Yes pretty much, its hard to believe the aliens are peaceable if they are going to offer tech just to one nation that’s inevitably going to end up dominating the world from the competitive advantage it will give them. The result would be at best espionage on a massive scale as other countries try to steal the alien tech to keep up and at worst war with all the other countries of the world against the chosen one (share your tech with all of us or face annihilation).
The Netherlands, for their excellent habit of simply dealing with issues. Prostitution? Legalized, inspected, sanctioned. Pot? Knock yourself out. Gay marriage? First ones there. So independent that they have the International Court of Justice. Not known for starting shit.
Scotland - Friendly people - Multi culture already in place - tech savie locals - and they can get a few rounds of golf on the lay over.
When you get down to brass tacks, international relations is more about might than right. If any country gets its hands on the proverbial Golden Goose, every other country is going to want it.
The only country with any real hope of defending the spaceport is the US. We are more remotely located than anyone but Australia, there are no large military powers on our borders. We are large enough and wealthy enough to mount a defense that Switzerland or French Guiana cannot match.
In second place, I’d put China and Russia. If the EU carved out some land for a jointly operated spaceport nation that shared the technology, that would be a viable option too.
Frankly, the spaceport offer sounds like a way to guarantee World War III
make that any country with a credible multi faceted nuclear deterrent (triad). MAD has worked up to now, why wouldn’t it keep working? Even getting rid of Nuclear weapons do you really think the US could mount a successful land invasion of western China if a space port was there?
Luxembourg. I mean, it’s got to be good for something, right?
I would say Ecuador. Chimborazo is over 20,000 ft high and very close to the equator. It makes a good location for a linear accelerator.
If China was poised to take over the world using alien technology? They’d sure as hell try. Better to try now, before they get too powerful to stop.
The US has a very robust military, can project a significant force anywhere in the world, and China will also have to worry about Russia, India, and Japan just in their immediate neighborhood.
Another vote for Central Australia. Initially I was tempted to agree with the suggestion of Canada but then I remembered the wildly varying weather conditions of the area. A busy spaceport should be as stable as possible to eliminate problems. The infrastructure isn’t there NOW, but you can be damn sure it would show up toot sweet with such an incentive. Additionally, if some sort of issue were to occur that necessitated isolation, Australia is an island continent with low population density.
Actually, I think what I’d do as a nation would be this:
- I’d ask the aliens to verify that the tech they’re offering has minimal military application, explaining that what we’d do with the tech wouldn’t exactly conform to their pacifist standards.
- I’d ask whether they were offering blueprints or built tech, and if the former, how long it’d take to put it in action, and if the latter, how much.
- If what they’re offering would be sufficient for the winning country to immediately win a war (e.g., a time-stop device that allows the wielder to manipulate objects while time is stopped), and if they refused to limit the tech as suggested in point #1, I’d do everything possible to persuade the aliens to give it to me. I’d do this by persuading them that I wouldn’t use it to win a war except through nonlethal means.
- If they’re offering anything else, I’d work ASAP to build a coalition of nations that promise to immediately attack any nation who deals with the aliens on a unilateral basis. I hate scabs.
- I’d work then to try to establish a whole-world treaty on where to locate the base. Antarctica might work. Another option would be for a nation to formally and irrevocably relinquish part of its territory to be governed by the United Nations or by some other multinational body.
The US. We already have a spaceport here in New Mexico and we know that extraterrestrials enjoy coming here; it’s been a popular vacation spot for decades, especially the Roswell area. In fact, some of the crashed UFOs could be used for spare parts.
I think the US is off the list from the start – global warming denial is practically national policy, payment by “solving global warming” is going to be proclaimed as a bad deal.
But I agree with others that we don’t know enough. Do they want to play intergalactic tourists, or do they want the riffraff kept at a distance? Are they city kids, or would they prefer to be surrounded by open country and wildebeests?
Skald, you mention some kind of fuel supply for their ships. Earth’s surface would be a terrible location for refueling ships – they have to spend too much energy taking off and landing. In fact, the only reason to put a facility on Earth is to use resources they can’t get in space, which are – none, AFAIK.
Which means they are lying to us about their motives! And we must learn about them in order to detroy them before they destroy us.
I say we just give them Detroit – it already looks like it’s been nuked from orbit.
Okay so we’ve got a few considerations and since their technology is beyond ours I’m going to eliminate equatorial placement as one of them.
- Defense. I would actually argue against a country who can defend this on their own. If we want this to be a shared technology the host country shouldn’t have the ability to remove it from the world with their own armies, it should require a multinational force to defend it.
- Local population. I’m going to argue in favour of a fairly high population because you’re going to need a workforce, services and reasonable transport to and from the spaceport from anywhere in the world.
