists who don't care about space colonization and only want to make money...