What kind of society would a Mars colony be?

A settlement more than 60 million miles from Earth would have to sustain its own government and economy.

[adamwhiteson]

"Launch as early as 2022." That aged well.

[dhanyakumari]

Martians should be given the right to decide

[stephenhoughton]

The outer space treaty does not say not subject to private or public ownership. It says not subject to national appropriation. Even that clause is against the basic principals of international law. But at least get what you quote right..

[solrey]

An RBE that's what will work with development of machines to do labor and also will help lower the chance for error which could be life threatening thereby putting the focus of humans to learn to be Engineers scientists doctors geologists things of that matter things that actually interest us and will help speed up the process of making Mars habitable

[phosphoros]

The current Outer Space Treaty technically only applies to terrestrially based states & persons. It would be ridiculous to assume that the treaty would be able to be enforced on any independent Martian state with sufficient power to ignore the treaty.

[davidpainter]

if dist1 < dist2 then
print(enemy1)
else
print(enemy2)
end

[ozzyfromspace]

The "Right to oxygen" and "right to radiation shielding" sound like common sense, but also, Is never thought about it, so nice point to bring up. I'd like to mention that one problem with being hyper-specific about what rights you provide your colonists is that if something isn't expressly written for, leaders can get away with not providing it. An example of this is the proposal for space tourists to the ISS. They're classified as "space participants" and not astronauts. This seems minor, but actually, if an astronaut is stranded in space, that person's country has an obligation to rescue him/her. This doesn't apply if you're a "space participant". It kinda makes sense, right? The US government, say, wouldn't wanna deal with the PR nightmare of a foreign citizen that went up in an American rocket getting stuck there. Or even an American.. expecting Washington to act creates massive perception liabilities. But this means that space tourists need a unique set of protections. Because such protections don't exist today, companies can get away with not doing certain things. For instance, if a tourist gets stuck in space, it's unlikely that SpaceX will mount a rescue mission, because it costs $62M just to get the falcon 9 up there. So it's not entirely a problem of foresight; we can expect companies to look the other way with regard to certain rights and protections. PS I'm not a lawyer (not even close). This is just my opinion/observation, looking at the space industry from the outside :)

[impulse]

Nobody on earth has the right to make universal laws. Musk has the right to claim land on Mars.

[crypter]

I would it would resemble the old west to some capacity!

[nightlightabcd]

No mater what, sooner or later, it would be a colony of the dead for Mars has only 38% gravity of earth!

[heatherkelly]

Imagine the relief of all mars colonists when they don't have the burden of rent, or mortgage lording over their time according to the treaty these are only Earth concepts and colonists wouldn't have this to stress over. There would still be plenty to work towards such as resources to build and develop space for their lives and families. One thing for certain... Mars would have no room for non-producers. Everyone absolutely must contribute to something.

[alseddraco]

Derect dimocrasy is the most athoritarion