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Taking Issue With The Outer Space Treaty
tekan writes: "The National Review has an interesting article about the challenges ahead for the settlement of Mars (or the Moon), as well as how Law and sovereignty issues factor into colonizing these bodies." Perhaps most interesting are the reasons cited for entering into the treaty at all -- which had little to do with keeping space a peaceful utopia.
Why can't we just colonize these planets for the good of mankind AS all of mankind. Why do we need more invisible lines in space?
You know, somone once said that you can't see national boundries from space, maybe that's something to think about...
Linux is dead.
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If we want to colonize space, and colonize it fast, the way to do that is to create viable land titles on the Moon, Mars, and any other body people want to live on. The value generated by making those title transferable at a distance ("the miracle of capital") will be more that sufficient to fund the trips to those places.
The Economic Viability of Mars Colonization
As to all those people who believe that "the world" should own space locations, and keep them as parks, or Utopias - that will be the easiest way to ensure that they remain completely unused by humanity, until it's *super* easy, whereupon those places will become slums and shanty towns, just like the unpropertied areas in third world countries today.
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The United Nations on it's face seems like a decent and good thing. Underneath it's a messy, contrived political body that lacks real power. To do anything of importance it has to resort to the same politics as any government and many say it's more corrupt given the number of governments involved.
I see the U.N. as yet another malformed, underfunded, and corrupt extension of the "civilized" world. It seeks to limit the freedoms and rights of it's member countries despite those government's rights to sovereignty. And for those people who think a utopian society will every come of a political body formed in the aftermath of war are surely fooling themselves.
As long as there are differences of opinion, language, creed, religion, power, wealth, resources, race and freedoms, there will be different countries with different agendas. The United Nations could be the spring board for a better thing, but at this point it's pretty worthless.
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. -Samuel Johns
I would expect the US, China, Europe, Japan, India, and maybe others to each have their own "colonies" on Mars, for a while. But then cultural trends would start pushing these colonies to band together, and eventually declare independence from any and all Earth nations. They'd have much more in common with each other than each colony would have with its mother nation, after all (2/5 gravity, food scarcity, etc.).
Then there's the communications gap. Absolute minimum of, I forget, 20 minutes round trip to get a response from Earth? Going up to 40 minutes? Not a huuuge gap, but it's there.
The main thing tying Martian colonies to Earth would be dependence on resources and infrastructure - heavy machinery, for instance - until the means exists to produce it locally. But that would just be a matter of time.
In short, humans, by nature, will band together where convenient, and declare independence when convenient as well.
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
...let's screw everything, antagonize everybody and unilaterally proclaim US sovereignity on a bunch of planets? What about proclaiming it on something where Americans ever stepped on? Or how about proclaiming it on unexplored areas of the planets? There is an american piece of junk on Mars => let's claim the whole Mars as an US territory! And why end with planets, US can claim that it owns the sun, Asteroid belt, all the space within Solar system (except one that is filled by other countries on Earth)? Or just claim the whole galaxy?
The point is, no one gives a shit who and why signed a treaty, it was and still is a right thing to do, and if US government will try to bite everything in its reach, they may find not only that they won't be able to chew it but that everyone else will be happy to help them to choke.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Do you think that if humans go out into space there will suddenly become more noble creatures? They will be the same humans that we have here on earth, and act the same way. You must be a fan of Star Trek, where it appears that they have found a way to rip testosterone from males and whatever makes women so bitchy and catty. If I had to pick any thing that would be a good representation, it would be something like Babylon 5, where politics and greed are readly apparent.
In one of the few decisions of the Bush administration that I agree with, they're finally starting to look at nuclear propulsion again.
Heck, all you have to do is say that it'll help fight terrorism... people will buy anything that claims that, these days.
I'd have thought that colonies, once they are of the size to sustain civilian populations (as opposed to being just researchers and scientists) would want to form their own government and laws, as opposed to being ruled by a bunch of `foreign' (alien?) beaurocrats.
Yeah, they might base their laws (and constitution?) on that of the US, cos it seems a pretty good starting place, but to be ruled by a far off land, and have to pay federal income taxes to a place tens of millions of miles away? Come on, you Americans must be in a uniquely qualified position to know that colonies don't like to do that!
K.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Slow down there. You seem a tad bit rabid. The point is the treaty has a chilling effect on possible future colonization by ANY country. The US is just one country that might have an interest in seeing it go bye-bye. Personally, I don't see any reason why the US *should* stay in this treaty. It clearly, and legally, gives us a way out that would allow US citizens to claim land rights on these other bodies. Any other nation is welcome to join us, it's not like we are saying "Well, it's ALL ours now just because we can see it in the sky or land junk on it!" No, the point is that if you can establish a colony on another planet, those people should have the right to choose whatever form of government they wish, including becoming another US state should they desire it (or a member of the British Commonwealth, etc).
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
Now that was one biased article. Let's see, we have UN slammed repeatedly, open source commie liberal trash berated, Bush looked up to for crapping on international treaties.. Almost good enough to be on /.! I especially enjoyed the part which equated foreign aid to funding kleptocracies. Personally I think much of the foreign aid is spent in ways that hurts the recipient nations more than helps them, but .. Hard to come up with something better.
Writer misses the point in any case. You need warships to claim a piece of soil as a private property. And as far as I know, US doesn't have spacegoing navy. Yet.