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From a practical standpoint, if a private space company were to move its center of operations to outer space it may end up as its own "state". As long as it has

From a practical standpoint, if a private space company were to move its center of operations to outer space it may end up as its own "state". As long as it has people loyal to the company owners, it could create its own rules and fend off any nation that tries to take jurisdiction. This would be similar to a feudal lord enforcing his own rules with a small army of private retainers. Realistically though, this would only happen on an independent base on Mars or the Moon, or a fully self-sufficient space station. Otherwise, Earth-dependence would allow nations to influence space operations and push their jurisdiction into outer-space, similar to European colonial endeavors. Maybe the solution is to create a new, separate state that has jurisdiction and military control over the entirety of outer space not tied to any particular nation?

adrianmonk 6y ago
The thing about a space colony is an invasion is not too easy. On the other hand, a blockade is pretty easy.
- handedness 6y ago
  Thirdly: A debilitating attack if you don't seek to preserve anything of the colony, is also relatively easy.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    If the colony has one or more nukes it could establish mutually assured destruction or at least a significant deterrent.
    - handedness 6y ago
      And so shall history echo with rhymes, even in a vacuum.
    - numpad0 6y ago
      Well, a habitat with propulsion in space is itself a deterrent.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
      For a colony further up the gravity well that produces resources locally, "rods from god" style weapons suddenly make much more sense than for earth-based nations. Nukes might simply not be worth the effort.
    - BelenusMordred 6y ago
      You don't need nukes at orbital speeds. A tungsten rod has equivalent power.
      - vl 6y ago
        Not even close! An easy way to make upper boundary estimate: let’s say you use Falcon Heavy to deliver your kinetic weapon. Falcon Heavy burns around 500 tons of fuel. This is upper boundary for energy of your payload (since most of the energy goes to lifting rocket itself and air resistance). So even ultra-heavy payload of 64 tons will have way less then 0.5 kilotons of energy (TNT equivalent used for nukes). Any nuke is way beyond that. Of course, another way to estimate is to not to be lazy and actually multiply mv^2/2. Truly massive 64 ton kinetic weapon reaching target at 7 km/s will have energy of 1.6x10^12 J. Modest 20 kiloton nuke has energy of 8.4x10^13 J. I.e. 50 times more.
        numpad0 6y ago
        > let’s say you use Falcon Heavy to deliver your kinetic weapon. Why? pick up an NEO and aim for Sydney, or wherever it needs to go. Easy, unless your settlement isn't orbital or you don't have electric propulsion.
        andredz 6y ago
        What is a NEO?
        grzm 6y ago
        Near-earth orbit
        andredz 6y ago
        Thanks. :)
        numpad0 6y ago
        Near-Earth Object. Asteroids around Earth. There is infinite supply of all sizes of boulders in space that you can just grab and turn into missiles given you have sufficient level of technology.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  In this snapshot of a moment, yes. But consider these things: 1. Space colonies, especially remote ones (e.g. not Moon, but Mars or Titan), are strongly motivated to be maximally independent as soon as possible. Whoever leads them must think about the possibility that the supply ships stop coming, either for some temporary disruption (pandemics on Earth, cough, cough, or even a war back home), or permanently (something has gone seriously wrong on the blue planet). And imports from Earth are expensive, because they have to be lifted out of the Earth's gravitational well. This means that the colony will try to produce everything necessary in situ for good reasons; such a colony will not be easily brought to its knees by a blockade. 2. It is easy to block a colony physically, but they will still be able to communicate back to Earth and argue their cause in front of the rest of the humanity. This will undermine the will of Earthly powers to maintain the blockade. 3. We are now in a rare situation when only one nation (the U.S.) is approaching the capability to send ships to the rest of the Solar System. It is not unlike the situation when only the Portuguese mastered the carrack and were the only ones to sail regularly from Europe to India in the late 1400s. But this situation will not last and I would guess that by 2050, at least five or six sovereign entities will have the same capability. By 2100 for sure. And their political differences will be exploited. It is unlikely that all of them would decide to start a common punitive embargo against a rebel colony.
  - ozim 6y ago
    For the point number 3 you might be too much under influence of SpaceX marketing and launches. China is on their way to mars as well with Tianwen-1, India is ramping up their space program, ESA is launching their stuff with Ariane vehicle as far as Jupiter, Russians with Angara have plan for crewed moon flyby in 2029. So it is not like other nations won't have that capability soon after US and not like US has it right now or next year. Second part is that there is still not that much of commercial gain in going to Mars, Moon or other place. Most of the money is made in LEO with satellite communications, gps, utilities. Space mining is not going to be profitable for really long time into the future. Where going to India was profitable right away if you had a ship to carry spices you were really ahead of the others. Space ship capability is just the starting point and we still have to find something that is worth enough to send those ships there, even with SpaceX reusable rockets it is still not worth to mine rare earth elements somewhere else in the solar system.
dane-pgp 6y ago
> Maybe the solution is to create a new, separate state that has jurisdiction and military control over the entirety of outer space Sounds like the Sovereign Military Order of Malta would be a good fit for that. They already have (partial) recognition, but no territory, so taking control of space would fix that anomaly. Also, bizarrely, it wouldn't be the first time they were used as a loophole to solve a political/military problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Malta#Air_force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Ma...
- pseingatl 6y ago
  marslegalcode.org
hahajk 6y ago
The Space Liability Convention basically says that all space objects are tied to a nation. While that law is designed to make international disputes easier to handle (India can sue the US instead of SpaceX for instance), i think it prevents a space object from claiming sovereignty. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention
Animats 6y ago
Musk has been talking along those lines for his Mars project.
pseingatl 6y ago
marslegalcode.org introduces a legal code for the Mars Colony and addresses some of these questions. Need a copy of the Code?

