PERMANENT - Donations Budget

Over time, we've had various budgets, but at this point I have revised things according to priority.

Before going through this list, please understand that to date the cost of PERMANENT has been almost entirely underwritten by the founder of PERMANENT, Mark Prado, out of personal money. That's me. It's totaled tens of thousands of dollars. I do not perform government contracting (I did before for the US space program, and seen a lot ... which is why I am so adamant about private sector space development!), nor do I get paid by anyone to do this at this time. In fact, I forego other work and income in order to spend time on PERMANENT (being a longtime self-employed business person managing my own small company). I do what:

1. nobody else has done,
   
   
2. what nobody is realistically going to do in the forseeable future (sometimes "talk is easy", from experience with institutions and individual human nature, and knowing the difference between talking and really doing -- planning vs. implementation), and
   
   
3. which I think needs to be done most urgently.

If someone else is doing good work, then I cite them and help them as best I can, and do something else along the lines of prerequisites 1 through 3, and which is practically and realistically applicable to nearterm PERMANENT. This is what it will take to make PERMANENT happen.

(As many people know, when I was a consultant in the Washington, D.C., area up through 1994, I made lots of money per day working with a flexible schedule so that I could devote a lot of time to PERMANENT. I'm no longer in that situation. A particular part of my work took me to Asia in 1994, which was an invaluable international experience in many ways, but also forced PERMANENT into becoming an internet based operation, and my business is rooted in Asia at the moment. There are both advantages and disadvantages to this ...)

As you will see, I offer a lot of bang for the buck. Having worked for a lot of "nonprofits" in the past, I can attest that many do not use their money very effectively. I do. I have been a self-employed small business person and consultant for 25 years and am results oriented. I have little patience for poor performance, excuses, egos pontificating and rationalizing, etc. Practical results are what matters.

Priority list:

• Web programmer. PHP/MySQL. I have hired a few Asian people over the years, temporarily, mainly in my office in Bangkok, to get some things done. For about $1500, I could get the rest of the programming for PERMANENT finished.

  (Ideally, we would like a volunteer. However, if we want to truly get things done, then we need to be realistic. Many people have volunteered over the internet over the years but then not actually done anything. Maybe some money as a reward would change that. I'm tired of deadlines missed, time wasted on people who don't produce, and sometimes half baked work. I am looking for somebody more longterm, who takes an interest in PERMANENT, and is responsible and reliable. Local labor is very transient, and the interest in PERMANENT is mainly part of the western mentality. (I don't care to be politically correct; I prefer the truth.) I would prefer a "western" programmer, albeit the price above would be "mate's rates". I've actually been tweaking the programming myself, but a professional programmer would be much faster and better than me, and there are too many other things I should be doing which nobody else can or would do ...)

• Amazon publications. There are various books and conference proceedings which are not available in a digital edition, but which I can order from Amazon, then have somebody collect them all and ship them to our Asia library in Bangkok.

  The PERMANENT library and database is the core of our operation.

• Translation into foreign languages -- Russian, Japanese, Chinese, others -- translate the PERMANENT website. Online technical translators.

  (We previously had a researcher in Russia willing to manage this. He previously designed the Russian landers for the Mars moons, and asteroid landers, and has published technical papers. We lost that opportunity when there were no donations. I could look for him again and hope he is still alive and well.)

• Conference attendance -- I haven't attended a space development conference since 1998. It has just been too expensive to travel to the US. Other expenditures have been a higher priority. However, in view of human nature, there is no question that face to face, in person interactions and relationship building could greatly help to achieve PERMANENT's goals a whole lot. At this time, I could justify this only with a sponsor who specifically supports a particular meeting.

• Salary to focus on PERMANENT -- $2500 per month would do it. I live very cheaply in Thailand, in an outer suburb of Bangkok, in a paid-off townhouse owned by my wife. (Now you know why I don't return to the EXPENSIVE USA, especially its insane health care system ...) My wife is a professional who manages our business for the most part, and can do more if I back out for awhile. Again, at this time, this would be something which would be discussed with a particular sponsor, e.g., goals and timeline.

  If I could just focus on PERMANENT fulltime for 1 month, that would bring us ahead by leaps and bounds. Right now, it's a handful of hours per week.

• Salary for others -- With a high enough budget, I would hire some of the best experts in the professionally published literature, and the proven PERMANENT volunteers over the years. I know who's who... but this would be only if we got a major philanthropic sponsor.

  Actually, I pay myself last in my business. I pay my staff and invest in my business first. Always have. Unlike many other people...

  By western standards, PERMANENT is great bang for the buck. Compared to other investments in the world, PERMANENT is not even a drop in the bucket at this time.

I know that we can do a lot with a little bit of money. I do not believe in waiting until later, and I do not believe in building up a huge nest egg for when you're old and steeped in other ways but lower in energy and health. There are countless excuses to put off work now and do something else, getting blown along with society's consumerist trends according to the lifestyles of the late 20th and early 21st century. The only thing I really need is internet and a computer, and I've already got that.

I'm still young (53), energetic and creative. When I was in my 20s, I volunteered for nonprofit "cause" organizations in Washington, D.C., and saw too much time and effort going into fund raising and, shall I say, "inefficient" spending.

If someone donated millions of dollars, then we would bootstrap quickly. However, I'm not going to wait for that, or fall into the perpetual fundraising trap. You can make a lot of what you've got, and we could bootstrap a whole lot with thousands, not millions, of dollars. I think we've come a long ways on a few tens of thousands of dollars, mostly one guy's personal money (mine!). I'm going to keep on working on what I think most needs to be done and which nobody else is doing, now.

If I've got my time, a nice environment, and a resultant good mindset, then I can work as both a prime mover and a catalyst via internet to get the species off the planet in a sustainable business. It needs:

• The overall concept -- DONE, and continually updating
• A collection of the state of the art technical publications -- largely DONE, but slightly out of date and needs some organizing and reviews
• A database of competant and willing people -- DONE, but slightly out of date and needs some work, plus outreach
• A business plan -- VERY IMPORTANT, needs a lot of work in specific terms, have mainly an outline and qualitative one now.
• Contacting philanthropic billionaires and bootstrapping millionaires -- fundraising. I need help with this.

You can help with either your expertise, time and energy, or else with financial support for our expertise, time and energy.

All the best,
Mark Prado
Physicist, and Founder of PERMANENT (1985)

Option 1: Donate

[This section has been deleted for the time being. If you wish to donate, please contact us.]

If you have any questions, then please contact the PERMANENT founder, Mark Prado, at his personal website at www.mark-prado.com

spacesettlement.com > Please DONATE or Contribute > Budget

If you choose to submit feedback, then I wish to thank you in advance. After you click on Submit, the page will jump to the top.