Or I may win enough in a lotto drawing to order a Falcon Heavy launch from Space X. Your pick.
This is irrelevant, but this line got me thinking. You are actually in the ballpark. Imagine that - space technology has gotten to the point where Joe Shmoe from Poughkeepsie could buy a lottery ticket, and a few weeks later start getting prepped for a trip into orbit on his own Falcon. Has anyone drunk a beer in space?
It would be even better if there was a way for many different people to add information, make corrections, discuss the implications, and point others to places that contain additional resources.
Good point. I had forgotten. There are several treaties about space, and I believe the one that says "No nation can claim any part of the moon" was signed by the US.... Ahh, here it is. The Outer Space Treaty, signed initially in 1967 by US, UK and USSR and over 100 countries since then, is described in Wikipedia as follows. So the interesting question is whether a private party is under the same restrictions by dint of being a subsidiary entity to a nation. The language in the last paragraph cited could be interpreted to mean that a private entity or its equipment or facilities outside the Earth's gravitational well are not subject to any nation's sovereignty.
The Outer Space Treaty represents the basic legal framework of international space law. Among its principles, it bars States Parties to the Treaty from placing nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in orbit of Earth, installing them on the Moon or any other celestial body, or to otherwise station them in outer space. It exclusively limits the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes and expressly prohibits their use for testing weapons of any kind, conducting military maneuvers, or establishing military bases, installations, and fortifications (Art.IV). However, the Treaty does not prohibit the placement of conventional weapons in orbit. The treaty also states that the exploration of outer space shall be done to benefit all countries and shall be free for exploration and use by all the States.
The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet, claiming that they are the Common heritage of mankind.[2] Art. II of the Treaty states that "outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means". However, the State that launches a space object retains jurisdiction and control over that object.[3] The State is also liable for damages caused by their space object and must avoid contaminating space and celestial bodies.[4]
Yes, but it's not a flag of claiming - under the Moon Treaties, no nation can claim any part of the moon. OTOH, there is no language regarding private parties - that's where the legal work needs to be done.
I think we have a window of opportunity - a fairly long one. Most companies prefer to work in a predictable, safe environment (not counting the inherent dangers). The days of the East India Company having their own army and navy are past. That's a very expensive way to operate. Both nations and companies operated that way largely because there was little or no legal structure. Today we have a large body of law, treaties and legal precedent such as maritime law, much of which can be extended into space largely by United Nations agreement, so every nation can require every private entity based in that nation to operate according to its laws, which are derived from the UN treaties. There are many significant holes, and there's a lot of work going on in this area, but I think we've all gotten a lot more 'civilized' about this stuff, so I'm hopeful.
The Greeks were into knowledge as an abstract, and weren't much interested in mining or colonization. Had they been a bit more practical, they might have developed electricity, steam power and much more 2000+ years earlier, and we might already be living on the Moon.
Nope - according to the Moon Treaties, no nation may lay claim to any part of the Moon. But there is no language, or precedent, applying to private entities. I.e., nobody knows. This is a huge area of concern for everyone involved in space development. One fairly obvious outcome, should this not be resolved soon, will be "first come, first served - who's going to stop me?" And shortly thereafter, declarations to the effect, "We hereby declare the area of Tycho Brache to be sovereign territory." And then the wars. Hopefully a legal structure will be agreed before we get that far - that's essentially what happened in the European colonial period, but over five centuries a large body of treaties, laws and legal precedents were worked out that should be useful as a prototype.
A valid question, with an interesting non-answer. IIRC according to the Moon Treaties, no nation may lay claim to any part of the Moon. But there is no language in the treaty regarding private claims. It is not certain that there is any legal connection between a private entity and a nation, especially these days when a corporation may have branches in 100 countries. So at this time nobody can say whether a private claim on the Moon would be legally sound. (Which effectively means, "first come, first served - try and stop me!") This is one of many areas of uncertainty today that are concerning everyone involved in space development.
