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Everything will go out of the window the moment the new space race truly begins. Whoever colonises Mars first at a large enough scale (that is self sustaining) has a tremendous first mover advantage. Anything earth can send will not be able to arrive in a timely manner such that it would not be detected. Short of faster than light travel, it is close to impossible to take down a planetary adversary with current technologies (one possibility would be a gravity tractor and slamming a massive asteroid into Mars, but the second and third order effects of doing so is very very dangerous).
Agreements like the Outer Space Treaty primarily bind weak nations. If US, China, (and eventually, India) truly believe that space dominance is critical to national security, then the treaty will become similar to the nuclear weapons agreements, an exclusive club for those who has the power to do so and everybody else will be kept out under threat of war and sanctions.
Lawyers too sleep well at night because of rough men willing to do violence on their behalf, it is just sometimes they forget that the armed enforcers of international law are sovereign powers who can rewrite the very laws should they win.
There will be decades, if not centuries, between the establishment of a Mars colony and the point at which it is capable of surviving indefinitely with no supplies from Earth whatsoever. In the interim it will be simple for any global-scale military power--the same ones writing the laws--to threaten a Mars colony by blockading its shipments. Launch sites are relatively few and can be easily monitored, launch windows are extremely predictable, and spacecraft are extremely vulnerable to space-based weaponry. There would be no need to spend time attacking Mars when you can just cut them off and let them starve.
This is true. However, the blockading global-scale military power would probably be committing an act of war against the country launching the supply mission. I have difficulty imagining a scenario where Mars would matter enough for any power to take that risk against any but the weakest supplier.
Exactly, the existing outer space treaties will have about as much effect on Martian exploration as the Treaty of Tordesillas[0] had on the colonization of the Americas. Perhaps even less - at least Spain and Portugal mostly abided by the treaty, even if the rest of Europe didn't, mostly because Spain wasn't too interested in Brazil and Portugal had Eastern Hemisphere colonies to exploit, whereas if Elon Musk has the only economically practical spaceship to go to Mars, he can pretty much dictate the rules.
[0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas
Elon will be long dead by the time Mars is a polity in its own right. Even if he isn’t he will not have a monopoly on violence over Mars as many nations will join up to smack him down. Sorry he doesn’t get to be king of Mars.
But Mars will be independent the moment they are self sufficient. That will take a long time, but that will be their tea party moment.
Posession and ability to defend territory are what ultimately determines who owns what.
Not quite, as even when they are independent - a self sustaining colony - they would still not be in the possession of military technologies to fend off Earth actors.
They don't need to. They just need rockets, lots and lots of them. All colonists need is to deny the incoming party the ability to make a successful landing or orbit.. Unless you want to nuke or slam an asteroid into Mars, conventional warfare simply do not work well on the timescales of space travel. Another alternative for the red team is stealth, but our current understanding of metamaterials is nowhere advanced enough for an
invisibility coating in the optical spectrum that can hide a spacecraft capable of interplanetary travel. Perhaps they are sufficient for a missile that only needs to make a minimal adjustments to direction.
Same for the Moon.
The US should jump the gun and claim it. We're in the lead now, but that won't always be the case.
This will happen the second governments think that the moon is actually worth "owning" (at least enough to justify the costs involved)
Under that logic, the Russians could claim outer space altogether.
>" Under that logic, the Russians could claim outer space altogether."
How so? The USA has had the most orbital launches so far in 2020, with China in second, and Russia in a very distant third.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_in_spaceflight#By_country
But like the US were first on the moon, the Russians were first to send a satellite/someone in space.
No one that's willing dismiss international treaties will care how many things anyone sent up - they'll only care who was the first.
Okay, now I understand, but grandparent was talking about who was in the lead, not who was first. You generally can’t stake claims retroactively, so USSR could have made a claim, but failed to. On the other hand, it’s tough to distinguish regions of space, so I’m not sure it could stick.
Noted; basically I'm just saying that Musk won't care about treaties, and given the US' silence so far on his 'terms and conditions', I'm willing to bet they'd go along with it; in fact, wouldn't be surprised if the US 'suddenly' took things over and started staking claims.
