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Comment by flexie | Hacker News Reader

Imagine the wealth a company could amass if it succeeded in terraforming mars. Rare metals, sale of land etc.

This is one of those markets where you have rather high barriers to entry.

I'm really not sure I want companies to have the capability to re-format entire planets. That sounds like entirely too much power for any organisation to have, if only given its potential for weaponisation.

And land sale? The Outer Space Treaty [1] prohibits governments from claiming ownership of planets, so where would the authority to sell land on Mars come from? Do we really want companies to own planets? Weyland-Yutani (Mars) Inc. anyone?

Edit: We're not even close to getting a grip on the social and legal problems of having access to habitable, off-earth environments. I suspect that the potential for conflict is huge.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

Does the concept of "owning" even exist outside of earth? Interesting times.

So far as we know, no concepts exist outside Earth

Ask the flag they planted on the moon.

Well, to us, it means something of course. But to others, who knows? It's kinda naïv (and a bit cute) of us to just assume we can go ahead and start "owning" things in the universe now. But hey, maybe that's how it works out there too. We'll see :)

The Outer Space Treaty was written with the party states knowing that it was a medium term measure. Capitalism will come to The Moon, Mars, and Venus. It will start with people just building wherever there is available land, like we did on the frontier, then once a couple thousand or a couple hundred thousand people are in outer space a new treaty will be formed around the political realities of the day.

I agree. In some ways the OST resembles the Antarctic Treaty: intended to mitigate the near and medium-term problems until something new comes along.

And I don't have a problem with capitalism per se, but our legal and political systems don't seem to be doing a very good job of managing its excesses.

Used to do better. Then we 'deregulated'

Many of our systems deal just fine with capitalism. Most Nato members. Most Nordic countries. Some of the Americas and some of Asia.

I don't think it is hopeless, but we'll need to reign in the outliers to stop global warming / Kessler syndrome.

"Capitalism will come to The Moon, Mars, and Venus."

The thing is that the order on which capitalism relies on to exist is not uphold outside the recognized international treaties. So, good luck on defending whatever ownership claims you have or you'll just have to submit to whoever can reach you and has more power than you. Also, it's kind of pointless for a government on Earth to claim ownership of outer space unless the means of maintaining permanent connections with said properties will significantly change. Think about what kind of connection you'll have with "yours" when it takes years to step from one part to another of the same country with nothing in between.

Extraterrestrial contact aside, governments will recognize property in space because it is in their interests to coordinate teams and allocate resources. This is most easily done through state backed capitalism. Governments that act in bad faith will see a dramatic drop in wealth due to sanctions and there is always MAD as a final safeguard.

"Capitalism will come to The Moon, Mars, and Venus"

Or maybe it will be replaced by something else on the Earth, I don't think we can predict the future yet.

> I'm really not sure I want companies to have the capability to re-format entire planets.

Does that mean you're against terraforming entirely, or would you prefer for the US/Russian/Chinese government to be the only powers allowed to do so?

I'm definitely not against terraforming, but I'd be against individual governments doing it for the same reasons that I gave for corporations. IMO it would have to be an international endeavour. Certainly wen we're talking about the solar system, where the number of candidate planets is basically two (plus Titan?). Does a Chinese planet and a US planet and a Facebook moon represent a useful and viable future?

In some far-future scenario where there are thousands of accessible planets suitable for terraforming then maybe it would be ok for corps and governments to do as they wish. But you're past the point where there is likely to be any overall political or legal system of control anyway.

> Does a Chinese planet and a US planet and a Facebook moon represent a useful and viable future?

I'd say it's a better future than the "no terraforming at all" future. And I suspect the "wait until UN-like bodies are competent and willing to organize terraforming" future is actually the "no terraforming at all" future.

In the sense that we need to remove our dependence on a single-point-of-failure planet to avoid existential risk, then I agree that terraforming is ultimately desirable.

But entire planets claimed by crushingly authoritarian political systems or uncontrolled profit-seeking corporations doesn't seem like a great way to safeguard humanity either.

What do you want terraforming for?

Primarily avoiding the single point of failure. Extremely secondarily, to create a diversity of human cultures, because I think that will ultimately create a bunch of things people enjoy (better art etc.).

Any country bound by that treaty can withdraw from the treaty with a notice of one year, considerably shorter time frame than necessary for terraforming Mars, I suppose. If the US won't withdraw, then other countries would. And there are already nations that haven't signed it.

Also, Spacex is not a party to the treaty. The treaty binds the countries, not their citizens or companies. I don't know if there are internal US laws banning sale of land.

Finally, the ban in many state laws on selling cars directly to consumers didn't hold back Tesla. I doubt a treaty from 1967 would hold back SpaceX

The legitimacy of a company or individual is derived from the country they belong to - the country who signed the treaty would have to enforce it against their citizens.

The Outer Space Treaty will be repealed as soon as practical colonization and commercial resource extraction is viable and profitable.

> Spacex is not a party to the treaty.

I know, and I didn't say it was. Only nations can ratify treaties. However, the OST states that "States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities" [1].

> I doubt a treaty from 1967 would hold back SpaceX.