I'm not sure how this is relevant, but I'm reminded of the quote by (supposedly) Chief Crazy Horse: "How can you own land? How can you own a piece of the Mother Earth?"
As a matter of fact, your last point is interesting. My father greatly disliked Franklin Roosevelt for many reasons. One of them was that under Roosevelt the structure of the US was changed. As my father put it, prior to some laws passed by Roosevelt when one owned a piece of property, you were sovereign - there were very few, limited cases that allowed the government to use it or take it. But under Roosevelt the government was basically turned into a corporation, and all land became the property of the government. When you 'bought a piece of land', all you were buying is a temporary right to occupy it and manage it within certain constraints. - just as you say.
As someone becoming active in projects related to space development, I'm thinking that some form of international regulatory body will be constructed (by demand of those working in the area more than anyone else), that does provide some form of mining/occupation rights for limited times based on continued use. We do have lots of precedent on Earth, based on international boundaries law, mining law, and maritime law. For example by law if a marine vessel is in distress, all vessels (of whatever size) within a reasonable distance are required by maritime law to provide assistance. That is one reason (in addition to pure niceness and fellow-sailor regard) that you'll hear of a 600 foot container ship detouring 50 miles and spending 1/2 day saving a couple of blokes on a sailboat in the middle of nowhere. I think you'll see equivalent laws, or legal precedents from Earth being applied, in similar circumstances.
However I expect/hope that the Space law will also include reasonable attempts at not messing things up too badly. The present legal situation with regard to space junk is improving, but there's a long way to go. Legally each nation and company is liable for damage caused by their vehicle or parts thereof. But until just a few years ago there was no mandate for each satellite to incorporate a mechanism for it to be de-orbited safely, so a lot of old junk up there will be in the way for many years.
There needs to be something in between these extremes, like "stake your claim, but if you don't actively use it within 5 years, you lose it". Or, "stake your claim, but you must rent it for a reasonable rate".
This is more or less how mining claims in the US were originally (are?) handled. If you didn't do some actual mining within a certain time, the claim reverted to the feds. Also, I believe US offshore oil leases are presently handled that way as well.
I heard that a big oil lease in the Gulf of Mexico is problematical for this reason. The company that bought the lease did it with borrowed money, expecting to be drilling and pumping within two years. But after the BP disaster all deepwater drilling was blocked by the US Gov't moratorium. Meanwhile the company's loan was costing them something like $100 million per year in interest, which they were forced to pay each year out of the principal. And now the lease is about to expire, and they don't have the money to start drilling. All they have to do is start, and the lease is continued. But their attempt at getting another loan to start drilling failed, and they are now going into bankruptcy. The first line of secured lenders are looking at getting 25% on their money, the second line will be getting something, the shareholders will get zipadeedoodah.
My thinking was that water, while being useful both for various biological needs and possibly for use by the ion thrusters, in enough thickness (as either ice or water) is a reasonably good medium for blocking all that stuff coming at you as you travel at 1/4 light speed through gravel-infested space. It can be used for cooling motors and heating other machinery or living space, etc. So it's more useful than just having the same mass of lead or rock in front of you for protection.
The key thing is this: when traveling at 1/10 light speed (30,000 km/sec), somehow one has to deal with any object that is likely to encroach on the vehicle. I'm assuming that one just lets anything small hit the 'bumper' up front like a bug on the windshield. I'm not sure what 'small' means in this case, but the longer and more massive the bumper is, the bigger 'small' can be. Then one has to have a way to either disintegrate or avoid anything bigger. That means something like really powerful laser and/or radar 'headlights' that can provide enough light far enough ahead and widely enough to cover the cone of probable encroachment and make such targets visible in enough time to do something. Since the light itself is only going about the same multiple of one's speed as the speed of sound relative to a car on the freeway, it's an interesting problem - can we see something far enough ahead? Can we turn in time? What is the acceleration effect of changing course by 100 meters over a 3000 km distance, at 30,000 km/sec? I'm too lazy to figure it out.
