SpaceX small print on Starlink insists no Earth government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities SpaceX has ambitions for its Starlink constellation beyond annoying stargazers if the pre-order agreement for its satellite-based internet service is anything to go by. Spotted by Register reader Amarinder Brar during his UK application for the system, an intriguing section in the fine-print warns that disputes related to " …
> £439 for the hardware coupled with the £89 per month charge for service is also a little on the high side although, to be fair, it isn't aimed at those with ready access to the wonderful world of fibre.
If you're in the UK, across most of the country you hav the choice of "BT" or "BT" no matter who your 'ISP' might eventually be
WHich means you MIGHT get what they're claiming to offer, or you might get hot garbage that never gets fixed
"We don't care. we don't have to. We're the PHONE company"
Incidentally Starlink's 100/20 _proven_ service is already being talked about being pushed up to 300/100 (whiuch wil rival GPON). The units have 12-60GHz radios onboard and right now are only using a couple of 12/14GHz bands so there's plenty of room for expansion
How certainly fortunate we then be, Alan Brown, now that Adastral Park services are commandeered to provide RAF Heads of the UK Space Directorate, leadership, presently pioneering under the flight direction of Air Vice Marshal, Harv Smyth ....... https://www.adsadvance.co.uk/the-space-domain-and-uk-security.html
And it should surely not be a surprise. After all, how much bigger a clue than ..... Per Ardua Ad Astra .... would anyone need right before their very own eyes to learn of the Birthplace of Master Pilots, Schooled and Skilled in the Otherworldly and Out of this World Arts of Flying.
And it is wise to not summarily dismiss any of the above for you will be severely disadvantaged in believing it far fetched and just too unbelievable to be an honest appraisal of unfolding events.
Kissing cousins across the pond are certainly aware of their vital lack of novel market leading share ......
The defense industry is now facing a disruptive technology moment and looking directly at Silicon Valley for inspiration. ...... https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2021/2/24/the-price-of-success-vs-the-cost-of-failure
........ although quite what the defence industry thinks the airheads and deadheads of Silicon Valley can do to have the Pentagon beating a path to their doors is surely some sort of fanciful secret it is best no one knows or asks too many pertinent impertinent questions about.
If you don't have a policeman on the ground, then on just exactly what do you base your claim to have your laws prevail?
If you display your stupidity on a cruise ship, do you expect arrest to come from some policeman based in the nation the ship is flagged in?
The captain's authority on a ship is high precisely because whenever you get more than a couple of humans together, things tend to get complicated. For a trip lasting years, this becomes a real thing. For a one-way trip, a VERY real thing.
The '67 treaty was a pipe dream when it was signed. Any Moon or Mars colony is going to be a frontier settlement. Issues of law & force are going to be settled based on what the folks on the ground decide to do, outside law be ******. That's particularly important when some joker can disperse the air or water supply permanently and with relative ease.
The only way some particular nation is going to have its laws in force is if it is a military outpost. Again, this is a frontier we are talking about.
That heavily depends on the desires of other countries to mess with the situation. If say, someone in the U.S. establishes a colony somewhere and refuses to obey the treaty, and the U.S. wants to defend the treaty, all they have to do is prevent any supply launches until things change. Companies trying to launch from elsewhere will have trouble getting access to the launch capacity since existing launches would be going somewhere else and it's not easy to get emergency access to a launch facility with your own rocket. Only if existing governments wanted to provide that emergency access in order to annoy the U.S. would that change.
Once there is a lot more development where the colony is, that situation will be different. At that point though, there will be authority of some sort established there.
"I'm sure there are nation states that would be happy to give access to their airspace if the USA don't want to play."
