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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: 1) by khallow on Friday March 31 2017, @06:42PM
Nobody, because it's a lump of rock that requires you to get constant resupplies from Earth to survive on.
That is incorrect. The Moon is in that situation of requiring supply with really strong scarcity of hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. Mars has every element in sufficiently ample quantity, such as the basics (C, H, O, N, S, P, Fe, etc) that a single colony could get all elements needed for plant and animal life from the local environment (C, O, N from atmosphere; H, O, S, Cl, Na, Mg, Ca, K from ground water/ice and dissolved salts; P, Fe, C, Na, Mg, Ca, K from meteorites).
Further, Earth is not the only source for resupply when resupply is needed. It would take far less reaction mass, for example, to ship water from Phobos, a small moon of Mars to the Moon than from Earth.