Posted: 12/10/2013 9:08:26 AM EDT
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Ok, let's say John Q. Public and a couple of his arfcom buddies somehow managed to scrape up the cash to build a vessel that could carry them to Mars and setup a colony, successfully. They get there, setup shop, and stake their claim. Is there anything the .gov could/would do to prevent that? Could our hero's lay claim to the whole planet?
Can they prevent a person from leaving Earth and moving someplace else? Anyone in? And....GO! |
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Quoted: Ok, let's say John Q. Public and a couple of his arfcom buddies somehow managed to scrape up the cash to build a vessel that could carry them to Mars and setup a colony, successfully. They get there, setup shop, and stake their claim. Is there anything the .gov could/would do to prevent that? Could our hero's lay claim to the whole planet? Can they prevent a person from leaving Earth and moving someplace else? Anyone in? And....GO! Obama and his cronies have done that with businesses so why not.  |
| Once you are there, dick. I'm sorry but no government is going to burn the money to go a couple billion miles to go after a handful of people staking out a colony. However getting there is the problem. I can easily see them throwing up so much red tape as to make the launch impossible in the first place. In fact they have already done this. We should have had colonies 30 years ago. The us .gov has made it all but impossible to have manned space exploration with all their safety regs and regs just for regs sake. |
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Destination: Moon
General Thayer: Are you out of your mind?
Jim Barnes: I will be, if we run into any more red tape! Now look, there's no law against taking off a spaceship: it's never been done, so they haven't got around to prohibiting it. If we ask for permission, they'll find a way to block us. So we go now, as soon as we can! |
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Do the heavy lifting with a modified 747 and launch from altitude. Build in orbit and launch interplanetary from there.
Here's your question though. Why do it? What is on Mars that will generate sufficient ROI to make people buy you all those 747 hours, engineering hours, materials, fuel, etc? Think about how you gotta take enough stuff to be able to get BACK too. It's huge. You're talking about either a shit ton of flights or a whole sustainable colony in a box spacecraft. Even if it was one way, it'd be insanely expensive, with a time before payoff measured in lots of decades. So what's on Mars that we need so badly we'll pony up trillions to send a few folks to live there? |
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Need a pilot?
I have thousands of hours in various spacecraft and have logged hundreds of Munar landings. What, you guys don't have Kerbal Space Program? |
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Quoted:
Do the heavy lifting with a modified 747 and launch from altitude. Build in orbit and launch interplanetary from there. Rutan is on it.... but it's a more modified 747 than you'd be led to think! Stratolaunch Systems: Any orbit, any time. |
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Quoted:
The problem is enforcement. You can stake your claim but can you defend it? No government is going to let a private group of people get in it's way if it wants the chunk of Mars you are on. Well the distance would make the usual "Molon labe" more of a challenge than is usual. :) |
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Quoted:
Do the heavy lifting with a modified 747 and launch from altitude. Build in orbit and launch interplanetary from there. Here's your question though. Why do it? What is on Mars that will generate sufficient ROI to make people buy you all those 747 hours, engineering hours, materials, fuel, etc? Think about how you gotta take enough stuff to be able to get BACK too. It's huge. You're talking about either a shit ton of flights or a whole sustainable colony in a box spacecraft. Even if it was one way, it'd be insanely expensive, with a time before payoff measured in lots of decades. So what's on Mars that we need so badly we'll pony up trillions to send a few folks to live there? Getting people to Mars wouldn't cost Trillions, and in the current economic climate the TV and merchandising rights would probably pay for a great deal of the cost of a modest Mars mission. I agree with you though, we don't really have any compelling reason to go at the moment, manned space flight isn't a very efficient use of resources until we get the infrastructure in place for space-based mining and manufacturing. |
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My first thought was how are you going to get the .gov to let you launch a craft.
If they say no and you do anyways what would they do? Blow you up in the air? Quoted:
Need a pilot? I have thousands of hours in various spacecraft and have logged hundreds of Munar landings. What, you guys don't have Kerbal Space Program? You don't want me flying the thing I've killed more kerbals than I can count 
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They'll try to stop the takeoff with rules and regs and safety codes and fees and whatever you can think of. If you do get to mars by taking off in secrecy and thumbing your nose at .gov, they'll still go after you for some new interplanetary taxes the IRS will come up with. (look how zealously they go after other people who cross them) Just like 'Upgrayedd', they gonna find a way to get their money. |
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The real legal problem is with the "stake their claim" part. I think the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibits nations from claiming ownership of any extraterrestrial body or territory. Whether that means private parties or corporations can not make such claims is currently a big black hole in international law.