They will care about who can make a defensible claim and defend it, on whatever real or made-up grounds. That will be 99% earthly politics and power projection and 1% space-to-space lasers for a long time to come.
And as far as (total) successful/operational missions go, I wouldn't call the USA as being ahead by that much anyways:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon
No offense, considering some politicians here, I wouldn't want the US in control necessarily.
Seriously the moon is large are sharing it will promote peace and innovation.
And this is what will happen, even if the first to start will get the better spots. You can't claim the Moon is yours unless you control all its territory.
Can't wait until multiple planets are in a race to build the first Death Star.
If a planet is advanced enough to build a moon-sized Death Star, I think they'd have a better life going nomad and using it as a mobile home. Its habitable volume might be greater than all the planet's surface.
Go to Mars. Build a colony that does not need anything from Earth, declare sovereignty. I can see no reason if some group of people were able to do this they could not declare their rights to be free from a planet they do not live on. At that point it would be up to Earth (anyway who is Earth here, who do I call to speak to the president of earth?) to enforce compliance with their sovereignty and at the point that Mars could stand alone, I would think that they would have mastered the art of astroid capture and movement which could make things bloody pretty quickly.
>I can see no reason if some group of people were able to do this they could not declare their rights to be free from a planet they do not live on.
Some Island on earth thought that too.
They are free to do this, but others from Earth are also free to show up and say "no".
It is a lot simpler to put a ship in water on your planet vs mount an attack 54m KM away. Space ships are quite delicate.
What if Earth sends a fleet to Mars with orbital bombardment capabilities? Mars isn't like the Earth where you can just run outside of your fixed settlements into the forests or jungle. Even Earth isn't like that any more.
It would be a fucking shame to waste the resources of the first interplanetary colony in a war. It would be pretty in line with what our leaders do, but still a shame.
Brush up on Factorio and arm the rockets. Our current spacecrafts are not designed to survive sustained damage (and unlike on earth, the attack vehicles have no easy way of refuel in space, so they are limited when it comes to evasive maneuvers). Attacking a planet is limited by the (current) laws of physics. Defenders are at a great advantage as long as they have a proper production line for orbital rockets.
Not really. The attackers have nuclear weapons, the defenders don't. That's it. It's over.
I big rock tossed at earth could do way more damage than a bunch of nukes. Like I said, it's MAD in space.
This is a game of energy. The energy necessary to deflect an asteroid from earth is undoubtedly lower than to put it on that course to begin with. It's really not MAD.
Also, sending a nuke could be done much faster than an asteroid intercept mission. It could get there in as little as a week.
Putting a few 100 rocks on course for earth all with different trajectories and arrival times is quite a doomsday game. Mars could be nuked but with 100s of big rocks, a few are going to get though and it will take only a few. It is MAD.
They need to be massive enough to do some real damage, and this will require a lot of energy and luck to divert as there is a low chance you'll find a few hundred on such a trajectory.
Just getting the ships in position to shift their orbits will take weeks to months. Meanwhile, nukes already hit. You'd only need 100km/s of delta-v, which is very doable at those timescales with a sub-ton payload.
So the point is it MAD in space. Successful colonization of Mars would involve master the technology needed to capture and move big rocks in space :) Put one of those on a course to smash into the east coast at that point would not be hard.
ACOUP has a pretty good piece on the practicality of planetary bombardments here:
https://acoup.blog/2020/07/17/fireside-friday-july-17th-2020...
TLDR: Short of planet killing levels of power, you are unlikely to dislodge dug-in ground forces. Rock is really really good at absorbing impacts.
Let's not pretend that any of these outer space treaties crafted in the 20th century and agreed upon by no one will be worth a damn when we are actually at a place where we can colonize planets. We have a hard time enforcing a climate agreement, and people think Mars will be governed by mutual understanding between countries/corporations?
> outer space treadies... agreed upon by no one...
As of June 2020, 110 countries are parties to the treaty, while another 23 have signed the treaty but have not completed ratification. In addition, Taiwan, which is currently recognized by 14 UN member states, ratified the treaty prior to the United Nations General Assembly's vote to transfer China's seat to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1971.
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty
USA was party to the Paris Agreement until the day it wasn't. What were the consequences? What stops any of these 110 countries from leaving the second there is an incentive to do so?
