If in the next few decades Elon Musk’s dream of founding a colony on Mars comes to pass, what will be it’s legal status? Since the 1967 Outer Space Treaty forbids nationalization of bodies in outer space, will such a colony be de jure independent from any Earth government? Can any government, USA for example, demand that the colony be established under some sort of charter giving that government jurisdiction over the colony and its inhabitants. If the colonists refuse, can the government refuse to allow the earthside part of the colonization effort to operate on national territory?
OST was agreed to in 67, So Elons lawyers say its a science station and just keep sending scientists and sooner or later, you have a population in excess of what can be reasonably evacuated. So at this point, New York can whine all they like but until Mars can produce what it needs without needing to import, its just a science station on a tether.
Regards your question about American involvement, if you get a shit load of Americans in one location, your gonna have govt regardless. Thats that We the People thing, and i can guess that it wont be so much as a colony, as a protectorate.
I would imagine it would depend on the size of the colony. If the Mars colony is tiny, and heavily dependent on Earth (in the same way that astronauts at the ISS are essentially 100% dependent on Earth assistance for food, supplies, etc.), then they wouldn’t be an independent nation any more than the ISS is a nation-state.
On the other hand, if we have 1,000 Mars colonists and the colony is entirely self-sufficient and has no need for Earth, then it by all de facto standards is its own nation, all the more so considering that Mars is so vastly further away from Earth than the ISS is.
Or more realistically, can have its earthside agents buy anything needed on the open market and ship it from wherever on Earth allows a Starship port to operate. So I guess the question is, do the colonists need either de jure or de facto to align with a government on Earth, and if they don’t will they nonetheless be compelled to?
Even if such a colony were under the control of the U.S. government, given the immense distance, the colony commander (or whatever his/her title is) would probably be granted near-total dictator powers, like a navy submarine commander or a captain of an aircraft or ship. Or some colony council - either way, there’s just about no meaningful governance the U.S. government (or United Nations) could exert. The practicality calls for 99% of the power to be in the hands of the immediately-local Martian government.
Since a Mars colony will never be 100% self-sufficient, there will always have to be trade with Earth, and that gives Earth governments leverage, which you can bet they will use to assert at least some kind of authority.
But here’s a real problem: Let’s say Musk starts sending people to Mars. Each one of them needs a constant supply of food, medicine, tools, etc. Shipping to Mars will never be cheap. Who is going to pay for it? SpaceX? What if SpaceX goes bankrupt? Do those people just die?
Here’s what I could see happening: Musk sends 100 people to Mars. Suddenly, SpaceX is on the hook for $100 million per year to support them. Doe Musk send another 100? And keep doing it until there are 10,000 people there? That would bankrupt them, and 10,000 is not nearly enough for a self-sustaining colony.
It’s a serious bootstrapping problem. To be able to self-sustain a technological society capable of manufacturing everything needed locally, you need millions of people. And if anywhere along the way the company that supports them goes bankrupt, someone will have to make the decision to either get them home somehow, or take over sustaining them.
For that reason, I suspect that before Musk sends his first 100 people, he’s going to have to answer very hard questions about sustainability, or he won’t even get a launch license.
This is why it’s stupid to try to force a colony to exist. Colonies have to grow organically based on need and profit. Where is the best place in the solar system to colonize? The answer is, "Wherever there is a need for a lot of people to sustain a profitable industry.’. Since we haven’t identified a single product or service that would be profitable to make or harvest on Mars and ship to Earth for sale, Mars is currently significantly worse than the Moon, Earth orbit or the asteroids as the site for the first off-earth colony of people.
Musk could build a McMurdo-style station on Mars, and make money by selling space in it to governments for research or exploration. Keep it small enough (say, 50-500 people), so that if the will to maintain it fades the people could be brought back to Earth on a few Starship flights. Have the clients pay an annual contract fee to maintain the base.
Then maybe, just maybe, once significant people are there and start exploring they will find reasons to bring more people. And maybe an actual colony will begin to form. But the shape it takes and what it does and how big it gets will depend on the needs of the people there as they discover them, and will not be pre-determined by some fancy colonization plan drawn up on Earth in advance.
