Who owns Mars?
It's a surprisingly big problem.
With the USA and China planning
to send humans by the 2030s
and with private company SpaceX
potentially sending them by 2026,
it's going to get pretty crowded up there.
You can even go online and buy a bit of Mars yourself.
I've got mine.
So who owns what up there?
And what happens if things get nasty?
I think we're going to need a space lawyer.
It's time to explore the unexplored.
Space law sounds like a fantasy job,
but it does kind of make sense.
Surely there must be some kind of rules and regulations.
Well, yes, and it started in 1957.
The US and the Soviets are in the midst
of a Cold War, they're sworn ideological enemies.
Suddenly, the Soviets launched Sputnik,
the first ever human activity in outer space.
It flies around the Earth a few times,
including directly over the US.
And that raised a whole bunch of new questions.
If an enemy vehicle enters your airspace,
then you can shoot it down.
But suddenly, people had to think about
where does airspace end and space begin?
The prospect of war in space was so frightening,
they decided to keep the war on terra firma.
To the surprise of the rest of the world,
they joined together and drafted
the Outer Space Treaty.
Finally, it's over to the space lawyer.
The most fundamental baseline principle
is found in Articles I and II combined,
which basically makes outer space into a kind of
a global commons, an international area
legally very similar to the high seas.
And no single state can act as if outer space
or part of Outer Space, or even part of the Moon
is part of the national territory.
It's basically open for all states
and freedom for states to be active there
is the bottom line.
The drafters of the Outer Space Treaty
were basically concerned with two elements, if you will.
One was the military use of outer space
and then the secondary subsidiary level about science.
The treaty didn't really discuss things
which we are confronted with today
as questions, at least theoretically,
like the settlement on the Moon
or human settlements on Mars.
So it's good that states are free to use space,
even if they weren't thinking about settlement.
But that wasn't the only thing
they weren't thinking about in 1957.
The treaty only refers to political states.
It doesn't even mention private companies.
So does that mean that the billionaires of the world
are exempt from the treaty?
One of the clear drawbacks looking back at
the Outer Space Treaty was the absence of any
detailed reference to the private sector.
So what you see in the Outer Space Treaty
is only one almost fleeting reference to
the private sector in the guise of what they call
non-governmental entities.
But at the same time,
it made sure that the state,
in this case the United States or any other state,
where those activities belonged to,
was the one being responsible.
And then Article VII followed that up with liability.
So not only you as the United States
will be responsible for them, for whatever they do,
and you will be liable for any damage they cause
by doing that.
So the United States
cannot dodge any international responsibility
just because SpaceX or Virgin Galactic
or Blue Origin does something in outer space.
OK, so I get that ultimately,
states are responsible
for what private entities do in space,
how they operate and any damages.
But what about the use of land on Mars?
We're planning on building habitats
and living on Mars.
Is that even allowed?
So we have to make a very fundamental
and important distinction between, on the one hand,
prohibition for any state to own part of Mars.
On the other hand, the freedom of outer space activity,
which is the other part of the global commons thing,
also means the freedom
of simply establishing a habitat,
putting space objects there,
which then serve as houses,
or probably even excavate minerals locally
and build a habitat from those minerals.
That all is, in principle, again allowed.
And of course, there is a tension
between those two because it is one thing
to be allowed to land somewhere,
to put people down somewhere,
maybe to have them live there for 25 or 30 years.
But at what point in time should we say,
wait a minute now, we are moving to something
which looks too much like a real colony,
which is prohibited by the Outer Space Treaty?
But again, that question has not been solved yet.
But it's not like here on Earth,
where if you break a treaty, we can physically take action.
Mars is over 300 million kilometres away,
so if the USA or Russia or China or a private company
starts breaking the rules up there,
wouldn't it be pretty hard to stop them?
Next question is then of course,
what happens if a private entity disregards
the international rules of space law?
Well, if that happens, then of course,
the first line is that the operator who goes
beyond the terms of the licence will be held
criminally liable under the laws of his own country.
It becomes a little bit more complicated
at the second level,
when we go to the international arena.
Either these states have to agree to a tribunal
or they have to sort things out on a diplomatic level.
And of course, then the reality
of the international community kicks in that
the bigger you are as a state,
the more you might get away with.
These are all crazy scenarios that could arise
in the future.
And talking of the future, many people see Mars as
a future second home for humanity.
But how would our laws on Earth work in space?
And if no country is allowed
to claim sovereignty over celestial bodies,
then how will it be governed if there are communities
and multiple generations of Martian people?
Well, of course, at some point in time,
certainly when they start living there,
knowing that they will never return to Earth,
when they probably get babies there who have
never been on Earth for any part of their life,
there will be a tendency for
those, quote-unquote, 'colonies',
I prefer to use the word 'settlements' actually,
to say, well,
'We don't want to be ruled by
this Earth-bound state anymore
because they have no idea what it means
to live on Mars and to be safe on Mars.
So we want to create our own legal regime.'
And sooner or later, that may actually become:
'We want to create our own state.'
I often compare this with the Pilgrim Fathers
who went to North America and then after, you know,
a number of years said, well,
'Why are we still paying taxes to the British king
in faraway London?
So it took a War of Independence before
the United Kingdom finally accepted, OK,
let them be on themselves,
let them be their own state.
I just hope that when that happens in space,
we are more peaceful as terrestrial states
in allowing those to go out on their own.
But that's still decades away, if not much further.
If my first chat with a space lawyer
has taught me anything, it is that
there is still a lot of grey area in space law.
If we want humans to play nice on Mars,
then we're going to have to answer
a lot of these unresolved questions.
And if you are silly enough to have fallen for
one of those bogus websites that claims
that you can buy a piece of land on Mars?
Well...
The paper is just worth the paper it's written on,
and it doesn't give you any title.
Don't expect to reap any benefits from it.