Yep, that's what I read back then. I don't know if it's true, of course. Let's say there were 100,000 TV stations worldwide, broadcasting at 2 MW each (power allowed varied from 300KW to 5MW - I'm just picking a number in the middle). That's 2GW (2*10^9 W) effective radiated power. The Sun puts out about 3.8 * 10^26 W but that's at all frequencies. I'm too lazy to figure out the fraction that amounts to the TV bands.
Going any significant fraction of lightspeed starts to involve problems with the stuff you're travelling through - at higher speeds it's essentially like standing in front of a particle accelerator, but even at lower speeds there is both drag that results from the one atom per cubic meter, and impact damage from everything bigger. So various ideas which amount to 'put a big mass in the front of the vehicle', like an ice ball or a chunck of rock, make sense. But there's also the significant probability of running into something 'big' - like tennis ball sized. At 30,000 km/s it's going to leave a mark. So you need some way of seeing those things soon enough to deal with them by avoidance (changing course), destruction (zapping them), or moving them (??).
So, to minimize frontal area and provide the distance from front to back to make it possible for those effects to be dissipated, you might have a needle ship, composed of a mile or so of 10 meter-diameter rock, followed by another mile or so of 10-meter-diameter water, followed by some big-ass lasers, followed by a 10-meter diameter actual vehicle cabin (how long?), followed by the rest of the vehicle
And something I've never seen addressed is the prospect that the interstellar medium must have currents - those particles are moving, and there are probably eddys and currents. So I suspect that at those speeds there may be enough of an effect to cause what amounts to a bumpy ride - much like an airplane has to deal with air currents. I haven't done the math but it's something to be considered. Imagine living on a vehicle where you're never more than five meters from the center axis, that's constantly jiggling like a bad airplane ride, and the living space is 10 meters wide and a mile long - for 40 years.
1/2 right. IIRC the rotational ('centrifugal') effect is negligible compared to gravity unless it's really spinning fast. The force is represented as mv^2/r, where m is the mass of a person or whatnot, v is the angular velocity in meters/second, and r is the radius. If the radius is 2*Earth and the rotation speed is the same, then the surface velocity is roughly 80,000 km/day or 1 km/second. So for a 100 kg person (let's assume they're wearing a space suit), we have 100 kg * (1000 m/s) * (1000 m/s) / 8000000 m = 100000000/8000000 = 12.5 kg m/s/s = 12.5 Newtons. The surface gravity for that person would be (roughly) 100 kg * 10 m/s/s = 1000 kg m/s/s = 1000 Newtons.
OTOH we can be seen as the expression of life on this planet, generating a form (us) that allows the great superorganism that constitutes Terran life to be propagated outward and onward. For wherever 'we' go, we will bring the rest of Terran life with us. We are the mechanism for continued growth of Life beyond its present boundaries.
I think the parent is off by two orders of magnitude. I looks to me like 11 billion miles is 0.00187122571 light years. It sez here that Voyager is now travelling about 13 km/sec or 8 mi/sec, which is 0.00004 times the speed of light. Nevertheless, I think it's within the realm of the possible to build a probe, today, that could be accelerated to 1% of light speed - 3,000 km per second (about 250 times the speed of Voyager). That would make it to Tau Ceti in 1200 years. That's not an excessively long time for a project embarked upon by a global civilization. In the middle ages the Europeans built dozens or hundreds of cathedrals, many of which required more than 100 years to complete. Can we build electronics and machinery that last that long in space? An interesting question.
Consider that many plants and animals (not to mention slime molds and other entities) build spores or capsules of various sorts that allow their seed to last for hundreds of generations, floating on the air or in the water or just buried underground, waiting for the right conditions.
Don't feel too badly, you were on the right track. IIRC clear back in the 1970s it was determined that at TV frequencies the Earth was the brightest (known) object in the galaxy.
I vaguely recall that Guatemala considers Belize to be a province of Guatemala, stolen by the British. They have made threatening remarks about walking in and taking it back. I could be off base though.
