Well, Watney points out that everywhere on Mars is technically international waters, with the exception of inside the HAB, MAV, and rovers. So I’m guessing Space is also IW, except inside the HERMES, which is, what? NASA is quasi-governmental. Are the ships privately owned by NASA, or owned by the US government?*
*This is why I Hate, hate, HATE! contracting with NASA. The Federal Acquisition Regulations don’t apply, except when they do, and only at the Contracting Officer’s discretion. Meaning, when it’s in NASA’s favor to claim them.
Nah, the crew on Hermes all have permission to be on the Hermes, which is a US vessel. They’re not pirates. Just Watney technically, and only for that last MAV. He has to board it and then contact Earth before he can be given official permission to board it.
Prosecution would be politically untenable in such a situation, when everyone actually comes home alive as heroes. Even if they broke the law, they would very quickly be pardoned, if any prosecution came forward anyway.
The Hermes is presumably owned by NASA, which is an agency that is part of the executive branch of the government. For legal and administrative purposes a spacecraft is assumed to be owned by the launching or controlling authority, and the laws of its host country apply to that authority including responsibility for damage or disposal, but it is unclear the degree to which those laws apply to actions by individuals which occur inside a spacecraft.
This is particularly confounding with the ISS because the modules are each considered to be “owned” by the country that maintains them, so if you interpret ownership as equivalent to legal authority (the way an consulte or naval vessel maintains legal authority within its confines) then the astronauts are constantly flitting from country to country with no controls and radically different laws. I’m sure there must be some parallel in some terrestrial multinational structure or system that exists outside international borders (e.g. Antarctic research stations) but I can’t think of one offhand.
There’s a line in 2010: The Year We Make Contact, during a flareup of Cold War tensions (yes, I know), the Soviet cosmonauts are ordered to leave the Discovery, which is considered “United States territory” (not just “property”). They comply.
In Allen Steele’s sf novel Clarke County, Space, a crewmember of a very large American space station in Earth orbit is appointed by radio a Special U.S. Marshal in order to arrest a bad guy who has made his way up there. (Something similar is done with U.S. personnel in Antarctica these days, IIRC).
Another barrier to prosecution, and a major one, was that in order to save face after the mutiny, NASA publicly claimed to have ordered the crew to use the Purnell maneuver.
Sorry for getting late to the party – went to see the movie the other day and I simply loved it!
Incidentally, regarding Vogel in the movie – check the first link in Elendil’s Heir post. Among the other information visible, it says that Vogel was born in “Künzelsau, Germany”.
Well, well, what a coincidence! There is an ESA German astronaut who has been to the ISS and happened to be born in Künzelsau as well.
Not only that, but the guy even looks a bit like the actor who portrayed Vogel! Don’t believe me? Check it out!
I think that there is no way that this is due to random chance
Now that I think about it, what I said was true only for the book. One of the things they cut out of the film was he accidentally fried the communications for good before setting off on his trip. So Nasa had no means to communicate with him. He would lay out messages with rocks from time to time, because he knew they were watching him by satellite. One of his adventures during the seven months the film skipped over was another dust storm he was heading into and they couldn’t warn him. (This one was a more realistic, slow-paced Martian dust storm that he didn’t even know he was in for several days. The danger was it affected his solar-cell-charging ability.) So he could not get permission to board the other MAV beforehand. Thus, he was a space pirate.
But he still had communication with Nasa during the trip in the film, didn’t he? So he would have had formal permission to board. What was his justification for being a pirate then? Remind me.
I don’t recall that.
I do know there were no G-d damn elephants. Martian Mammoths would have been cool.
Cold? They have long, woolly hair. Little water? They drink to forget.
You mean you don’t recall that from the book? He fried the communications for good while drilling all those holes in the roof of the one vehicle. And he good only send progress messages by spelling out words for the satellites with rocks. You did read the book? I said that was cut out of the film.
Odd that you would not remember that. He had this huge-ass drill, not a hand drill but one for piercing rock in the ground. Maybe jackhammer-size. IIRC, he lay it against the metal sheet he was using as a table, the drill was metal and connected to power, and Voila! fried communications. So he had absolutely no contact from Earth again until he reached the MAV, climbed in and activated the onboard communications system. But he knew the satellites were keeping an eye on him, so he would spell out messages with rocks along the way. That’s why he didn’t know about the new dust storm he was entering – Earth couldn’t warn him.
But that’s also the reason for my question. In the book, he was a space pirate because he would be entering and taking command of the MAV before receiving formal permission or orders to do so. But in the movie, it seemed he was still in contact with earth the whole time he was traveling. No communications fritz. So he did receive permission or orders. So again, now what was his reasoning that he was a space pirate?
I guess that sort of makes sense. But since the Purnell plan was by that time a fait accompli, Nasa would have accepted it and told Watney to enter the MAV, thereby granting permission or giving an order. It made much more sense in the book, where there was no way to communicate anything to him until after he had boarded. (They had, of course, told him of the Purnell plan before the communications fritz in the book, that’s why he was preparing for the journey, but they had not actually gotten around to telling him to enter the MAV, it was just a given that he would.) I’m trying to remember his exact explanation in the film.
