Well, we didn't get the funding from the European Framework Programme that we wanted. The project got "good" marks from the assessors, but not the "excellent" that we needed. So, the search goes on.

However, there's another thing we could think about. It is of course very difficult to get funding for an unknown project lead by unknown people, such as ourselves. However we could turn our attention to the dir necessity of cheap orbital flight and the sustainability of human colonies on the Moon and on Mars. The "MUSTARD" project of the 1970s and the Earth II experiment of the 1980s, respectively, are things that need to be continued, if humanity is ever to gain a permanent foothold in space. Some would say that time is running out for that to happen, due to over-population, resource exhaustion and climate change. I think so too. We could look into the possibility of creating a not-for-profit foundation to study a continuation of MUSTARD and Earth-II. To colonise space we absolutely need reliable cheap transport to orbit - no more ballistic rockets and we need to know how to survive when we land at the destination.