I am informed by the Official UPC Representative to the Sol Neighborhood Association, that the United Planets Committees take a dim view of misrepresenting their identity. Your house will be zapped from space shortly. Fortunately, 'shortly' has a poorly defined time scale, so you probably have time to move - or perhaps grow old and die. Or else it already happened. These things are difficult to plan, what with dilation, the two-dimensional 'square root of time' thing (but of course Terrans haven't figured that out yet - oops!), etc.
As an advocate for humanity to carry Terran life to the rest of the solar system and interstellar seeding, I'll just note that, technically, that would not be rape, but foraging.:)
- disregarding any potential for intimate interspecies relationships, of course.
Yes. That's why I'm a sort of optimist in the long run. I think that economic and political systems both tend to converge toward diverse, 'free' ecosystems with a rich distribution of entity 'sizes'. Monopolies in either power or money require ever-increasing amounts of energy to maintain, as the system always wants to coast 'downhill' on the energy cost surface. (The same is true of 'flat' systems - wheat fields are not efficient from this point of view, as weeds tend to grow and return the field to the natural state). However when I say 'optimist', I can't say what the system looks like at the end - it does all depend on the environment.
The larger point I guess is complex systems once they reach certain scale are just hard to administer....by humans.
Yes. Which is why polities and economies are best looked at as 'complex adaptive systems' - living systems, that need to be managed as organic systems (gardens, or ecosystems) - management of an ecosystem involves adjusting the environmental parameters in such a way that the system converges toward an optimum of both energy and adaptability - some folks have argued for life being at 'the edge of chaos' (there's a good book by that title.)
Most large corporations today are basically run as something between tinpot dictatorships and state-run economies - while they argue for free enterprise outside their walls, the run something closer to Leninism inside. Thus HP.
Slashdot Mirror
Or I may win enough in a lotto drawing to order a Falcon Heavy launch from Space X. Your pick.
This is irrelevant, but this line got me thinking. You are actually in the ballpark. Imagine that - space technology has gotten to the point where Joe Shmoe from Poughkeepsie could buy a lottery ticket, and a few weeks later start getting prepped for a trip into orbit on his own Falcon. Has anyone drunk a beer in space?
It would be even better if there was a way for many different people to add information, make corrections, discuss the implications, and point others to places that contain additional resources.
Good point. I had forgotten. There are several treaties about space, and I believe the one that says "No nation can claim any part of the moon" was signed by the US. ... Ahh, here it is. The Outer Space Treaty, signed initially in 1967 by US, UK and USSR and over 100 countries since then, is described in Wikipedia as follows. So the interesting question is whether a private party is under the same restrictions by dint of being a subsidiary entity to a nation. The language in the last paragraph cited could be interpreted to mean that a private entity or its equipment or facilities outside the Earth's gravitational well are not subject to any nation's sovereignty.
The Outer Space Treaty represents the basic legal framework of international space law. Among its principles, it bars States Parties to the Treaty from placing nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in orbit of Earth, installing them on the Moon or any other celestial body, or to otherwise station them in outer space. It exclusively limits the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes and expressly prohibits their use for testing weapons of any kind, conducting military maneuvers, or establishing military bases, installations, and fortifications (Art.IV). However, the Treaty does not prohibit the placement of conventional weapons in orbit. The treaty also states that the exploration of outer space shall be done to benefit all countries and shall be free for exploration and use by all the States.
The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet, claiming that they are the Common heritage of mankind.[2] Art. II of the Treaty states that "outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means". However, the State that launches a space object retains jurisdiction and control over that object.[3] The State is also liable for damages caused by their space object and must avoid contaminating space and celestial bodies.[4]
Yes, but it's not a flag of claiming - under the Moon Treaties, no nation can claim any part of the moon. OTOH, there is no language regarding private parties - that's where the legal work needs to be done.
