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This week, Elon Musk’s SpaceX will test SN8, the eighth three-engine iteration of the Starship rocket class that uses fuel that could be mined from Mars itself. Spaceships are meant to transport people to their glass-domed habitats on a terraformed Mars.
With Musk aiming to have one million people on Mars by 2050, there are several concerns regarding the nature and implementation of the rule of law on the red planet, especially regarding the local environment. Consider the possibility that if there is native life on Mars, bacteria and viruses carried by humans to the new world could eventually wipe them out. Not to mention the ramifications that any terraforming of the planet to be more Earth-like will have on any indigenous life, if any. We already have a long history on Earth detailing how introduced non-indigenous species have damaged their new ecosystems, threatening or even wiping out its flora and fauna entirely.
An astronaut encountering life on Mars (illustration) Photo: Shutterstock While international and bilateral efforts such as the recently signed Artemis Accords likely contain language that promotes the sustainable use of outer space resources, even on Mars, the language is (probably by design) vague and unclear, such as we discussed in a previous column. As such, these agreements wouldn’t do much to prevent people on Mars from acting with reckless abandon when it comes to the Martian environment.
Sure, astronauts and space navigators are likely bound by rules and regulations set out here on Earth, however, they have little incentive to abide by them, especially when they are tens of millions of miles away, even though they are generally conscientious people.
And while there are many rules that we all abide by on a daily basis and that will need to be followed by those living on Mars, there are a few that are likely to expire. Like on Earthy, many of these guidelines are followed because we can justify them through our sense of morality, such as not stealing or killing. However, there are other rules that we may be less inclined to follow, especially if we don’t appreciate their justification or if we have strong conflicting demands. One such example could be the conservation of the Martian environment by early settlers.
As Amazonian farmers who may not like, or who don’t care to like, given their dire economic conditions, how their limited deforestation on their small plot of land affects the global climate, so too Martian ranchers may not have incentives. sufficient to protect the environment at a potential cost to their safety, protection or satiety.
This could be especially true if settlers aim to be self-sufficient. Recent research suggests that the soil of Mars is far less able to support our standard plant life than previously thought, perhaps requiring the introduction / contamination of nutrients and microbes to allow Mars explorers to properly grow their own food. .
In the Amazon, economists have suggested that society put its money where its mouth is. If we truly believe in the value of the environment to our way of life and appreciate the conflicting and immediate needs of farmers, then we should address both concerns through a process known as payment for environmental services (PES).
Under this type of payment scheme, Amazonian farmers receive monetary compensation for not cutting down the carbon sequester trees on their land and for not harming the environment from those who believe the costs are justified given the potential damage. to humanity. This conservation plan money has had mixed results in the past.
The system also requires intense policing to make sure Earth-Martians don’t cheat the system, especially when offensive actions could occur on a different planet. One potential solution is some kind of smart contract, in which disincentive payments to prevent environmentally harmful activities on Mars could be paid incrementally and automatically if certain conditions are shown to be met via sensors or cameras.
Consider the following example: A team of green earthlings arrives on the Red Planet after an arduous journey of months into space. Sensors installed throughout the burgeoning colony of Mars would keep track of how many times one of the new visitors decontaminates their spacesuit before leaving the glass-domed habitat and heading into the pristine Martian environment. After a predetermined number of successfully completed decontaminations, a system based on smart contracts would automatically forward the remuneration to the individual’s bank account. Similar blockchain-based ideas have been considered elsewhere.
Unfortunately, while such efforts may work on an individual basis, they may not be enough to prevent an influx of space miners, especially if the Martian environment proves to be a profitable source of raw materials. It is unclear how an Earth-bound society could enforce proper management of a potentially hugely resource-rich Martian ecosystem from so far away, when the benefits could clearly outweigh any payments offered through a PES program.
Of course, all of these efforts could be questionable if researchers started sending small, easy-to-build spacecraft loaded with enough tools to begin recreating Earth-based contaminating life throughout the universe, as the former chair of the Department of Astronomy of Harvard, Avi Loeb recently suggested.
Dov Greenbaum is director of the Zvi Meitar Institute for Legal Implications of Emerging Technologies, at the Israeli academic institute IDC Herzliya.
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