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Comment by vaksel | Hacker News Reader

it needs competition, private companies would be all over this if they could profit from space exploration. Setup a law that states that any landing on the planet will get the lander all land for 250 miles, and you'd have hundreds of missions lifting off trying to get a piece of the pie.

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Like Earth, the resources on Mars are at the bottom of a gravity well and lack the benefit of Earth's breathable atmosphere, massive infrastructure and ~7 Billion inhabitants. What, exactly, would you profit from by owning 250 miles of that? A business would do better to snag 1 mile of diamond-yielding tundra here instead.

Want something valuable? Mine an asteroid for platinum, build fuel cells out of it, and undercut the terrestrial competition while cleaning up on the profit. Right there you've identified a competitive advantage (low-cost of scarce resources) to satisfy a growing market which exists today.

Who cares about earthly laws in space? You can take whatever you can lay claim on.

I am all for private enterprise and creating incentives, but would that work? We know that there are metals and minerals that could be mined in asteroids and other planets. But, so far no private mission has been carried out. In fact, only recently have private companies started launching satellites into orbit, which is kind of trivial when compared to mining the Moon, or Mars.

Last but not least, suppose that you would grant any spaceship landing in Mars the right to own all land within 250 miles. Sounds great, but why wouldn't they explore and mine the entire planet if they could?!? It's not like you have CCTV cameras on Mars to know what they're doing, where they're mining, etc. Hence, in a way that's a false incentive.

That's because the cost does not justify the payout. Sure you could go and mine on Mars, but there is no guarantee you'll keep the land if you find anything. By setting up a rule that if you explore it, it's yours...you'd have companies rushing to plant their flag...not because they wish to explore, but to lay a claim of ownership on the area for the future.

As far as companies mining the entire planet, sure they could, but they'd be poachers. The 250 mile area claim would have legal rights of ownership backed by earth governments.

The rule would obviously need to add some extra provisions to drive innovation. I dunno, require colonies within 100 years, or trips every decade to show the flag etc.

There is a reason that pretty much every single explorer on earth was financially backed by either a company or a gov't grant.

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