Public interest
The public interest of terrestrial people in the colonization of the Red Planet is fundamental for fund raising and political acceptance. Money is one of the crucial issues in planning an autonomous colony.
Contents
Web page hit counting
The frequency of web page views with Martian topics can be compared with those of other topics. The following examples compare the view statistics with The Beatles, one of the most popular internet topics.
wikistics.falsikon.de on March 13th 2009
The Mars page on Wikipedia is among the 1000 "Most accessed pages this month" on position 426 with 8,464 hits per day. Compared with The Beatles on position 8 with 101,832 hits per day this is nearly every tenth.
stats.grok.se
The Wikipedia article Mars_colonization has been viewed 196 times in January 2009. During the same period the article Mars has been viewed 262344 times and the article The Beatles has been viewed 3171857 times.
Advantages
- The hits can be easily counted.
- The data is already available.
Disadvantages
- Only online people are measured.
- The data can be easily manipulated.
- The data do not reveal further details, such as the appreciation towards the government spending effort.
Public-opinion poll
(to be completed)
Membership in organizations
One of the best known organizations regarding Mars colonization is the Mars Society. The membership in the U.S. is currently 5473 (March 13th 2009) persons, which is about 0,002 per cent of the population [1].
In Canada there are 430 members, which makes about 0,001 per cent of the population.
In France there are 420 members, which makes about 0,0006 per cent of the population.
In Germany there are 190 members, which makes about 0,0002 per cent of the population.
In India there are 10 members, which makes about 0,0000009 per cent of the population.
Open Issues
- What is known about the trend of public awareness and interest?
- How can the interest be measured exactly?
- Where are the data about web page hits?
- How many people know the idea, but do not see a point in spending any effort?
- How many people find it an interesting idea and appreciate the government to spend effort?
- How many people find it an interesting idea and appreciate private investigators to spend effort?
- How many people are working actively for the implementation of the idea in their spare time?
- How many people are working actively for the implementation of the idea in a full time job?
