This is for space colonization generally. You may know from my other answers that I think there is a significant chance that we'll find interestingly different life on Mars, and that as a result, that we may well decide not to send humans to Mars surface, only study it from orbit. Also that for long term space settlement, I think Stanford Torus or O'Neil cylinders give more room for civilization to expand in space, and mean we can start building close to Earth, where the settlements are more useful to us and more valuable.
However - wherever we build in space - it's different from Earth - the actual land itself doesn't have much value for humans - there is nothing growing on it, and nothing can grow on it until you build on top of it. It is probably not even of much value as a building site except for a few very special locations such as the peaks of eternal light at the poles of the Moon.
It becomes valuable when we build habitats on it. Or parts of it may be valuable as sources of minerals or metals. Parts maybe of value for tourism. In places where water is rare, ice deposits may be of value. But nothing, without building on it, is of value for growing crops or trees.
So - probably space settlements can work just fine without any land ownership. Instead you would have functional ownership. This is far easier to make consistent with the Outer Space Treaty which almost all nations have signed, and not likely to be renegotiated in the near future (it's very hard to get all the nations to agree on a treaty about space, the Moon treaty for instance was pretty much a complete fail, only a few countries not yet significant in space like the Netherlands signed it).
Map of all signatories of the Outer Space Treaty, - signed by all the space faring nations and almost all aspiring space faring nations as well as most other countries in the world. Green here means signed and ratified. Yellow means signed, but not ratified.
List of signatories: Outer Space Treaty
So the way that would work is, that if you make a habitat then you own that habitat. That's already the case under the OST. If you take hardware into space you own that also.
Now under the current OST then though the US owns the lunar modules, rovers etc on the Moon, and the Russians the lunakhods, and the Chinese their lander - and same also for the Russian and US landers on Mars - that technically then any other nation could go to Mars or the Moon and return those machines to Earth so long as they then give them back to the original owners.
So it would need some tweaking, some extra rules or agreements that all space faring nations would make between themselves either informally or formally, or could be a treaty like the OST but one that is added on top of the OST so not needing renegotiation of the OST which is probably, legally, almost impossible to achieve to get so many nations to agree on a new version of it.
I think myself that that is good actually. Because when you don't have ownership of solar system bodies outside of the Earth - then - that's far less reason for conflict and makes co-operation between astronauts of different backgrounds easier and reduces likelihood e.g. of wars between groups of colonists in space.
Then the way it would work is, that after you build a habitat, you keep ownership of it, so long as you continue to use it. That also would include reasonable area of occupancy around it, others couldn't come and build habitats right next to yours without your permission.
And - obviously want it so that others can't come and move your habitat back to Earth or just move it to somewhere else in space that they find more convenient - so there would need to be extra provisions on top of the OST to prevent that.
Using the materials in the Martian moon Deimos alone - if it is decided that it is okay to mine Deimos, you could build habitats in orbit around Mars with total surface area of Stanford Tori with about 100,000 square kilometers of living area.
That's roughly the size of Iceland, larger than Scotland, or Norway, more than twice the size of Switzerland, which could be useful for Mars orbital colonies.
In terms of US states, that's about the size of Oregon or Colerado. And that's just the ground floor of the colony - most of the mass is needed for cosmic radiation shielding. In some designs you then have multiple layers of habitation inside of that - and in any case certainly multiple story buildings inside. And far more spacious and congenial to humans than surface settlments because you can build big spacious regions in space like this, rotating for artificial gravity.
Similarly if you start a mine you'd own the mine, but not the asteroid you are mining, but would have some functional ownership say of the region around the mine or for small space rocks, the entire rock, that you have the right to mine it in its entirety.
All probably also with some provisions regarding historical interest - so nobody could set up home in the lunar modules on the Moon for instance because of historical interest even though they have been abandoned, and you'd have preservation parks around sites of special interest. So historical landing sites would be preserved areas, even the astronauts footprints and the tracks of the first missions may be protected by international agreements.