I think we have a window of opportunity - a fairly long one. Most companies prefer to work in a predictable, safe environment (not counting the inherent dangers). The days of the East India Company having their own army and navy are past. That's a very expensive way to operate. Both nations and companies operated that way largely because there was little or no legal structure. Today we have a large body of law, treaties and legal precedent such as maritime law, much of which can be extended into space largely by United Nations agreement, so every nation can require every private entity based in that nation to operate according to its laws, which are derived from the UN treaties. There are many significant holes, and there's a lot of work going on in this area, but I think we've all gotten a lot more 'civilized' about this stuff, so I'm hopeful.
The Greeks were into knowledge as an abstract, and weren't much interested in mining or colonization. Had they been a bit more practical, they might have developed electricity, steam power and much more 2000+ years earlier, and we might already be living on the Moon.
Nope - according to the Moon Treaties, no nation may lay claim to any part of the Moon. But there is no language, or precedent, applying to private entities. I.e., nobody knows. This is a huge area of concern for everyone involved in space development. One fairly obvious outcome, should this not be resolved soon, will be "first come, first served - who's going to stop me?" And shortly thereafter, declarations to the effect, "We hereby declare the area of Tycho Brache to be sovereign territory." And then the wars. Hopefully a legal structure will be agreed before we get that far - that's essentially what happened in the European colonial period, but over five centuries a large body of treaties, laws and legal precedents were worked out that should be useful as a prototype.
A valid question, with an interesting non-answer. IIRC according to the Moon Treaties, no nation may lay claim to any part of the Moon. But there is no language in the treaty regarding private claims. It is not certain that there is any legal connection between a private entity and a nation, especially these days when a corporation may have branches in 100 countries. So at this time nobody can say whether a private claim on the Moon would be legally sound. (Which effectively means, "first come, first served - try and stop me!") This is one of many areas of uncertainty today that are concerning everyone involved in space development.
I'm not sure how this is relevant, but I'm reminded of the quote by (supposedly) Chief Crazy Horse: "How can you own land? How can you own a piece of the Mother Earth?"
As a matter of fact, your last point is interesting. My father greatly disliked Franklin Roosevelt for many reasons. One of them was that under Roosevelt the structure of the US was changed. As my father put it, prior to some laws passed by Roosevelt when one owned a piece of property, you were sovereign - there were very few, limited cases that allowed the government to use it or take it. But under Roosevelt the government was basically turned into a corporation, and all land became the property of the government. When you 'bought a piece of land', all you were buying is a temporary right to occupy it and manage it within certain constraints. - just as you say.
As someone becoming active in projects related to space development, I'm thinking that some form of international regulatory body will be constructed (by demand of those working in the area more than anyone else), that does provide some form of mining/occupation rights for limited times based on continued use. We do have lots of precedent on Earth, based on international boundaries law, mining law, and maritime law. For example by law if a marine vessel is in distress, all vessels (of whatever size) within a reasonable distance are required by maritime law to provide assistance. That is one reason (in addition to pure niceness and fellow-sailor regard) that you'll hear of a 600 foot container ship detouring 50 miles and spending 1/2 day saving a couple of blokes on a sailboat in the middle of nowhere. I think you'll see equivalent laws, or legal precedents from Earth being applied, in similar circumstances.
However I expect/hope that the Space law will also include reasonable attempts at not messing things up too badly. The present legal situation with regard to space junk is improving, but there's a long way to go. Legally each nation and company is liable for damage caused by their vehicle or parts thereof. But until just a few years ago there was no mandate for each satellite to incorporate a mechanism for it to be de-orbited safely, so a lot of old junk up there will be in the way for many years.
There needs to be something in between these extremes, like "stake your claim, but if you don't actively use it within 5 years, you lose it". Or, "stake your claim, but you must rent it for a reasonable rate".
This is more or less how mining claims in the US were originally (are?) handled. If you didn't do some actual mining within a certain time, the claim reverted to the feds. Also, I believe US offshore oil leases are presently handled that way as well.
