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posted by CoolHand on Friday March 31 2017, @05:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the martian-gold-rush-of-2029 dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 1) by DmT on Friday March 31 2017, @07:34PM (2 children)

    by DmT (6439) on Friday March 31 2017, @07:34PM (#487273)

    Just seed life to the planet. Send microbes or any other living organisms, until something sticks and starts growing.

    After that it will be much nicer to colonize.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 31 2017, @08:15PM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday March 31 2017, @08:15PM (#487297) Journal

    If that were going to work, it probably would have already happened with meteor impacts causing fragments from Earth to hit Mars. Just as we have Martian origin material on Earth.

    Granted, we could give bacteria a posh billion dollar ride in a craft with plenty of atmosphere and food, and then dump a slurry onto the Martian surface. But it doesn't look like they will be able to do much when they get there.

    The best places to look for life in the solar system could be the subsurface liquid water oceans [wikipedia.org], of which there could be hundreds. They don't even need tidal heating to exist, so they could be found on undiscovered dwarf planets in orbits that take them hundreds of AU away from the Sun, making them currently undiscovered.

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    • (Score: 1) by DmT on Friday March 31 2017, @09:03PM

      by DmT (6439) on Friday March 31 2017, @09:03PM (#487327)

      I don't think that life is elsewhere in the solar system, because the possible quantities of diffrent bacteria that might have gotten on other planets is fairly limited. Its the job of the human race to spread life elsewhere.

      Mars seems to be an interesting candidate. Maybe in some caves or polar regions.

      In extreme case sent them to Venus.