The United States currently has the necessary funds available to implement a project of this scale, as the Apollo program demonstrated. Studying the budget for the Apollo program and comparing the percentages that it took of NASA's budget in the 1960's to its current budget gave us an idea of the amount of money that the US government would be willing to spend if it were properly motivated. The political maneuvering that this would require is a project in itself, which is explored in the public relations section.
Many overseas governments have space programs and an interest in finding out more about Mars.
The research has shown, however, that alone, most other governments do not have the funding for such a project and may not be willing to fund a U.S.- initiated project. While international collaboration between governments are politically very attractive, past collaborations, such as the International Space Station, indicate that they are often inefficient and tend not to work as well as single-government ventures. This is unfortunate because such an expensive undertaking would be more palatable to the U.S. Congress if the U.S. were only expected to pay for a portion of it, but realistically a collaboration is not workable. Private funding is going to play a larger role in space exploration in the future, especially if useful resources are found on other planets such as Mars. However, this is a projection into the future.