I heard that a big oil lease in the Gulf of Mexico is problematical for this reason. The company that bought the lease did it with borrowed money, expecting to be drilling and pumping within two years. But after the BP disaster all deepwater drilling was blocked by the US Gov't moratorium. Meanwhile the company's loan was costing them something like $100 million per year in interest, which they were forced to pay each year out of the principal. And now the lease is about to expire, and they don't have the money to start drilling. All they have to do is start, and the lease is continued. But their attempt at getting another loan to start drilling failed, and they are now going into bankruptcy. The first line of secured lenders are looking at getting 25% on their money, the second line will be getting something, the shareholders will get zipadeedoodah.
Too bad domain names aren't the same way!
My thinking was that water, while being useful both for various biological needs and possibly for use by the ion thrusters, in enough thickness (as either ice or water) is a reasonably good medium for blocking all that stuff coming at you as you travel at 1/4 light speed through gravel-infested space. It can be used for cooling motors and heating other machinery or living space, etc. So it's more useful than just having the same mass of lead or rock in front of you for protection.
The key thing is this: when traveling at 1/10 light speed (30,000 km/sec), somehow one has to deal with any object that is likely to encroach on the vehicle. I'm assuming that one just lets anything small hit the 'bumper' up front like a bug on the windshield. I'm not sure what 'small' means in this case, but the longer and more massive the bumper is, the bigger 'small' can be. Then one has to have a way to either disintegrate or avoid anything bigger. That means something like really powerful laser and/or radar 'headlights' that can provide enough light far enough ahead and widely enough to cover the cone of probable encroachment and make such targets visible in enough time to do something. Since the light itself is only going about the same multiple of one's speed as the speed of sound relative to a car on the freeway, it's an interesting problem - can we see something far enough ahead? Can we turn in time? What is the acceleration effect of changing course by 100 meters over a 3000 km distance, at 30,000 km/sec? I'm too lazy to figure it out.
Yep, that's what I read back then. I don't know if it's true, of course. Let's say there were 100,000 TV stations worldwide, broadcasting at 2 MW each (power allowed varied from 300KW to 5MW - I'm just picking a number in the middle). That's 2GW (2*10^9 W) effective radiated power. The Sun puts out about 3.8 * 10^26 W but that's at all frequencies. I'm too lazy to figure out the fraction that amounts to the TV bands.
Going any significant fraction of lightspeed starts to involve problems with the stuff you're travelling through - at higher speeds it's essentially like standing in front of a particle accelerator, but even at lower speeds there is both drag that results from the one atom per cubic meter, and impact damage from everything bigger. So various ideas which amount to 'put a big mass in the front of the vehicle', like an ice ball or a chunck of rock, make sense. But there's also the significant probability of running into something 'big' - like tennis ball sized. At 30,000 km/s it's going to leave a mark. So you need some way of seeing those things soon enough to deal with them by avoidance (changing course), destruction (zapping them), or moving them (??).
So, to minimize frontal area and provide the distance from front to back to make it possible for those effects to be dissipated, you might have a needle ship, composed of a mile or so of 10 meter-diameter rock, followed by another mile or so of 10-meter-diameter water, followed by some big-ass lasers, followed by a 10-meter diameter actual vehicle cabin (how long?), followed by the rest of the vehicle
And something I've never seen addressed is the prospect that the interstellar medium must have currents - those particles are moving, and there are probably eddys and currents. So I suspect that at those speeds there may be enough of an effect to cause what amounts to a bumpy ride - much like an airplane has to deal with air currents. I haven't done the math but it's something to be considered. Imagine living on a vehicle where you're never more than five meters from the center axis, that's constantly jiggling like a bad airplane ride, and the living space is 10 meters wide and a mile long - for 40 years.