Argentina has a successful forced colony in Antarctica, not organically grown nor based on need or profit. Even having children birthed there.
True, but the cost of a colony on Mars is orders and orders of magnitude costlier than any scientific outpost/colony in Antarctica.
AIUI, the general plan is to send a small number of people first to establish the fuel production plant. Then once Starships can be refueled for the return trip, expand as able. I presume that expansion will only go ahead as long as the funds are there and the ongoing cash flow looks favorable for the foreseeable future. As the infrastructure on Mars expands, the amount of materiel that needs to be shipped in grows more slowly than the population; for example, near-total self-sufficiency for food. If it does all go belly-up, my guess is that the funds/ equipment/ resources that would have been dedicated to expanding and bringing in more people would be diverted to an evacuation.
Based on an analysis of several thousand years of exploration and colonization here on Earth, I predict that a hundred years from now, the situation will be vastly different from our current expectations. And so will the solutions.
I only wish I could be around to see it. 
Amen. I’m going to miss SO MUCH! 
We talking terrestial law or martian law here?
Any Martian colony or viceroyalty will be quite dependent on Earth, but not necessarily directly. First, establish a big orbital “Science Station” that inexorably grows. Colonize Mars from SS Valhalla, a logical transfer point. Now declare Valhalla’s independence; Emperor Elon I reigns benignly and sends his clone as viceroy.
After a few years in 0.38G, nobody will be evacuated unless they’d exercised in a centrifuge their whole time there, or unless major biological tricks are learned by then. Otherwise they’ll spend much of their return-to-Earth lives in Walmart power-chairs.
Better to have a non-returnable Lunar colony (0.17G) as their refuge where they’ll all be super-strong again - like on Mars in their early years. Thus Mr Musk should start a Lunar colony for Earth-haters or desperate fugitives before ascending his throne. Earth nations cannot claim Luna but Valhalla Space Empire can.
Wouldnt any space colony be under the UN’s jurisdiction? that’s the way popular media always portrayed it mostly (with exceptions)
it will be something like the English colonies before the 1707 act created great Britain and the government took control by rescinding the original licensing/privatization agreements
it’ll be independent until a tragedy or incident or rebellion happens (in the colonies it was the witch trials which was the excuse for the crown to take control ))
The biggest benefit to going to space is escaping Earth’s gravity well. It is easier to swing out from orbit, grab an asteroid, process it, and come back to orbit than it is to enter orbit once. And even easier if you just hang out in the asteroid belt and sling materials into an Earth orbit after extracting and processing them rather than actually coming back with them.
We will have permanent habitation of low earth orbit before we live on Mars, and will likely have permanent habitation in orbit around Mars long before we permanently inhabit the surface too.
By the way you dont need a Mars colony with many thousands of people to be fully self sufficient. It should actually be easier to build a self sufficient orbital station than a surface base.
Most raw materials we would need are available in the asteroid belt, where we wouldnt have to waste ungodly amounts of fuel to reach orbit. Nitrogen which is needed for plant growth and which our own atmosphere uses for volume (though there are substitutes) would be hardest to get.
I don’t think that’s right. Massachusetts received its charter in 1691. The infamous witch trials there were in 1692-93. The British didn’t abrogate the Massachusetts charter until 1774 with the Massachusetts Government Act, which was in response to the Boston Tea Party, not the Salem Witch Trials. (There had also been a previous royal modification to the 1691 Charter, the Explanatory Charter of Massachusetts Bay in 1725, but that’s still over thirty years after the witch trials, and also just doesn’t seem to have had anything much to do with them.)
What SF work are you referencing?
AFAIK the UN doesn’t have jurisdiction over anything. It’s not a true government, despite the rather utopian treatment it’s given in fiction.
I hadn’t heard that the colonies had to renegotiate their legal status after the 1707 union. Weren’t most of them royal charters directly bestowed by the monarch?
None. I made that up all by myself. Emperor [del]Norton[/del] Musk didn’t prompt me.
SFers have hypothesized non-Terrestrial legality for many many decades. We’re merely spinning more thought-webs here. Might indeed makes right, or at least losers mostly don’t run things (US politics excepted) so expect any resolution to be forced.