adrianmonk 6y ago

The thing about a space colony is an invasion is not too easy. On the other hand, a blockade is pretty easy.

handedness 6y ago
Thirdly: A debilitating attack if you don't seek to preserve anything of the colony, is also relatively easy.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  If the colony has one or more nukes it could establish mutually assured destruction or at least a significant deterrent.
  - handedness 6y ago
    And so shall history echo with rhymes, even in a vacuum.
  - numpad0 6y ago
    Well, a habitat with propulsion in space is itself a deterrent.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    For a colony further up the gravity well that produces resources locally, "rods from god" style weapons suddenly make much more sense than for earth-based nations. Nukes might simply not be worth the effort.
  - BelenusMordred 6y ago
    You don't need nukes at orbital speeds. A tungsten rod has equivalent power.
    - vl 6y ago
      Not even close! An easy way to make upper boundary estimate: let’s say you use Falcon Heavy to deliver your kinetic weapon. Falcon Heavy burns around 500 tons of fuel. This is upper boundary for energy of your payload (since most of the energy goes to lifting rocket itself and air resistance). So even ultra-heavy payload of 64 tons will have way less then 0.5 kilotons of energy (TNT equivalent used for nukes). Any nuke is way beyond that. Of course, another way to estimate is to not to be lazy and actually multiply mv^2/2. Truly massive 64 ton kinetic weapon reaching target at 7 km/s will have energy of 1.6x10^12 J. Modest 20 kiloton nuke has energy of 8.4x10^13 J. I.e. 50 times more.
      - numpad0 6y ago
        > let’s say you use Falcon Heavy to deliver your kinetic weapon. Why? pick up an NEO and aim for Sydney, or wherever it needs to go. Easy, unless your settlement isn't orbital or you don't have electric propulsion.
        andredz 6y ago
        What is a NEO?
        grzm 6y ago
        Near-earth orbit
        andredz 6y ago
        Thanks. :)
        numpad0 6y ago
        Near-Earth Object. Asteroids around Earth. There is infinite supply of all sizes of boulders in space that you can just grab and turn into missiles given you have sufficient level of technology.
inglor_cz 6y ago
In this snapshot of a moment, yes. But consider these things: 1. Space colonies, especially remote ones (e.g. not Moon, but Mars or Titan), are strongly motivated to be maximally independent as soon as possible. Whoever leads them must think about the possibility that the supply ships stop coming, either for some temporary disruption (pandemics on Earth, cough, cough, or even a war back home), or permanently (something has gone seriously wrong on the blue planet). And imports from Earth are expensive, because they have to be lifted out of the Earth's gravitational well. This means that the colony will try to produce everything necessary in situ for good reasons; such a colony will not be easily brought to its knees by a blockade. 2. It is easy to block a colony physically, but they will still be able to communicate back to Earth and argue their cause in front of the rest of the humanity. This will undermine the will of Earthly powers to maintain the blockade. 3. We are now in a rare situation when only one nation (the U.S.) is approaching the capability to send ships to the rest of the Solar System. It is not unlike the situation when only the Portuguese mastered the carrack and were the only ones to sail regularly from Europe to India in the late 1400s. But this situation will not last and I would guess that by 2050, at least five or six sovereign entities will have the same capability. By 2100 for sure. And their political differences will be exploited. It is unlikely that all of them would decide to start a common punitive embargo against a rebel colony.
- ozim 6y ago
  For the point number 3 you might be too much under influence of SpaceX marketing and launches. China is on their way to mars as well with Tianwen-1, India is ramping up their space program, ESA is launching their stuff with Ariane vehicle as far as Jupiter, Russians with Angara have plan for crewed moon flyby in 2029. So it is not like other nations won't have that capability soon after US and not like US has it right now or next year. Second part is that there is still not that much of commercial gain in going to Mars, Moon or other place. Most of the money is made in LEO with satellite communications, gps, utilities. Space mining is not going to be profitable for really long time into the future. Where going to India was profitable right away if you had a ship to carry spices you were really ahead of the others. Space ship capability is just the starting point and we still have to find something that is worth enough to send those ships there, even with SpaceX reusable rockets it is still not worth to mine rare earth elements somewhere else in the solar system.

dane-pgp 6y ago

> Maybe the solution is to create a new, separate state that has jurisdiction and military control over the entirety of outer space Sounds like the Sovereign Military Order of Malta would be a good fit for that. They already have (partial) recognition, but no territory, so taking control of space would fix that anomaly. Also, bizarrely, it wouldn't be the first time they were used as a loophole to solve a political/military problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Malta#Air_force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Ma...

pseingatl 6y ago
marslegalcode.org

hahajk 6y ago

The Space Liability Convention basically says that all space objects are tied to a nation. While that law is designed to make international disputes easier to handle (India can sue the US instead of SpaceX for instance), i think it prevents a space object from claiming sovereignty. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention

Animats 6y ago

Musk has been talking along those lines for his Mars project.

pseingatl 6y ago

marslegalcode.org introduces a legal code for the Mars Colony and addresses some of these questions. Need a copy of the Code?