1/2 right. IIRC the rotational ('centrifugal') effect is negligible compared to gravity unless it's really spinning fast. The force is represented as mv^2/r, where m is the mass of a person or whatnot, v is the angular velocity in meters/second, and r is the radius. If the radius is 2*Earth and the rotation speed is the same, then the surface velocity is roughly 80,000 km/day or 1 km/second. So for a 100 kg person (let's assume they're wearing a space suit), we have 100 kg * (1000 m/s) * (1000 m/s) / 8000000 m = 100000000/8000000 = 12.5 kg m/s/s = 12.5 Newtons.
The surface gravity for that person would be (roughly) 100 kg * 10 m/s/s = 1000 kg m/s/s = 1000 Newtons.
That's assuming I did the math correctly. :P
OTOH we can be seen as the expression of life on this planet, generating a form (us) that allows the great superorganism that constitutes Terran life to be propagated outward and onward. For wherever 'we' go, we will bring the rest of Terran life with us. We are the mechanism for continued growth of Life beyond its present boundaries.
I think the parent is off by two orders of magnitude. I looks to me like 11 billion miles is 0.00187122571 light years. It sez here that Voyager is now travelling about 13 km/sec or 8 mi/sec, which is 0.00004 times the speed of light. Nevertheless, I think it's within the realm of the possible to build a probe, today, that could be accelerated to 1% of light speed - 3,000 km per second (about 250 times the speed of Voyager). That would make it to Tau Ceti in 1200 years. That's not an excessively long time for a project embarked upon by a global civilization. In the middle ages the Europeans built dozens or hundreds of cathedrals, many of which required more than 100 years to complete. Can we build electronics and machinery that last that long in space? An interesting question.
Consider that many plants and animals (not to mention slime molds and other entities) build spores or capsules of various sorts that allow their seed to last for hundreds of generations, floating on the air or in the water or just buried underground, waiting for the right conditions.
Don't feel too badly, you were on the right track. IIRC clear back in the 1970s it was determined that at TV frequencies the Earth was the brightest (known) object in the galaxy.
I vaguely recall that Guatemala considers Belize to be a province of Guatemala, stolen by the British. They have made threatening remarks about walking in and taking it back. I could be off base though.
I love that story. :D
Does that include resettling in another location, with new infrastructure? I might go for that.
United Plantes Comittees
I am informed by the Official UPC Representative to the Sol Neighborhood Association, that the United Planets Committees take a dim view of misrepresenting their identity. Your house will be zapped from space shortly. Fortunately, 'shortly' has a poorly defined time scale, so you probably have time to move - or perhaps grow old and die. Or else it already happened. These things are difficult to plan, what with dilation, the two-dimensional 'square root of time' thing (but of course Terrans haven't figured that out yet - oops!), etc.
...rape the planet for any resources too
As an advocate for humanity to carry Terran life to the rest of the solar system and interstellar seeding, I'll just note that, technically, that would not be rape, but foraging. :)
- disregarding any potential for intimate interspecies relationships, of course.
You're such an optimist! :D
Yes. That's why I'm a sort of optimist in the long run. I think that economic and political systems both tend to converge toward diverse, 'free' ecosystems with a rich distribution of entity 'sizes'. Monopolies in either power or money require ever-increasing amounts of energy to maintain, as the system always wants to coast 'downhill' on the energy cost surface. (The same is true of 'flat' systems - wheat fields are not efficient from this point of view, as weeds tend to grow and return the field to the natural state). However when I say 'optimist', I can't say what the system looks like at the end - it does all depend on the environment.
The larger point I guess is complex systems once they reach certain scale are just hard to administer....by humans.
Yes. Which is why polities and economies are best looked at as 'complex adaptive systems' - living systems, that need to be managed as organic systems (gardens, or ecosystems) - management of an ecosystem involves adjusting the environmental parameters in such a way that the system converges toward an optimum of both energy and adaptability - some folks have argued for life being at 'the edge of chaos' (there's a good book by that title.)
Most large corporations today are basically run as something between tinpot dictatorships and state-run economies - while they argue for free enterprise outside their walls, the run something closer to Leninism inside. Thus HP.