The Battle for Mars: How Elon Musk, Blue Origin, and the US Could Build the First Alien Government

The moment when the first human sets foot on Mars is getting closer and closer. The distance of 140 million miles between Earth and the red planet will be exceeded in two decades, Nasa predicts.

Recently, the space agency announced plans for its Artemis lunar missions – due in 2024 – that could establish a lunar base on the moon as a stepping stone for the first planetary spacewalk.

For some, simply taking the first step on an alien planet, however, isn’t looking far enough into the future. Once a community is established on Mars, discussions will have to take place on how exactly it is governed and functions. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, is one of those people planning for such a future and already appears to be laying the groundwork for the terms of service of the company’s current products.

“For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via a spaceship or other spacecraft that colonizes, the Parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no government on Earth has authority or sovereignty over the activities of Mars”, states the section on law.

Accordingly, disputes will be resolved through self-governing principles established in good faith at the time of the settlement on Mars.

SpaceX did not respond to multiple attempts to get more information from The independent, but experts suggest that the addition of this segment could actually serve two purposes: the first is that it’s a joke; the second is that it lays the foundation for a Mars constitution – based on how tolerant existing space exploration laws really are.

The section Musk added is “a little ironic with his contracts … referring to this Martian constitution he’s about to draft,” said Randy Segal of Hogan Lovells law firm. “He is trying to include in his commercial terms … how you are going to comply with applicable law.”

The applicable law here is the 2020 Artemis Accords and the Outer Space Treaty of 1957 (which signatories to the Artemis Accords say they will adhere to). Under that legislation is the rule: “Space is not subject to national appropriation through claim to sovereignty, through use or occupation, or in any other way.” As a result, these treaties prevent space exploration from becoming a “land grab,” as Segal describes it.

However, the regulations are generally “ motherhood and apple pie, ” says Segal – an American phrase that means something that no reasonable person can disagree with, like the transparency, interoperability, and emergency response provisions related to space exploration.

“The whole space law means that those of us on this planet share the rights and responsibility to make space something that we can all share together,” said Segal.

In general, if a clause is illegal, you would read the rest of the contract as enforceable and single. He has added a section related to Mars services (which is not being delivered today, so has no effect), “but in five or 10 years” he may review his contract.

“I don’t know that apart from being humorous and anecdotally remarkable, a provision like this is something that does anything to the rest of the contract at all. He could try to build a foundation for offering an independent constitution … just like he did for electric cars and reusable launch vehicles. Does it have precedent or is it enforceable? The answer I would say is clearly no; but if you say something enough, people might come by. “

While Musk’s contracts may not be legally strong (or “nonsense,” as one professor considered them), they are likely to start a conversation about how lawmakers should proceed when planning a Mars constitution. This is something SpaceX’s general counsel, David Anderman, is seemingly already investigating.

“Our goal is to be able to send 1,000 starships with 100 people in them every two years,” Anderman said, according to Business Insider.

‘We start with 100, then a few hundred, then 100,000 and then a million until we have a truly sustainable colony. It will happen in my lifetime. Faster than you think. ‘

He also said he expected SpaceX to “impose our own legal regime,” but it would be “interesting to see how things turn out with terrestrial governments exercising control.” Anderman did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The independent before publication.

While colonization may be the way SpaceX and other companies think about alien exploration, Musk is legally more likely to create a community than a colony, given that he would still be under US administration.

“A community is a group of people with common interests and characteristics. Colony is a legal term applied to territory under the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the colonizing state, ”said Professor Sa’id Mosteshar, director of the London Institute of Space Policy and Law. The independent.

If SpaceX or Musk were to create a community on Mars right now, its activity would be under the administration of the United States. However, legislators in the future may see the need for a constitution that governs all of Mars, rather than splitting laws into geographic jurisdictions as they do now.

Exactly how that would turn out remains to be seen. In 2016, Musk said his intentions for a Mars government would be a direct democracy, where people vote on the issues themselves rather than through politicians under representative democracies, as we do now.

So it would be people who vote directly on issues. And I think that’s probably better, because the potential for corruption is substantially reduced in a direct versus a representative democracy.

“I think I would recommend that an amendment for the slowness of laws would be sensible. It should probably be easier to remove a law than to create one,” Musk also said. “I think that’s probably a good thing because laws have an infinite life unless they’re taken away.”

The benefits and pitfalls of such a system, like many government systems on Earth, are many, and experts suggest that it is more likely that the most favorable Mars government will be one ultimately decided on Mars itself.

Like SpaceX, other space-faring competitors, such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, will likely explore similar proposals as well – albeit in a “ somewhat more coherent and logical orbit than SpaceX, ” says Professor Von der Dunk, an aerospace expert at Nebraska College of Law. The independent.

“It is very appropriate to think about how to deal with the certainty that conflicts arise that require a legal solution. Ultimately, of course, both SpaceX and all other companies can only go that far, ”he said, adding that while companies set the agenda, it is ultimately up to governments to decide whether or not to take over.

Blue Origin’s intentions for the Mars administration remain unknown. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has made a few allusions to his idea of ​​extraplanetary life, predicting an “incredible civilization” where a trillion people live in rural colonies, similar to the one hypothesized by physicist Gerard O’Neill.

‘They are not what you think. I mean, they’ll have farms and rivers and universities; they could have a million people in them. They are cities. But I would also like to be able to get back and forth to Earth, “Bezos said, but he is deliberately approaching space slower than Musk. Regarding legislation, Blue Origin told me. The independent that it wasn’t a subject it had talked about.

As for the future of those laws, the strange legal cases of the past may provide some guidance. It has already been suggested that a murder in the Arctic, where a lack of legal jurisdiction meant the killer was acquitted of all charges, could provide the basis for extraplanetary laws where jurisdiction on Earth cannot come.

There is a human impulse to create stability through the law, Anderson said The independent, and as such would result in a push for a framework that could be applied to the entire planet in a way that would not be possible on Earth due to geological and cultural boundaries.

Should Musk – or another space pioneer – look for favorable arrangements to ensure that the desired legislation is implemented, there are a number of routes available.

Provinces such as Luxembourg are already targeting the privatization of space, while others, such as New Zealand and the UAE, are both attractive for potential space launches due to their geographic location and tax benefits. While neither seems particularly likely to be home to the next SpaceX or Blue Origin launch site – given that both companies are deeply immersed in the US industrial ecosystem for spacecraft manufacturing – they do offer the potential for a distinctly un- American hegemony beyond our planet, Anderson presumes.

As for when the last, and arguably the most important question is when Mars could become self-sufficient with its own legal system, lawyers aren’t sure – but it’s likely that once the first community was established it would try to regulate itself fairly fast because of the difficulties of interplanetary communication.

“I have to rely on the real scientists, some claiming maybe 10 years, others more than a century or more,” says Professor von der Dunk. “I would probably put myself somewhere safe in the middle.”