Hi
How will spheres of influence be determined in space? No one own the moon. I presume countries will claim stakes in planets, moons and asteroids for mining purposes or for way stations. Who will decide on international rules to determine who owns what?
I look forward to your feedback.
Nobody knows. Once someone has laid claim to, for example, an asteroid, this will be hashed out. Parameters will include:
- What would the claimant like?
- What is everyone else willing to grant?
- What eventualities will they think of?
- What eventualities will be realistic?
Let’s say, for instance that Abcistan and Defistan have claimed an asteroid each and that their transport ships, in addition to their transport capacities, are able to launch facility destroying and unavoidable “rapid cargo deployment” events from different distances depending on their speed. They may then mutual agree to a limitation of “No foreign vessel shall be on a vector with ETA less than 10 hours without authorization.”
Or circumstances might be completely different, and different rules will be desirable or required.
Thank you naita. Very helpful.
There is the Outer Space Treaty, already signed by most countries, including the usual suspects.
Also, there are endless debates on whether the Treaty applies to private firms.
They’ll be determined in space the same way they are on Earth: Everyone will claim whatever they want, and will control whatever they can enforce against anyone who disagrees. And when it’s unclear who can enforce what against whom, it’ll be put to an empirical test.
This may not be an issue … there’s still some technological hurdles yet to be overcome before we can seriously think of mining in space … just look how difficult it was to bring back Moon rocks … there’s a cost/benefit ratio to bring back materials which, AFAIK, can be found on Earth as well …
I assumed with a point and radius just like the spheres here on earth.
What about optimum positioning of satellites? Do countries compete for optimum positioning? Do satellites from various countries interfere in each others’ signaling?
That’s the most scientific way of saying “war” that I have ever heard!
Well done.
Considering that spaceships, moon bases, etc. will be orders of magnitude more expensive than comparable earth equipment, I believe negotiation will precede attempts at empirical solutions. (empirical - hmmm… in which interpretation?)
Find a motherlode on the moon? I suppose you can’t stop someone from mining the other end 10 km away. Both bases are sitting ducks, so have an incentive to negotiate. Sounds like the law of the open range - anyone can graze, but you can’t chase away the other guy’s herd… and if he grazed there first and the grass is gone - sucks to be you. Go somewhere else. Too many of these scenarios playing out would quickly lead to a desire to negotiate an equitable division.
or else someone is the dominant authority and everyone else has to do what they say.
r[sub]SOI[/sub] ≈ a(m/M)[sup]2/5[/sup]
simples
Most the territory on the surface was sorted out by a long series of wars or credible presumptions of capacity to carry out threats thereof. I don’t know why space would be any different.
Possession is 9/10ths of the law. Whoever gets there first will have a strong claim.
Suppose Elon Musk gets to Mars and says "Ha Ha I am here on Mars and I claim the planet for myself. What are you (referring to the rest of the world) going to do?
Realistically, there would be very little the rest of the world could do about that without putting on a massive (and most likely) unproductive effort.
However,
As mentioned, it is very difficult to get to space and stay in there and realistically any countries would be working together on this.
Even in the space race, Russia offered any assistance it could provide to the troublesome Apollo 13 mission.
Also look at the ISS as well for cooperation.
I could be wrong but any country that can make it to space would also have the knowledge and the internal fortitude to assist other countries with any exploration or settlement.
I can’t help thinking that as on earth, we will be dividing up our galaxy into quadrants and as on earth, the more powerful nations will not allow too much independence for individual fiefdoms. You can own your own island on earth, but you’re going to pay taxes. (not sure how it would work out in international water) Owning a rock somewhere in the known galaxy will eventually end up in a larger area of influence, and more than likely subsumed into it. No one has mentioned science fiction. I wonder which sic-fi works have been a guide those thinking about this very topic.
Seizing the Earth-based resupply launch points would settle his hash in short order. There is no living on Mars or anywhere else in the solar system without some Earth-based resupply, with current tech levels. Musk is not going to be growing potatoes in his own shit, or not for very long, at any rate.
I humbly suggest that the Space Pope applies the fine principles embedded in theTreaty of Tordesillas [1494] in which a meridian of longitude was chosen to separate the mercantile interests of the Spanish, who claimed everything to its west, and the Portuguese who had it all to the east of the line.
Similarly the Space Pope could draw a line in 3 dimensional space with the Empire to take everything on the left and the Republic everything on the right.
I don’t possibly see how that could possibly go wrong, for anybody, anywhere, any time.
Because in that process we’ve also established a system of international agreements where actual wars or the capacity to carry out threats play less of a role. And because for the foreseeable future will be more like exploiting resources in international waters and doing research in Antarctica than it will be like claiming and keeping territories.
Chile, which claims the most temperate zones of Antarctica, includes its Antarctic region to be Chilean national territory, and denies the validity of treaties to the contrary. So far, the only thing stopping Chile from assuming its slice of Antarctica is the modesty of its military capacity to sustain a claim against international opposition. I believe Argentina has more or less done the same.
I am suspicious of the durability of any international treaties that are not enforceable by well-armed powers. Which, for the most part, are merely dancing with each other as long as there are no economic imperatives being brought to bear.
I seem to recall some science fiction story where a dude with access to super-tech of some sort commits a heinous crime and then flees to Mars, specifically because he wants to force the nations of Earth to develop the space travel capability to come after him and arrest him. I don’t remember the title or author, though.
Both Chile and Argentina, whose Antarctic claims overlap by the way, are signatories to the Antarctic treaty. So while they may claim to have territory there, it’s a paper claim that they’ve decided not to pursue.
What’s stopping the US, Russia and China from just grabbing a third each? What kind of international opposition could there realistically be? The point wasn’t that the military mights of superpowers don’t play a role, but that there are hard to reach territories without obvious rightful claimants on Earth already, and what we’ve done is made a multi-nation treaty to share for the foreseeable future.