So again same on Mars, the rovers there, and spaceships - except in case of Mars it's possible we might need to remove all the hardware from the surface and sterilize their surroundings. Chris McKay suggested that anyway - if it turns out to be biologically interesting and different from Earth (which I expect to happen myself, reasonably high probability once we do start to do a proper biological exploration of Mars) - to preserve the planet from Earth contamination by our microbes.
Also special areas like for instance if ice deposits at the poles of the Moon are of particular scientific interest - we might set aside some part of them to be preserved - or lunar caves, or might be some requirement that any asteroid has to be opened to a scientific study before it is mined - similarly to archaeologists investigating a building site with a dig before construction goes ahead.
The same is true also for floating cloud colonies on Venus. Though plants might be able to grow there without much modification just protection from the acid in the clouds - still - they can only grow inside of habitats.
There's nowhere in the solar system outside of Earth where you can grow anything without first building a habitat to grow it in. So functional ownership of the habitat would seem to be sufficient in space plus functional ownership of resources such as mines so long as you have the equipment in place and show that you are actually using it - and it is not a designated area or type of area of special scientific interest or otherwise protected.
I haven't answered about religion - of course there would be people practising various religions and with various religious and also philosophical views. But I assume you are asking about organized religion and territories associated with them.
If so - I expect there would be settlements which are set up by people with particular interests, or background, or religious or philosophical views. Also the experiences of people in space conditions may well lead to new outlooks and views developing and probably new religions also after all we've had several new fairly major religions in the last century or so, so new religions will probably continue to develop, as well as new political and philosophical views and ideas.
The rules would be the same for them also, not sure it needs special discussion, functional ownership of habitats. But it does raise another point - what happens if someone sets up a habitat - but then the settlers no longer want to be bound by them? And who enforces the OST if some group decides it wants to claim territories in space for itself counter to the OST?
However - in the near future then space colonies will be very vulnerable, its a harsh environment, just a crashing spaceship would destroy a colony. So they will need to co-operate to a far higher degree than we do on Earth. A space war would end quickly with all habitats of all those concerned destroyed.
So, either we end warfare or never have it in space - or we don't succeed in space, I think those are the two possibilities.
May have other ways of resolving conflict - some higher authority like the UN in space, or sport - games of chance - depending on the situation, what it is you want to resolve - or things like that just as a way of dealing with natural human competitiveness in society - goodness knows how we'd do it - but hard to see warfare with weapons fired at habitats working in space. No habitat could be shielded against things moving at the kilometers per second velocites that any space settlement would be able to achieve easily with rockets or other future spaceships. You'd be so vulnerable in space, hard to see anyone risking starting a war with other colonies.
However - wherever we build in space - it's different from Earth - the actual land itself doesn't have much value for humans - there is nothing growing on it, and nothing can grow on it until you build on top of it. It is probably not even of much value as a building site except for a few very special locations such as the peaks of eternal light at the poles of the Moon.
Land like this on Mars is of no intrinsic value to humans, you can't grow crops there, or plant trees. Actually myself, I think there is a reasonable chance that we won't want to have humans on Mars because I expect we'll find interestingly different life there and want to do biologically reversible exploration.
But whether or not we have humans on Mars, we might have greenhouses there that export crops to orbit - as some forms of hydroponics are possible without introducing Earth microbes to Mars. If so you'd own the greenhouses on Mars but not the land they are built on. The land is of no value anyway until you build the greenhouse on it.
It becomes valuable when we build habitats on it. Or parts of it may be valuable as sources of minerals or metals. Parts maybe of value for tourism. In places where water is rare, ice deposits may be of value. But nothing, without building on it, is of value for growing crops or trees.
So - probably space settlements can work just fine without any land ownership. Instead you would have functional ownership. This is far easier to make consistent with the Outer Space Treaty which almost all nations have signed, and not likely to be renegotiated in the near future (it's very hard to get all the nations to agree on a treaty about space, the Moon treaty for instance was pretty much a complete fail, only a few countries not yet significant in space like the Netherlands signed it).
Map of all signatories of the Outer Space Treaty, - signed by all the space faring nations and almost all aspiring space faring nations as well as most other countries in the world. Green here means signed and ratified. Yellow means signed, but not ratified.
