If that person owns the rocket company which got everyone there in the first place? The response will probably include seizure of all Earth based assets including the rockets, use of those rockets to fly to Mars, and by way of this give the idiot who thought it was a good idea to be obviously dangerous while in charge of interplanetary ballistic missiles a personal introduction to dangerous end of the first real human space marine.
Needless to say, the likely-Earth-based shareholders are likely to be unimpressed by such a colonial government.
If they don’t own the rocket company and don’t threaten the main colony? That might end up like Jonestown.
> If they don’t own the rocket company and don’t threaten the main colony?
And if they do threaten the main colony or even take it over entirely?
My point with my comment was that because mars is far away, any earth response on mars would be rather slow. Mars would have plenty of time to react if earth ships soldiers over or whatever and they wouldn't care about seizure of earth assets. As for ballistic missiles, to what end? Kill all the innocent colonists to get rid of the warlord?
Even if it was the person that owns the rockets, if they're on mars, they may no longer care about the earth assets. I mean, if its a one way trip, they wouldn't be able to do anything with them other than send supplies. I assume if they were to play warlord, its at a point where they no longer care about the supplies. If earth used those rockets to invade mars, mars would still have plenty of time to come up with a plan to shoot them down or whatever.
> Needless to say, the likely-Earth-based shareholders are likely to be unimpressed by such a colonial government.
If mars is a one-way trip away, why would they care about Earth-based shareholders?
Not saying such a takeover would end well for mars, just that the isolation leaves it wide open for some maniac to play warlord. I also think its more likely that its not the person who owns the rockets, if someone does decide to do that.
Bit of a shift, given that before your earlier comment we were discussing “is Musk and SpaceX being a bit feudal”, but sure.
Military action between the main colony and outliers is going to involve not-yet-invented doctrine and tactics because we don’t yet have enough experience of building such settlements to properly consider what warfare in or between them will look like.
One thing we can say is: anyone who looks like a dictator, and is based on Mars, and who has interplanetary rockets, is a threat to Earth, because while stealth in space can always be beaten by having more sensor coverage, it’s really hard to action that information. Likewise, Mars will see the Terran space marines coming and, depending on industrialisation level, either have a really hard time doing anything about it, or find they’re being preemptively RFG’d to stop them doing that to Earth.
(Hello MAD my old friend / how about a nice game of chess?)
> Bit of a shift, given that before your earlier comment we were discussing “is Musk and SpaceX being a bit feudal”, but sure.
Well, I was responding to:
> The Outer Space Treaty means anything launched from Earth remains the responsibility of the nation who launched it. SpaceX most certainly is under the jurisdiction of the US and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
My response being that jurisdiction may not mean anything, simply because of the distance involved. That was my point. If mars is a one way trip, then earths influence may turn out to be quite minimal, simply because its hard and slow to move between earth and mars. If earths influence is minimal, then jurisdiction is a rather moot point.
Needless to say, the likely-Earth-based shareholders are likely to be unimpressed by such a colonial government.
If they don’t own the rocket company and don’t threaten the main colony? That might end up like Jonestown.