There are, but how happy will they be taking the risks? If the big and experienced countries agree not to help a random company, the random company has to choose among the small countries with no history of supporting a launch. They can't choose a country so small that their rocket will end up in a neighbor's airspace unless they can get support from multiple countries, so now they have to choose a large country or one next to the ocean in the direction of their launch. Then they'll need to build the launch system which the country doesn't have, and the country probably isn't paying for that. Even then, the country is taking the risk of rocket explosions or similar happening overhead, and do they really think a company which has officially disclaimed their responsibilities to the treaty is going to honor the environmental regulations for the cleanup process? Also, if the big countries care enough about not letting the launch happen, they can provide some incentive to the selected country not to provide the assistance and make the company bounce around wasting their time and money trying to find new places to launch.
It also has to be noted that launch facilities aren't generic. Each model of rocket requires its own specific ground support. If a company were planning to go rouge, its building of a launch pad unannounced would probably violate their home country's arms trade restrictions (ITAR, in the US).
1) Construct a secret base inside Olympus Mons
2) Rename 'Mars' to 'Musk' around 2042
In this case, this is very much the issue.
If Musk manages to establish a settlement on Mars (Or anywhere else for that matter), then Mars is his own personal kingdom unless anybody else is in a position to displace him.
The problem of course is that he will require an Earth base for his operations for the foreseeable future.
But it has always struck me that Boca Chica looks like a campsite rather than a factory.
Perhaps the plan is that if the US refuses to play ball, he will simply pack up and move to somewhere more friendly.
"Perhaps the plan is that if the US refuses to play ball, he will simply pack up and move to somewhere more friendly."
If he does, that will take away his chance at US gov contracts. It could also mean a ban on his being in the US at any point in the future along with any engineers that transfer with him. The US Government up at Fort Pelosi may also impose putative punishments against whatever country he moves to.
I don't see any commercial potential with going to Mars. The cost to send anything substantial back means material trade is out. This is why I think SpaceX hasn't gone public. Elon's Mars fixation with no income possibility would not sit well with shareholders. Neither would blowing up millions of dollars on a monthly basis to "try out new ideas". Private investors have gone along with this, but things change when the average Joe can buy stock on a public exchange.
I would suggest open space can be relatively conveniently governed by the same international laws that apply to open water - including salvage rights and the like. Claims on territory on the other end, what about all those sites purporting to sell land on remote planets long before anyone can actually get there? Of course they didn't own the land in the first place. Tell that to the American colonists being paid to stick flags in the ground and own a farm for a few years in order to get the rights to land too...
"No Free Mars," remarked Dr Bowen, "unless he's allowed to break international law, or the states of Earth decide to change the Outer Space Treaty."
If Musk wants to break international law, then he should consider relocating SpaceX to BritainEngland. The current government takes a laissez-faire attitude to international law and treaties
A nano second after publicly funded research (NASA Mars Rover program) finds valuable resources on Mars, Musk and his partially publicly funded space fleet will suddenly be fully operational and will get employees there first to claim the entire planet and establish a puppet sovereign government with Musky pulling the strings.
"A nano second after publicly funded research (NASA Mars Rover program) finds valuable resources on Mars, Musk and his partially publicly funded space fleet will suddenly be fully operational"
I doubt it. What resource would be so valuable on Mars that it would be worth shipping back to Earth? It would have to be something that could be robotically scraped off of the surface loaded on a robot rocket and sent back unmanned. It would then need to be landed on the surface of Earth. Maybe someday hundreds of years from now it would make more sense to mine Mars for raw materials to send to LaGrange points around Earth to construct orbiting stations, but doubtful in the lifetime of anybody alive today. The next time JPL holds an open house, it might be a good question I can ask one of the scientists if they've worked out the costs to lift tonnage from Mars and bring it back to Earth orbit vs. lifting it from Earth's deeper gravity well.
there's a reason why european schools ripped out all their wifi about a decade ago, there's a reason why some countries are halting 5g roll out and some are ripping them down, there's a reason why they make such movies like Kingsman (and the other one Sammy J was in about the same time)......please try to learn to think people before it's too late :-(
Mars is just another 'continent'. The first person there with the Power to do it can claim ownership. Hey, that's the way it's done on Earth, and when we venture out into the stars we will take our little 'traditions' with us. Billionaire, King, Dictator...whatever, you flex your muscle and exercise authority until challenged. That's been our history.
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