Getting the money together to make the massive investment in such a colony without having the property rights sewn up first is a big hurdle, along with finding a way for such a colony to be anything other than a giant money pit in the sky. |
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Quoted:
Rutan is on it.... but it's a more modified 747 than you'd be led to think! Stratolaunch Systems: Any orbit, any time. Quoted:
Quoted:
Do the heavy lifting with a modified 747 and launch from altitude. Build in orbit and launch interplanetary from there. Rutan is on it.... but it's a more modified 747 than you'd be led to think! Stratolaunch Systems: Any orbit, any time. I like that launch vehicle. Part of me actually wants to see someone use a humongous version of the balloon the red bull guy jumped from. Hot air and all that. Picture the scale of dirigible required to get up to a meaningful altitude though, and it's gonna get scary. |
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Quoted:
The problem is enforcement. You can stake your claim but can you defend it? No government is going to let a private group of people get in it's way if it wants the chunk of Mars you are on. once on Mars, throw weight is in your favor. You hold the high ground. |
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This very, very well done series on Mars colonization covers the subject thoroughly. If big.gov or big.biz want what you have they will come take it and kill you if you resist. This was the best researched and thought out stuff I've ever read, and a great deal was downright tragic because of the big shots taking over.  |
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Quoted:
The real legal problem is with the "stake their claim" part. I think the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibits nations from claiming ownership of any extraterrestrial body or territory. Whether that means private parties or corporations can not make such claims is currently a big black hole in international law. Getting the money together to make the massive investment in such a colony without having the property rights sewn up first is a big hurdle, along with finding a way for such a colony to be anything other than a giant money pit in the sky. Only governments can steal land legally. |
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My first thought was how are you going to get the .gov to let you launch a craft. If they say no and you do anyways what would they do? Blow you up in the air? If they care enough, they can do exactly that. I don't doubt that a combination of NORAD, ABM, and ASAT technologies can put a stop to a rocket launch if the government decides that they don't want you leaving the planet, and the only time anybody really tested the US government on secession, well over half a million people died in the conflict. The question is how much they care. |
(Only half joking.)
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Mine some of the many asteroids worth trillions which also conveniently puts you on top of a gravity well with a side business in kinetic energy weapons.
From there, solve for E if mass is somewhere between 1 and 100 metric tons of asteroid and your velocity to be squared is 10-20,000 meters per second and tell the taxman to come at you, bro. 
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| For a place as hard to get to as Mars, I think possession is really 9/10ths of the law. Of course you could claim all of Mars, but what are you going to do with it. Really you would only control whatever piece of land you could manage, until someone else shows up. |
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Find some 3rd-world country to develop/test/launch from. Once in transit and then on the surface you're home free. This inept government won't get back to the moon in my lifetime at this rate, much less take away $billions from the FSA to go colonize another planet. The Universe will be the frontier. If humans want to be free, they will have to take it for themselves, nevermind the State. I suspect the Left fears a humanity unbound by one little planet--they'll be so much harder to control, then. If you know any eccentric billionaires, I'm game.
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They would stop you from building, testing and fueling your rocket. They would prevent you from ever launching. There are sufficient laws already on the books for that. Who's "they"? I assume you mean the US gov. If someone had enough $$ to even remotely make this happen they would have enough to pay off some 2nd or 3rd world government for a place to test and launch from. Not that it matters, the concept is probably not feasible with current tech anyway, or at least not feasible in a way that does something useful. What would it look like, a biodome? A prison you can never leave millions of miles from home? No thank you. |
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Quoted:
Do the heavy lifting with a modified 747 and launch from altitude. Build in orbit and launch interplanetary from there. Here's your question though. Why do it? What is on Mars that will generate sufficient ROI to make people buy you all those 747 hours, engineering hours, materials, fuel, etc? Think about how you gotta take enough stuff to be able to get BACK too. It's huge. You're talking about either a shit ton of flights or a whole sustainable colony in a box spacecraft. Even if it was one way, it'd be insanely expensive, with a time before payoff measured in lots of decades. So what's on Mars that we need so badly we'll pony up trillions to send a few folks to live there? Mining on asteroids? Supposedly there are gold and other rare elements there. I can imagine all the lefties getting upset with the pollution from asteroid mining. Try to boycott all shipment sales. |
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Clinton Could, but only if Monica is willing to suck-start.. well, something. http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/062/b/f/bill_clinton_the_lady_killer_by_sharpwriter-d5wx11h.jpg where the fuck did that come from? |
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FIFY-  |
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Quoted:
Find some 3rd-world country to develop/test/launch from. Once in transit and then on the surface you're home free. This inept government won't get back to the moon in my lifetime at this rate, much less take away $billions from the FSA to go colonize another planet. The Universe will be the frontier. If humans want to be free, they will have to take it for themselves, nevermind the State. I suspect the Left fears a humanity unbound by one little planet--they'll be so much harder to control, then. If you know any eccentric billionaires, I'm game. Exactly, launch from Chad or some other place with a weak as government easy to bribe. Just send them some space diamonds to keep them happy. |