- Tolerance. Meh. The spaceport isn’t the only part of the world the aliens will see and while it would be nice if the spaceport area was safer than the rest of the world you don’t want the difference to be too dramatic. I think that starting in/near a fairly cosmopolitan city will be sufficient to meet this need.
- Multilingual. Assuming a lack of universal translators we’re going to need to pick up some alien language pretty quickly and a city where 2 or more languages are regularly used is going to have citizens who are more comfortable with that adjustment.
When I started this list I was going to argue for Canada (go home town team) or Switzerland (go neutral country!) but after looking at maps for a while I’m going to go with France. About halfway between Geneva and Lyon. Airports can be upgraded in both those cities and it will be less than an hour to each.
A multinational security force would need to be created and housed in the area, but again both Lyon and Geneva are under 60 mins away. With improved roads and a rail link that could be even faster.
I was going to mention that, although I think other countries are also planning spaceports.
Anyway, we already have some ideas for a space elevator, and it seems this ET spaceport would have similar requirements, although more land area. So an equatorial area it is.
One idea for a space elevator is to put it on a large floating platform that can be moved around as needed. These ETs can turn wormholes into stargates, so building, or commissioning the building of a large floating spaceport is pretty doable; it’s just a matter of money.
The US owns some equatorial islands. We could locate the port somewhere in that area, say somewhere around the United States Minor Outlying Islands
I say the US because like it or not, the govt. is fairly stable and it’s used to being more powerful and working with foreign super powers and assuaging their fears. With a few exceptions, most of the world is free to come visit the US and see for themselves we’re not up to anything too diabolical. I’d imagine the spaceport would be completely international with millions of visitors from all over the world (and galaxy I guess). I can’t see China or Russia working up enough fear to consider a preemptive strike of some kind, when they’re actively doing business there anyway.
I think the existence of humanoid aliens would give weight to the intelligent design branch of creationism.
The “fuel depot” bit, you’re probably right about: why not just put that in space?
But there could easily be some other reasons:
- Recreation. Maybe they want a vacation sot, and there’s nothing they love better than vacationing in smog-enriched cities.
- Research. They’re very interested in how other intelligent life-forms develop, both biologically and culturally.
- Creativity. Maybe we have some genre of art that they find simultaneously foreign and fascinating–maybe none of them can write fiction, for example. Or maybe the pace of human technological growth far outpaces their own, even though they’re a much more advanced tech-culture than we are, and they want to get some of our awesome scientists working at the cutting edge of their science.
- Food. Maybe we’re delicious. Or maybe they just really like The Cheesecake Factory.
I agree we need to know about them, but I don’t agree that the only interest they could have in Earth is in raw materials or death.
My main point is that there are no raw materials that they couldn’t find more easily and cheaper in space, including oxygen and water. So we have to wonder why they want a base on Earth’s surface.
As far the “us or them” destruction thing, that was mostly just for fun. 
Still, unless we (and by “we” I mean the advocates for particular countries) have a better idea of that the aliens really want on Earth, how can we attract them? Maybe they want someplace like in the middle of Calcutta, maybe they want someplace more isolated like Guam.
Given this ignorance, the best offer any country could make is, “Just pick any spot on the map of my country. We’ll move anyone who’s there off of it and bulldoze flat a 10 square mile area for you.”
Of course, EVERY government will claim they’re stable, will be good neighbors, etc., and claim the opposite for every other government they’re bidding against. So, the aliens will need to develop their own intelligence sources to separate the truth from the bullshit.
:mad: Well, stop it–this is SERIOUS BUSINESS!!!1!
I understand – when the aliens arrive they will read this thread and be pissed that I joked about going to war with them. So pissed, they will DESTROY us!
If we’re building a Space Elevator for this purpose, then it needs to be along the equator. I would vote for an island that could be built up as a neutral territory city/airport/sea port. We’ll have to rule out the Galapagos (conveniently on the equator) for cultural and ecological reasons. Sao Tome and Principe would be useful on this side of the planet for access from Europe and the Americas, but problematic from other standpoints. The Republic of Kiribati has a large number of islands spread across the equator region in the middle of the Pacific. One of them would probably be best suited as it would be relatively accessible to both Asia and the Americas.
So that’s it. We arrange for an Island in the Republic of Kiribati in the middle of the Pacific to be cut loose as an independent city/state/spaceport. The land mass is increased sufficiently to support the space elevator, an airport and a sea port and the necessary population to support all such enterprises.
Of course, chances are the UN would control it. I honestly don’t recommend that as it would be positively ludicrous on the face of it to watch the UN completely f-up our first spaceport with intolerable amounts of corruption and pure fail.