SpaceX is a US corporation and is subject to US law. If maintaining the OST is in the interests of the US then SpaceX would absolutely be held back.

I think of the OST as a sort of Nash equilibrium. Given the current situation (no terraforming on the horizon), it is arguably the best place for everyone to be. If the rules change in the future them some different set of controls would come into play.

[1] http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/intr...

> And land sale? The Outer Space Treaty [1] prohibits governments from claiming ownership of planets, so where would the authority to sell land on Mars come from?

Possession is 11 tenths of the law.

The Treaty of Tordesillas gave the modern USA to Spain. How'd that go?

> Possession is 11 tenths of the law.

Thats the problem that the OST tries to address. If more than one party claims possession of a territory (say Mars) then they can either settle things legally or with gunboats (err.. space battle cruisers). Given the absence of an off-Earth legal system to adjudicate, and with no compelling need to create one then or now, conflict would therefore be a likely outcome. So the OST just tries to defer the problem for a while. At some point, extraterrestrial territorial claims will need to be settled though.

I think the Martians will determine what their laws are. You can only legislate over what you can control. All the 'space laws' are whistling in the dark.

Amassing great wealth implies that metals and barren lands on Earth are currently rare & expensive. They're not.

Metals: choose an elemental metal you think is rare. Look up it's Wikipedia entry, and look at its availability. It will be expressed in terms of a percentage of the earth's crust, something like 0.01%. Multiply that by 2.6*10^22 kg and realize that we're not going to run out of it any time soon, nor is it rare. It may be expensive to mine, but compared to the cost of transporting on rockets? Cheap.

Land: you can buy prime farmland in Saskatchewan, Canada for USD500 per acre.

And the weather is much nicer, even in Saskatchewan! You get all the air you can breath!

Honestly though - isn't Venus more likely to take well to terraforming

Venus - like Mars too, is missing an essential element for terraforming: water. On both planets this is long lost, and the constituent elements, espcially hydrogen, is gone from the surface.

Unless there is a way to massively mine the rocks for the hydrogen and oxigen, there is no other way to terraform a planet like Mars or Venus. I am afraid that would put the terraforming efforts like hundreds of years ahead.

Mars has plenty of water:

"More than five million cubic kilometres of ice have been identified at or near the surface of modern Mars, enough to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters (115 ft). Even more ice is likely to be locked away in the deep subsurface." [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars

The problem with Venus is that the atmospheric pressure at surface level is about 92 times that of earth, the surface temperature is 735 K, and the atmosphere contains 96.5% carbon dioxide, while also containing significant amounts of sulfur dioxide. This is even more toxic than the Martian atmosphere.

If you want to terraform Venus to a (human livable) state you'd probably need to give it a solar shade to cool the planet to decent temperatures, shrub the 4.6 10^17 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and remove those 7.210^13 tonnes of sulfur dioxide.

edit Also, please note that Venus has a 117 earth day solar day, while the Martian solar day is only 24h 37m.

Sources: wikipedia, google, calculator

Each time I'm hearing about minerals (like in asteroid mining) I'm wondering how do you deal with atmosphere re-entry ? Meteorites made of metal are melting so what's the plan here ? And which country will be ok to receive a ton of unguided metal on its territory ?

There's literally 0 chance that mining anything on Mars and bringing it back to Earth would be profitable. Obviously mining is still going to be important to build things on Mars, but sending any metals over, no matter how rare, is just crazy.

You are thinking what we can do right now. Probably the same thought had the Europeans 500 years ago.

The energy cost of transporting mass over distance isn't going to change no matter what technology we invent.

Maybe not Mars, but asteroids definitely. Platinum is $33k per kg. Bringing back a tonne would net you $33 million.

I think the point is that while it may be worth $33 million, it would take much, much more than that to get it safely back to Earth.

Also, the price of platinum is currently driven by the knowledge that it's naturally scarce and the likelihood of a large amount of "new" platinum coming on the market is low. If this ever changes (we somehow figure out how to profitably bring back a tonne of platinum), then the price would likely crash, as the amount out there in space is essentially infinite.

If you bring back a tonne it would make the value plummet. And $33 million is still more than your average space mission, and this wouldn't be an average space mission.

Coat the metal in an ablative shield made of Martian rock (handwaving over how this is done), fire it to earth using a mass-driver, guide it in with an on-board chemical rocket engine, and drop it into the Pacific for recovery (more handwaving).

Of course, this also has other uses [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

I think the whole idea of space/asteroid mining is to use them eventually in space based manufacturing. The biggest cost of space exploration is actually raising a spaceship into outer space. If you just build it up there it's very fuel efficient to transport between space and to other stations/planets.

Ok in an Ender's game future, but asteroid startups are talking about ten years...

It wouldn't be able to hold onto all of that wealth really. Even the East India companies couldn't really succeed at acting as nation states.

> rather high barriers to entry.

About 55 million kilometers/34 million miles high at least.

(nitpick)

In space, you count barriers to entry in km/s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v

A high barrier to enter and a high barrier to escape, too. Velocity wise.

Have you ever flown over northern Canada or northern Russia? Empty land is ridiculously plentiful on earth.

This is kind of exploitative attitude is why we're in the situation we're in with Earth.

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