[anymouse]

montrose signed up 2002-04-04

Of course montrose knows all, especially about commercial space activities. /sarcasm

[montrose]

Name one commercially viable business plan for planetary exploration. There aren't any. There HAVE been a number of plans hawked to a gullible public--but they have lost their investment.
In some cases they propose to subsidize their efforts by leeching off the government facilities, but that begs the question.

Note that I speak very carefully about PLANETARY exploration (including the moon), not communications satellites and the like.

The CLOSEST proposal anyone has made has been the novel suggestion that a Voyager-type mission could be privately funded, and paid for by royalties from the imaging products (IMAX films and so forth). But that's a money-loser too.