Mars Needs Lawyers... already.

Mining & Minerals - Evaluations / Off-World Exploration, Mining, & Technology

Date posted: 03/04/17

Koerth-Baker blogs that the treaties that govern space allow private individuals and corporations to travel the stars, but only with the licensure and legal backing of an earthbound government. It is similar that way to the laws of the sea. And today, on Earth oceans, more than 11% of all the tons of freight shipped is carried on boats that fly the Liberian flag. In exchange for lower taxes and looser regulations, both the shipping companies of the present and the Martian explorers of tomorrow could pay to register their vessel with a small country they have no other connection to and carry its flag (and laws) with them, wherever they go. We may slip the surly bonds of Earth, but we will not escape the knots tied by Earth law and politics. Nobody knows what the geopolitics of Mars might someday be like. The experts I spoke with took pains to point out that SpaceX founder Elon Musk dream of humans on the Martian surface by the 2020s is a tiny bit of a stretch goal, so guessing about the laws they will live under is even more tenuous. But the governance of space has always been affected by the governance of Earth. The Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, for instance, was the political driver behind the race for the moon and set the stage for the 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, which is still our primary legal document outlining the rules for space. That multinational tree fort, and the decision to invite the Russians inside, really changed the balance of power in space, Lambright told me, but not necessarily in the U.S. favor. The very creation of the ISS required multinational technology transfer negotiations that allowed the countries involved then-unprecedented access to and sharing of technology and research data.