Treaties tend to not have much meaning these days when you can just walk away on a whim without any consequence.
The latest example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_...
Assuming we are talking about a self sustaining colony on Mars, what about the right to self-determination? Do people really still accept that you can rule over a colony far far away? Plus, why bother? There is nothing on Mars that earth needs. As long as I can visit on vacation, why would I care what Government it has?
Because its moot, and therefor free to agree to?
Just imagine when we have First Contact and inform them that we've already declared their planet subject to the laws of Earth. And that furthermore, under those laws, they're not allowed to claim or own any part of their home planet.
If only there were parallels in human history that we could draw from
Exactly.
Our first contact will probably be our only and last contact.
Aboriginals and Native Americans would like a word (as well as many other peoples that found invaders on their doorstep).
Why wouldn't they be allowed to? They didn't sign the treaty.
I am now very interested in what alien laughter would sound like.
Imagine if their leaders were even more corrupt than ours. They might agree to buy their planet from us, and declare themselves Planetary Emperor because the Humans, owners of the Universe, sold the whole planet to him.
Meanwhile our space lawyers would be like "I didn't really expect that to work".
What are we waiting for!? We can do that now on Earth /s
I see the current legal status of Mars as similar to the legal status of the New World after 1494 when Pope Alexander VI divided it between Portugal and Spain, and those countries agreed on exactly how to do it.
We see how that held up.
Or for another example look at the colonization of the USA. There were overlapping legal claims to most land, with the same plot having been given in a grant by the King before the revolution, by the state, by Congress, and some innocent pioneer actually went and lived there knowing none of that. The way we resolved this was consistently in favor of the squatters who lived there. On the same principle, conflicting legal claims to Mars should be resolved in favor of people who actually go to live there.
And guess what? We're looking a likely future where in a few years SpaceX is able to get there in volume while nobody else can do better than occasionally land small robotic vehicles at great expense. Who will be establishing the facts on the ground?
Doubly so if Elon winds up financing a lot of it by replacing long distance airplanes with reusable suborbital rockets. Despite SpaceX not being a sovereign government, the implied military capabilities here on Earth are quite significant...
If we are very lucky we may see a single exploration mission or two to Mars in our lifetime. Saying SpaceX is a few years away from taking people there in volume is very delusional.
Colonial law on Mars is something our great great great great grandkids may need to worry about, if even that.
That is indeed conventional wisdom.
But as
https://www.foxnews.com/science/musk-4-year-timeline-mars-mi...
reports, in mid-October Elon Musk was claiming a fighting chance of launching a rocket there by 2024. With that being a type of rocket that he intends to be making in volume for uses near Earth.
Given his past over-optimism, I'd take good odds against him in 2024, but would take an even money bet that he makes it for the 2026 window. And given that he's already gearing up for mass production, he'll be able to send a bunch at the following 2029 window. If he misses 2026, shift those dates to 2029 and 2031 instead. (The windows come every 26 months, see
http://clowder.net/hop/railroad/EMa.htm
for a list of dates.)
Either way, SpaceX is apparently on track to launch a fleet of ships to Mars in a decade or so. With plans that the first launch will get there and explore, the second will be a bunch of ships that land and set up a base, and the third will hopefully be able to make a return trip using fuel produced on Mars. From there, he's aiming for serious colonization.
You may call him delusional. I certainly did in 2008 when he was trying to get a rocket program off the ground using his private fortune. But I would suggest not underestimating his ability to achieve on his vision (if not on the timeline that he pushes for).
Basic human lesson here:
We are accountable to those we need stuff from.
Every human needs Earth right now.
Anyone wanting to establish fresh needs to not need earth, period.
They can then approach the earth as a sovereign trading peer.
Seems to me no more complex than that.
> _Every human needs Earth right now._
I think this will be the case for an incredibly long time, if not forever.
In the face of climate change or an extinction-level event like the one at the end of the Cretaceous period, even the bottom of the ocean would be a more habitable environment than Mars would.
> even the bottom of the ocean would be a more habitable environment than Mars would.
Fun (and mostly unrelated) fact I learned on a Joe Rogan podcast: If you are at the bottom of the ocean, it actually takes 7 times longer to get to the hospital than if you are on the international space station.
