By the way, am I the only one that would have liked some indicator of the size of the models used to take the photos?

This is an awesome comparison. For the record, acccording to wikipedia, the Moon (0.273 Earth diameters) would fall almost exactly between the Mercury (0.383 Earth diameters) and Pluto (0.19 Earth diameters) in size.

While the old adage “Invest in land, it’s the only thing they aren’t making more of.” may still hold some validity while the means for climbing out of the local gravity well are, shall we say, limited and controlled, we can see that that condition may not prevail much longer. The surface area of Mars is within 4% of the land area of the seven continents of Earth. The Homestead Act (May 20th 1862) was enacted 55 years after Lewis and Clark and Zebulon Pike first explored the Louisiana Purchase. A similar act, 55 years after the beginning of Project Mercury (1959) or the end of Project Apollo (1975) could stimulate private settlement and commerce in the 2014 to 2030 timeframe.

Taking another historical example; the eastern coast of what would eventually become the United States was visited by Spanish and English government employees in 1560 and 1584, respectively. By 1607, a corporation (The London Virginia Company) had financed and established a permenant colony at Jamestown. This is a span of 47 years. The question raised by this is: who is building the equivalent of the “Susan Constant”, the Conestoga Wagon, and the prarie schooner?