So the way that would work is, that if you make a habitat then you own that habitat. That's already the case under the OST. If you take hardware into space you own that also.
Now under the current OST then though the US owns the lunar modules, rovers etc on the Moon, and the Russians the lunakhods, and the Chinese their lander - and same also for the Russian and US landers on Mars - that technically then any other nation could go to Mars or the Moon and return those machines to Earth so long as they then give them back to the original owners.
So it would need some tweaking, some extra rules or agreements that all space faring nations would make between themselves either informally or formally, or could be a treaty like the OST but one that is added on top of the OST so not needing renegotiation of the OST which is probably, legally, almost impossible to achieve to get so many nations to agree on a new version of it.
I think myself that that is good actually. Because when you don't have ownership of solar system bodies outside of the Earth - then - that's far less reason for conflict and makes co-operation between astronauts of different backgrounds easier and reduces likelihood e.g. of wars between groups of colonists in space.
Then the way it would work is, that after you build a habitat, you keep ownership of it, so long as you continue to use it. That also would include reasonable area of occupancy around it, others couldn't come and build habitats right next to yours without your permission.
And - obviously want it so that others can't come and move your habitat back to Earth or just move it to somewhere else in space that they find more convenient - so there would need to be extra provisions on top of the OST to prevent that.
Build a habitat like this - in this case a Stanford Torus - and you would own it under the OST. To avoid the solar system becoming filled up with regions nobody can use because of ancient scrap from previous failed attempts - could add agreements on top of that that if it is abandoned for some period of time then others can take it over - say after a decade, with no habitation, or where appropriate (roving machines) no remote control from Earth or elsewhere
But if continually inhabited then others would not be permitted to move it - or build another habitat right next to it - or indeed, to enter it either, without permission of the inhabitants.
Surprisingly perhaps you could build this whole habitat, for 10,000 people, from the material in a small NEO a few hundred meters across.
Using the materials in the Martian moon Deimos alone - if it is decided that it is okay to mine Deimos, you could build habitats in orbit around Mars with total surface area of Stanford Tori with about 100,000 square kilometers of living area.
That's roughly the size of Iceland, larger than Scotland, or Norway, more than twice the size of Switzerland, which could be useful for Mars orbital colonies.
In terms of US states, that's about the size of Oregon or Colerado. And that's just the ground floor of the colony - most of the mass is needed for cosmic radiation shielding. In some designs you then have multiple layers of habitation inside of that - and in any case certainly multiple story buildings inside. And far more spacious and congenial to humans than surface settlments because you can build big spacious regions in space like this, rotating for artificial gravity.
Mars's moon Deimos has enough material in it to build Stanford toruses with total surface area twice the size of Switzerland or same area as the state of Oregon - and that's just the ground floor of the habitats.
This is a "for instance" - whether we should dismantle Deimos in its entirety to make habitats is another matter - but whether or not - Deimos is a tiny Moon - serves to show that there is plenty of material in NEOs or the asteroid belt - which would also be easy to transport to Mars orbits in any future with extensive space settlement, if that's what we decide to do. Asteroid belt has enough material for space settlements with total land area of a thousand times that of Earth - which could be built almost anywhere in the solar system - there are techniques that would make it easy to move this material to anywhere we need it, with almost no expenditure of fuel (and get the fuel from the asteroids anyway) with enough advance notice for your order.
If you abandon your base, say for a decade or whatever, nobody living there, not controlling it via radio or anything - then others would be able to take it over.
Similarly if you start a mine you'd own the mine, but not the asteroid you are mining, but would have some functional ownership say of the region around the mine or for small space rocks, the entire rock, that you have the right to mine it in its entirety.
All probably also with some provisions regarding historical interest - so nobody could set up home in the lunar modules on the Moon for instance because of historical interest even though they have been abandoned, and you'd have preservation parks around sites of special interest. So historical landing sites would be preserved areas, even the astronauts footprints and the tracks of the first missions may be protected by international agreements.