If you are aboard the ISP, you can get to a hospital within about 24 hours if needed. But if you're at the bottom of the ocean, it takes about a week to surface because you have to give your body time to adjust. I think those are the correct numbers at least. It's been a while.
From a super interesting episode with Garrett Reisman, who lived on the bottom of the ocean:
> I think this will be the case for an incredibly long time, if not forever.
This seems unlikely to remain true if Martian settlement becomes a real thing. The shipping cost of <anything> from Earth to Mars is so preposterously expensive that a high priority of any settlement would be to make everything self-sufficient as quickly as possible in order to avoid it.
You can survive on Mars with protection similar to that required to summit Mount Everest. Mars is a little colder and a little lower pressure and you need oxygen for both.
At sea-level, Earth's atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi and Mt Everest summit's is about 4 psi. Mars' atmospheric pressure is about 0.087 psi. Apparently a pressurized suit is required to survive on Mars[1].
Also, Mars' soil has toxic amounts of perchlorates[2]. You wouldn't want to breathe them in or have them touch your skin.
[1]
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-breathe-and-survive-...
[2]
https://www.space.com/21554-mars-toxic-perchlorate-chemicals...
No, we are only accountable to people with bigger guns than us. Native Americans didn't need anything from foreign settlers, and look how that ended up.
Mars can have 100% self sufficiency but will only have freedom if it can defend it.
Well, guns do a lot, but they do not contradict the basic premise.
The bare minimum to even have the discussion is sufficiency. Having something to defend.
I agree with you otherwise.
And the example of sovereign trading peer holds too. Being able to assert sovereignty in a way that matters to would be oppressors speaks to how wise it is to declare said sovereignty, does it not?
In any case Musk is cart well before horse here. Humorously so.
And this, folks, was practice beating theory.
:D
And in the meantime... things are going to be messy. Just like between American colonists and the British Empire. Hopefully we can avoid unnecessary bloodshed this time around, if and when the time comes for Mars to establish its independence.
There will absolutely be bloodshed.
I harbour no doubt.
This... is a very European perspective, lol.
My thinking exactly. As an American, I found the whole "You can't claim that land because it is illegal" mentality rather funny.
Funnier still if you consider European history
Humanist perspective
The real meat of this post is the sentence from this author:
"SpaceX purports not to create law horizontally via contract, but to establish the only law on Mars – a vertical structure endemic to sovereign legal orders."
Which doesn't seem supported by SpaceX's ToS:
"For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement."
SpaceX is trying to establish an agreement between itself and all its users, not enforce that agreement against third parties (as far as I can see). There may be a conflict if/when a second provider establishes a colony on Mars, but nobody else seems to be working towards that goal, so it's even more speculative than SpaceX's ambitions.
Who truly owns Mars will be decided by whoever has the power to enforce their claim. (Realistically I think any Mars colony would be too dependant on Earth to ever call themselves independent.)
Nah, they'll own it just long enough for the second party to land. There is no way the first group to land there will be able to establish dominance over the whole planet in one go. Mars may be smaller than Earth but it is still quite big, it is also _all_ land.
Besides the nice theoretical debate this is of course all nonsense, there is no way that a viable Mars colony will be set up within the next century or so, and quite probably much longer than that.
> There is no way the first group to land there will be able to establish dominance over the whole planet in one go.
Every potential adversary is approaching from the same direction and you have weeks / months of warning before they arrive. If you have the resources to establish a colony on another planet then defending your stake is relatively trivial in comparison. Also your team are already experts at the rocketry required to implement such a defence.
While I agree that object tracking is relatively cheap to implement in a newborn colony, I can't agree with defending it being trivial. Every bombing will destroy precious and rare resources, and even if you seek shelter underground, Earth could just send a stream of cheap kinetic missiles and carpet-bomb for months.
Your only hope would be that Earth wanted to take over your settlement. The military would need to land, and at least you could die mounting some kind of pathetic resistance... or blow it all.
Actually I disagree. I think any organization capable of establishing a Martian colony would likely be capable of sending along a few anti-satellite missiles to defend their claim. I do however doubt they'd be inclined to do so.
