BBC Focus Magazine

[MikeG]

Be hard to generate interest like that I think, I mean the initial series aside the rest existed by running highly strung, bombastic, fevered egos deliberately selected to be antagonistic towards each other and the resulting train wrecks of their dysfunctional interactions.

I don't think they would have to be dysfunctional to generate interest. Just driving out on the Rover to look at a new point of interest (a cave, site of potential microbial life, strange rock...) would attract immense interest. The Big Brother association was unfortunate. Maybe a Discovery Channel type of association would have been better.

[Shadowwolf]

Just driving out on the Rover to look at a new point of interest (a cave, site of potential microbial life, strange rock...) would attract immense interest.

Oh I get that, that would be interesting and likely worth watching but..., this media event seems intended to be a strong component of the fund raising effort to pay for the mission which means that most of the coverage will be prior to any Mars based firsts. However, much of the coverage can only be of applicant selection and training with the odd vehicle design / manufacture documentary and the odd launch should we assume a very rosy projection for the mission. Heck, even many of the launches are doubtful to garner anymore interest than any other launch does these days. So we have a critical component of their fund raising for the mission with little to show thus compromising their revenue stream which in turn compromises their ability to actually further the project. The revenue generating potential only kicks in after they have acquired enough money to make the mission a reality first; there's a disconnect there.

As for the BB association, well tis probably unavoidable given a project lead manager was behind BB, but their suggestion of televising something similar doesn't help. They very quickly had to engage in heavy engineering to keep people watching that "reality" TV, an option they won't have in a serious endeavour, an option that would potentially be deleterious to the mission. I also don't imagine that any significant number of people will be all that interested in watching several years of training.

Perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic but I am definitely getting the impression that this mission has not been objectively or fully thought through.