how dare ye
Can you convert these figures to tanks plz?
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Every day this government lives up to Wilde’s aphorism about knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.
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god almighty
Right, these clowns are saying that just because no State (aka nation) can have jurisdiction, that does not mean a company can’t have it.
I think from the UN’s point of view, a company that exercises the high and low justice over a physical area without being governed by some other nation’s laws, meets the qualifications for being a nation-state… but such a company might not be willing to sign the treaty.
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Take my love, take my land,
Take me where I cannot stand.
I don’t care, I’m still free,
You can’t take the sky from me.
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don’t be silly those kinds of things are only available for sale to nation-states
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States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities
ARTICLE I
The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.
considering treaties have the weight of constitutional amendments under our laws, Article 1 of the treaty seems to contradict the administration’s views.
additional edit: Man this treaty is pretty clear about how the Space Council chief is wrong
Article VI
… The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty. When activities are carried on in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, by an international organization, responsibility for compliance with this Treaty shall be borne both by the international organization and by the States Parties to the Treaty participating in such organization.
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Ancap space society here we come… only question is will you work for Weyland-Yutani or Tyrell Corporation
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There are still places on Earth that are uninhabitable without regular supplies from outside (the bottom of the ocean, Antartica), so what hope do we have of surviving in a vacuum weeks away from outside help?
I’m not saying it will never happen or that I don’t want it to, but if we can’t manage it everywhere on Earth then we can’t manage in space. I am honestly scared that Musk’s plans will leave a bunch of corpses on Mars and we will still be stuck on this planet in 100 years time because nobody else wants to try.
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with the level of technological prowess in visual effects these days, im not sure reality would even come into play. a thriving mars colony could be simulated via green screen, expensive cgi renders and actors, much like the movie The Martian, which seemed like barely-masked nasa propaganda from the get go
real dollars would be spent by citizens to ensure these actors survive
And let’s not forget the infinite human capacity for fucking up, which has only been exacerbated exponentially by this current administration.
Pipe dreams, indeed.
I fully expect that’s exactly what’s going to happen if he ever manages to launch; one catastrophic failure after another.
I don’t know that anyone else will be too scared to try afterward, but I do hope that anyone who makes an attempt studies Musk’s failures and learns from them.
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At this point, I am concerned that if anyone sets up permanent colonies offplanet, it’s going to resemble some corporate Bladerunner dystopia rather than Star Trek.
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Not with that attitude!
/s
Yeah, they’d be cheaper to colonize and they’d work even better as “backup plans” where people might be protected from cataclysms, too - having a bunch of water over your head is great shielding from gamma ray bursts, for instance.
I think that every time I hear about a proposed private Mars venture - if not Musk, it’ll be some other showman capitalist taking risks as a PR stunt (as they’re more likely to make a hasty, ill-planned visit to Mars before any government gets around to doing it right).
It’ll be Western railroad “company towns” writ large. The concept of company scrip will seem quaint when the moment-to-moment existence of everyone in the colony will entirely depend on some corporate-owned infrastructure and whatever safeguards they have protecting it. The company will entirely own and control everyone there in the most thorough way possible.
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This is especially disconcerting, because as soon as there are corpses on Mars, everyone & they momma is going to be scrambling to get them back.
I think this goes without saying. The Apollo astronauts had to check in with Earth every step of the way. All for their genuine safety, which was intertwined with project success.
A scenario where a space colony could become “free” in any manner remotely similar to the original American colonies is absurdly distant.
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I think you are greatly underestimating humans’ desire for adventure and exploration and being the first to do something. I’m not impressed with their safety record so far, but when they are done reinventing the wheel I’m sure things will get better, at which point sign me the hell up. It’s not like the Apollo program didn’t have ridonkulous safety problems, but good enough was good enough.
The Culture, in its history and its on-going form, is an expression of the idea that the nature of space itself determines the type of civilisations which will thrive there.
The thought processes of a tribe, a clan, a country or a nation-state are essentially two-dimensional, and the nature of their power depends on the same flatness. Territory is all-important; resources, living-space, lines of communication; all are determined by the nature of the plane (that the plane is in fact a sphere is irrelevant here); that surface, and the fact the species concerned are bound to it during their evolution, determines the mind-set of a ground-living species. The mind-set of an aquatic or avian species is, of course, rather different.
Essentially, the contention is that our currently dominant power systems cannot long survive in space; beyond a certain technological level a degree of anarchy is arguably inevitable and anyway preferable.
To survive in space, ships/habitats must be self-sufficient, or very nearly so; the hold of the state (or the corporation) over them therefore becomes tenuous if the desires of the inhabitants conflict significantly with the requirements of the controlling body. On a planet, enclaves can be surrounded, besieged, attacked; the superior forces of a state or corporation - hereafter referred to as hegemonies - will tend to prevail. In space, a break-away movement will be far more difficult to control, especially if significant parts of it are based on ships or mobile habitats. The hostile nature of the vacuum and the technological complexity of life support mechanisms will make such systems vulnerable to outright attack, but that, of course, would risk the total destruction of the ship/habitat, so denying its future economic contribution to whatever entity was attempting to control it.
Outright destruction of rebellious ships or habitats - pour encouragez les autres - of course remains an option for the controlling power, but all the usual rules of uprising realpolitik still apply, especially that concerning the peculiar dialectic of dissent which - simply stated - dictates that in all but the most dedicatedly repressive hegemonies, if in a sizable population there are one hundred rebels, all of whom are then rounded up and killed, the number of rebels present at the end of the day is not zero, and not even one hundred, but two hundred or three hundred or more; an equation based on human nature which seems often to baffle the military and political mind. Rebellion, then (once space-going and space-living become commonplace), becomes easier than it might be on the surface of a planet.
A Few notes on The Culture
Iain M Banks
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Warfare in space = disabling or hijacking your opponent’s satellites. And, of course, dropping rocks.
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