I see everyone's big on the armed colonisation of Mars, and assuming that this can be done without Earth factions noticing and doing something about it. But I think this radically underestimates how fragile and dependent the colony is likely to be. We've already had "rare earth metals" discourse on Earth; how rare are they when you're not even on Earth? Are there Martian deposits of tantalum, iridium, neodymium, etc?
This,
The idea that an independent Martian colony is just around the corner seems to have an incredible following here in hn.
That's radically over-optimistic in a wide variety of ways. Exactly which resources are would scarce for such a colony is challenging to predict but guess humans - living indefinitely in 38% of earth gravity probably isn't possible and even reproduction would likely be harder still. A colonized Martian environment is going to be one big room/box for a long time. Also, it's not just raw materials that are going to be scarce. Microprocessors, chips, as an example, require continent-scale support/supply-chains on earth, where most things are easy. Vacuum is cheaper on Mars but not free like in space and all sort of other things are harder.
If we assume the existence of technologies that make a Martian colony possible, the same technologies would make asteroid mining even more viable. Now the complex manufacturing is a whole other set of problems. Unless someone invents a magical 3d printer capable of producing modern CPUs in-situ directly from raw materials, this kind of infrastructure would be the real bottleneck for any Martian self-sustainability dreams.
Whistling in the dark. "Outer Space" refers to all that is not on Earth. To imagine some sovereignty over the entire Universe is hubris at the very least. Imagine what the Arcturan Confederacy would have to say about that!
Of course a world is governed by the people on that world. Not some billion-mile remote authority. I.e. an Earth government can say anything it wants, while the folks on Mars go on doing whatever they decide.
Just what we need--start spreading our legal monstrosities across the universe!
Jokes aside, this is one thing I don't understand about Elon's viewpoints. He's afraid Earth's insanity will destroy itself, which is why we must spread to other planets. He forgets that as soon as he relocates people to Mars, that same insanity will be relocated with them.
Mars has an opportunity to start from scratch, with the current knowledge about political systems but superior technology. It's a golden opportunity to start anew the human race.
Take for example the current elections in USA. Elections in Mars could be a two-round blockchained poll transmitted in real time. It would be over in minutes instead of weeks.
It also has the opportunity to ignore knowledge we already have, for example that elections over an internet cannot be both secret and trustworthy. Other countries manage to conduct an election and count the votes within a day or two – using paper ballots.
England couldn't maintain its military influence over the US because of the big travel time over sea. The US declared independence afterwards.
I see very little chance that Earth can maintain a military influence over Mars, especially when the cost/time to travel is magnitudes higher. It's likely that Mars will have its own form of government from the people over there.
I imagine USA would try to appoint a banana president on Mars. Everything goes fine for decades, until the colony is prosperous and self-sufficient, at which point it thanks Earth and declares independence. Earth would of course refuse, but in the following days every banana officer would perish in freak but plausible space accidents. Interplanetary War I starts. Ancient Mars aliens wake up and destroy humanity.
I've probably read too much sci fi.
He probably thinks a lot about that scene where Tom Cruise is running to vast newfound lands where the first one gets it.
I’m pretty sure the whole mars thing was just a joke in the ToS...
I buy'd some land on mars, please Elon, land there and build your station..we will see us at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea or something like that ;)
If an American murdered another country’s citizen, both countries won’t care what your TOS says once you are back on earth
Sounds just like what England had to say about its colony :man-shrugging:
Good luck enforcing Earth laws on Mars.
Space law is an established rulebook likely to undergo some high-octane developments in coming decades. While Elon is welcome to the table, he can’t keep sucking the air from the room. It leaves us space lawyers just shouting into the void.
This is quite the post, where space lawyers think the law isn't possession and force projection. Without force behind a law, they are just words. Mars will be independent the moment they no longer need Earth for resources, decided by whomever governs Mars.
>Mars will be independent the moment they no longer need Earth for resources, decided by whomever governs Mars.
But earth has the bigger fleet, not as advanced as mars but still, and the belters have something to say too.
Imagine launching an invasion out of spite but the enemy has 9 months notice that you are coming.
Good luck with that in your fragile vacuum vessels.
Change trajectory of a Asteroid let i impact on the Capital on Mars (known as Olympus City), then fire your nukes (for the "surgical strike" effect) send your troops on the backside of another asteroid..invade..i don't see any complication in my plan.
