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http://www.autodidacts.io/who-will-own-mars/
Everyone's excited about rockets to Mars, and each SpaceX launch brings that dream closer to reality. Musk and others are putting a lot of money and brainpower on the technical problem of getting people to Mars. Less sensational topics, such as surviving on Mars, receive less attention — but plenty of money and serious thought, because there's no way to get around them.
But there's another important question which isn't getting much attention:
Who will own Mars, and how will it be governed?
Does Mars belong to the people who get there first? To the highest bidder? To all the people of Earth?
Does Mars belong to Earth, or does Mars belong to Mars? Does it belong to the Sun? To the Martian microbiome, if there is one? (What are the indigenous rights of microbes, I wonder?)
Who will be in charge of Mars once the colonists arrive? If Mars turns out to have valuable resources, who gets them? And if a Mars colony is to govern itself, what kind of government would it have?
The Mars colonization project is driven by the ultra rich. And those who want to stake their claim on Mars may rather the rest of us didn't think too much about the little problem of who owns the planet next door, and why.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Friday March 31 2017, @06:26PM
But there's another important question which isn't getting much attention:
Who will own Mars, and how will it be governed?
Why ask questions for which you can't have answers at present? We really don't know what the problems will be like till we have actual colonization efforts underway. Further, making decisions of ownership now will merely constrain our future actions for no gain by creating unnecessary obstacles and conflicts.
The Mars colonization project is driven by the ultra rich.
What Mars colonization project? The only person or organization mentioned was Elon Musk. He's probably "ultra rich", but he's just one person without any concrete plans for Mars colonization at the moment. The only efforts going on right now are a few exploration prestige missions by national space programs and some token (and probably fraudulent) theater (like Mars One). No projects here.
My view is that the only thing that really makes sense is the first person or group to make significant use of a location, owns that location (a practice in the US which is called "claim staking" [wikipedia.org]) perhaps combined with some moderate long term tax on the productivity of the claim payable to every person.