Starships Launch for Mars in 2026. Crewed Flights Possible by 2028
nextbigfuture.com
nextbigfuture.com
1) does spaceX have to recognize the authority of any national oversight body to decide to launch people into space for long duration flight to Mars, or is this actually outside the putatuve body's control?
2) does anyone expect the national regulatory body to approve this? I don't for two reasons: The jurisdictional issues around "property" in space are fraught and a silent compact around "I claim this land" exists, which right now is just silly after dinner blovating but if Musk did launch and land, would not be (much as the whole issue around Antarctica is not a problem, right up until it is) And the second one: Permissive society doesn't mean you can do things just because you want to. Sometimes, you have to obey rules, no matter how rich you are, and flight (and space) is one of those places which is bound by rules. Passengers are different to crew. Even Crew are bound by duty of care, Passengers doubly so. Not that the warsaw convention on lost luggage applies, but you can't just put up a shingle and say "we're good to go" in space.
Mike Hughes, who launched and died in a self-made rocket, the guy who did the balloon thing, Evel Knievl, they're all in a grey area of duty of care (every lawyer within 1000km just sat up and felt a disturbance in the force because I'm not one, and I used a term of art) because there probably was a competent regulatory body somewhere who could (and maybe even did) say "don't do that"
Taking money from people to go to Mars, with a significantly non-zero risk of dying. How different is that to putting rich millionaires in a submersible with a game player control to go down to the Titanic? (Is there a lawsuit in the offing?)
Taking money from people on a future promise to go to Mars, thats a financial regulatory issue. I'd say the FTC is cool with people doing it, they're cool with Cryonic suspension too even though nobody in the world I inhabit thinks there is buckleys chance of the corpsicle coming back.
The FAA could deny approval for launch, but its unclear what the basis would be. What happens on Mars is out of it's jurisdiction, literally.
The UN governs Earth, not Mars. It could expand to cover Mars I suppose. It's the sort of pointless activity you could imagine the European Parliament obsessing over, but there is little they could do about an American launch company.
But the reality is we are centuries away from something approaching a land-rush on Mars, or actual competition between nations for control of anything.
I suspect it will be a "watch and wait and see" situation.
Although it covers states, not individuals, and was signed in the 1960s. That said, most space law still derives from these outdated laws and treaties and we're sorely in need of an updated approach that recognises things work differently now. Even if not for Mars, we need it to work better in orbit and on the Moon.
Since he doesn't have a matter transporter, he has to transit from a legal regime his company assets exist in, to some mythical point where the jurisdictional boundary lies. I think that is likely to be where alignment of the limits to US lawfare, and the headache of privatized use of space combine.
If I was China, I'd refuse to recognise any claim to ownership of assets beyond Geosynchronous. I wouldn't deliberately go to the lagrange points and graffiti the JWST, but I'd sure as hell make sure Musk knew that if he finds magnetic monopoles or tritium supplies, China expects it's cut. (magnetic monopoles don't exist.)
The law on this is ample: it would be the same as it was on the high seas and in unsettled lands on Earth, before busybody narcissist state bureaucrats had the power to insert their opinions of how others should live into all human life.
Artic and Antarctic exploration is littered with stunningly bad decision making from Franklin's search for the Northwest passage onward.
I live in one of those "uninhabited" lands, claimed by the state as "Terra nullius" anything but of course.
So it may make no sense to you why someone would get in a rocket, or trek to the south pole, or ride a motorbike, or perhaps go further than sight distance from your house, but others want to live an exciting and impactful life during that brief blip of time before they die. And that life is their property, not that of some self appointed guardian.
Im sure in this age there are plenty of people who want to die and are happy to risk their lives in the pursuit of adventure. If they want to risk it going to Mars let them.
the new vikings