Exactly.
It will just be called the Compromise of 2057 and all legal claims and military presence will be dropped and recalled.
Worse has happened before.
Considering it took something like 250 years for North American colonies to go from colonies to independent countries, I'd say it will take more than 37 years when we're talking about interplanetary travel. My understanding is a journey from Europe to North America would take anywhere from 2-3 months and a cursory Google estimates 9 months to travel to Mars.
Communication, however, is much faster.
The speed of the trip has nothing to do with the outcome of cooperation.
"Cease quoting laws to us that have rocket boosters strapped to asteroids!" (with apologies to Plutarch)
_Mars will be independent the moment they no longer need Earth for resources, decided by whomever governs Mars._
Yeah, and that will happen... if and when a series of extremely challenging technological and social hurdles are crossed. Especially, the ability of humans to live on Mars for any extended period of time is doubtful given the limited gravity[1]. Mars is going to need influx of humans for a long time, hopefully with them also leaving well compensate. "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise a kid"[2]
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mars
[2] William Shatner
I have enormous faith in the ingenuity of motivated engineers and scientists from all domains. We’ve made it this far as a species.
> Mars will be independent the moment they no longer need Earth for resources, decided by whomever governs Mars.
Or even sooner, when the Martians are backed by _some_ earthly sovereignty that gains enough from the cooperation to really don't give a damn about who is in charge over there.
Colonization of Mars will likely be dependent on Earth for a long time. Long enough that terrestrial authority will gain a firm grasp there. This doesn't preclude an eventual rebellion and emancipation but that's different than what Elon has flippantly declared.
This sounds like someone who believes that the universe owes them continued relevance. Free clue: External events do not care whatsoever whether they leave space lawyers just shouting into the void.
Either you can _enforce_ your space law, or you're irrelevant. (But they may in fact be able to enforce it in Earth court. We'll see.)
This. Once as a self-sustaining colony is started on Mars, _SPAAACE LAAAW_ is non-existent for them, at least until they can send law enforcement to establish a military state.
A colony on Mars would have to adapt fast to the challenges of that environment, they can't be expected to wait for Earth bureaucracy to decide if they are allowed to act. In fact, the colonization of Mars should be modeled after the colonization of the American Continent; everything that was done then will be repeated on Mars, with the exception of genocide.
The Romans had this concept of "possession". You can own something but if someone else possesses it for a long enough time, it is theirs.
They also talked about "De Jure"(In theory) and "De facto"(in practice). You could subvert the law if you do not apply it or apply it selectively.
Communist are experts on that. For example, Lenin called elections. When he lost them, he just made a coup d'etat and took power(De facto), then he will name everything as "democratic"(De jure), the government of the people and so on. A similar strategy as Napoleon, that declared himself against monarchy and declared himself Emperor (De facto) later(while being republican in theory).
Another example is Venezuela. It is a democracy "De jure", but a dictatorship "de facto".
The entities that occupy Mars (or Venus) and take possession of it will own it de facto. Who cares about what lawyers say in another planet?
_> Outer space is already subject to a system of international law_
How far does that reach exactly?
This topic reminds me The Moon is A Harsh Mistress and A Ticket To Tranai.
Everything's a legal vacuum if you have a big enough gun.
Edit: I'm not saying how things should be... I'm just pointing out the obvious
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_power_grows_out_of...
Yeah, some bureaucrat on Earth is going to tell Martians what to do, good luck with that control freaks.
But it is. International law is basically an illusion. It only works while participants agree - there's no way to enforce it because countries have sovereignty and as such they can do as they please if they really want to. Treaties are glorified pinky promises, and the only real recourse is threat military action, which can't be used against nuclear-capable states. There's only one country able to colonize Mars in the foreseeable future, and within the US there are only two entities possibly capable of such a feat : SpaceX and NASA. So at a minimum, there will be US law there initially, and if colony is viable the US will claim Mars. "International lawyers" will be told to pound sand shortly thereafter. Then I suppose people there will show us here on Earth their long martian middle finger and go their own way, much like the US itself did hundreds of years ago, and we won't be able to do jack shit about it.