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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: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 01 2017, @03:25PM
Mars will be owned by whatever agreement the large power blocks on the Earth can agree upon. Look into how Svalbard and Antarctica is managed for examples. Same goes for international waters which even the movie The Martian [wikipedia.org] mentioned. Corporations and individuals will be subject to the laws and the interests of the nation they originate from.
Any party that bring out the guns onto anyone else can expect all parties to the agreement to jump on them for stepping out of line. Unless of course you have bigger guns than all Earthly power blocks together.
So it's most likely to be governed by international treaties until interplanetary business makes Earth irrelevant. But still when there's many parties they can see the benefit of agreeing on common rules and then any rouge one will feel all those guns whenever they try to take advantage of others. At present the Venezuela government mismanage the country and tries to monopolize power (guns) but the first response is that a lot of other countries call back their ambassadors so even countries will be punished for going rogue.
However one could wish that only peaceful nerds will be allowed to land :P
No business administrators, human resources, government, politicians, lawyers, military hawks etc.
Btw, To avoid inbreeding a population of at least 1000 persons is required. That translates into infrastructure demands.