So again same on Mars, the rovers there, and spaceships - except in case of Mars it's possible we might need to remove all the hardware from the surface and sterilize their surroundings. Chris McKay suggested that anyway - if it turns out to be biologically interesting and different from Earth (which I expect to happen myself, reasonably high probability once we do start to do a proper biological exploration of Mars) - to preserve the planet from Earth contamination by our microbes.
See Mars Pathfinder
If there is interesting life on Mars we may need to sterilize all our rovers there from early missions - in this case Sojourner, quite possibly also remove them from Mars. If that's not necessary, then they may be preserved as of historical interest in Mars parks.
Also special areas like for instance if ice deposits at the poles of the Moon are of particular scientific interest - we might set aside some part of them to be preserved - or lunar caves, or might be some requirement that any asteroid has to be opened to a scientific study before it is mined - similarly to archaeologists investigating a building site with a dig before construction goes ahead.
The same is true also for floating cloud colonies on Venus. Though plants might be able to grow there without much modification just protection from the acid in the clouds - still - they can only grow inside of habitats.
There's nowhere in the solar system outside of Earth where you can grow anything without first building a habitat to grow it in. So functional ownership of the habitat would seem to be sufficient in space plus functional ownership of resources such as mines so long as you have the equipment in place and show that you are actually using it - and it is not a designated area or type of area of special scientific interest or otherwise protected.
I haven't answered about religion - of course there would be people practising various religions and with various religious and also philosophical views. But I assume you are asking about organized religion and territories associated with them.
If so - I expect there would be settlements which are set up by people with particular interests, or background, or religious or philosophical views. Also the experiences of people in space conditions may well lead to new outlooks and views developing and probably new religions also after all we've had several new fairly major religions in the last century or so, so new religions will probably continue to develop, as well as new political and philosophical views and ideas.
The rules would be the same for them also, not sure it needs special discussion, functional ownership of habitats. But it does raise another point - what happens if someone sets up a habitat - but then the settlers no longer want to be bound by them? And who enforces the OST if some group decides it wants to claim territories in space for itself counter to the OST?
However - in the near future then space colonies will be very vulnerable, its a harsh environment, just a crashing spaceship would destroy a colony. So they will need to co-operate to a far higher degree than we do on Earth. A space war would end quickly with all habitats of all those concerned destroyed.
Destruction of ISS in Gravity. Any habitat in space would be vulnerable to destruction by an incoming spaceship or even a large piece of debris from it. So space wars in space in conventional sense would seem to be impossible - they would end quickly with all habitats of all those involved in the war destroyed.
This is equally true for colonies in space or on planetary surfaces, or the Moon or asteroids - and even colonies floating in the upper Venusian atmosphere - though protected to some extent by the thick Venus atmosphere - and not so vulnerable as most space colonies to small fast moving objects which would burn up in the atmosphere - and small meteorites anyway would just puncture the habitats - still would obviously be very vulnerable to any major collisions e.g. with an incoming spaceship.
So, either we end warfare or never have it in space - or we don't succeed in space, I think those are the two possibilities.
May have other ways of resolving conflict - some higher authority like the UN in space, or sport - games of chance - depending on the situation, what it is you want to resolve - or things like that just as a way of dealing with natural human competitiveness in society - goodness knows how we'd do it - but hard to see warfare with weapons fired at habitats working in space. No habitat could be shielded against things moving at the kilometers per second velocites that any space settlement would be able to achieve easily with rockets or other future spaceships. You'd be so vulnerable in space, hard to see anyone risking starting a war with other colonies.
- Idea of functional ownership in space Real Property Rights in Outer Space
- Idea of planetary parks 'Planetary Parks' Could Protect Space Wilderness
- Chris McKay on biologically reversible exploration of Mars
- Same talk as an interactive slide show 12. Biologically Reversible Exploration
- "Ten Reasons Not To Live On Mars, Great Place To Explore" - On The Space Show
- Asteroid Resources Could Create Space Habs For Trillions; Land Area Of A Thousand Earths
- Imagined Colours Of Future Mars - What Happens If We Treat A Planet As A Giant Petri Dish?
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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