Meet the family doctor selling land claims on Mars to prevent the militarisation of space
THE colonisation of Mars may be considered humanity’s next big project but one man says, technically, he already has ownership rights over the Red Planet — at least in part.
It might sound crazy, but he’s not exactly wrong. At least not yet.
For the past six years Phillip Davies, a 49-year-old family doctor from Hampshire, England, has periodically used a commercial telescope and a laser to shoot a few quadrillion light particles towards the surface of Mars.
What’s the reason for this peculiar exercise?
Well according to the current letter of the law, he thinks it gives him a “legitimate” land claim on Mars that could be legally ratified, and he is working hard to get an international court to preside over his land claim.
Dr Davies doesn’t want to own Mars, instead his mission is to force the global community to shore up international space law due to a fear that the systematic weakening of the current space treaty will open the door for the militarisation of Mars and other planets.
In an email to news.com.au, he called his land claim “preposterous but technically legitimate”.
And that’s exactly the point.
By exploiting a loophole in the 50-year-old Outer Space Treaty (OST) which, according to the UN outlines the principles governing the activities of nation-states in the exploration and use of outer space, he hopes to provoke genuine change in the legal framework that is supposed to govern the universe.
“It was meant to be preposterous ... it gave us opportunity to highlight the dire status of the only law that prevents nuclear weaponisation of space,” he wrote.
The OST forms the basis for international space law. It includes a binding law that stops nuclear weapons from being launched into orbit or placed in outer space. However there are plenty of gaps in the treaty and it has proven increasingly outdated on pertinent issues such as asteroid mining and other commercial ventures in the celestial arena.
Instead of updating the treaty there is concern governments will largely ignore it going forward, or abandon it all together.
“That treaty is severely at risk of being dropped or marginalised due to it being bad for business,” Dr Davies said.
Last year US President Barack Obama signed a controversial bill known as the US Space Act giving US companies legal ownership of materials they extract from asteroids and other space bodies, causing some to predict a galactic gold rush will soon take place. It was a move that was described as dangerous and potentially illegal.
“This act of sovereignty completely breaks the OST,” Dr Davies said.
THE LOOPHOLE
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty states: “Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”
However Dr Davies is trying to exploit a loophole in the treaty which asserts that ownership claims can only be prevented when made from space itself, and not Earth. The treaty also states that land claims can be made for barren and difficult to settle land without setting foot on it, if the claimant can prove that they are able to improve it — and that’s where the past six years of laser beams comes in.
Dr Davies is arguing the light particles have a “very small, but nevertheless relevant, beneficial effect upon the land, atmosphere and any primitive organic life on Mars.”
“In using solar mirrors or lasers, light and heat can be targeted on the polar regions to liberate CO2 gas from dry ice. Just a three degree temp rise will be enough to create a greenhouse effect ... that might benefit any primitive photosynthetic life which might actually still exist on Mars.”
It’s obviously a Hail Mary play, but one that just might make enough noise to achieve the desired result. He admits it all sounds a “bit wacky” but says it’s all grounded in international law.
Dr Davies says he has been in contact with the Permanent Court of Arbitration and has published snippets of the email exchanges with the court’s Deputy Secretary General Brooks W Daly, on his website.
He believes his issue could be addressed as early as next year.
The PCA in Hague, Netherlands is the international court that just ruled in favour of the Philippines in a dispute with China over land ownership in the South China Sea.
The courts’ involvement is a rather fitting outcome because it’s easy to look at what is happening in the South China Sea and imagine a similar scenario playing out in space in the decades ahead.
“Unfortunately, the only way to prick the UN into action on this is to demonstrate the OST weakness against our claim in an international court. If we can get them to update the OST then it can stay internationally relevant and thus stay strong against weapons,” Dr Davies said.
“We can see in the emails from UN that they are moving ever closer to a positive consensus to have our claim case submitted for such formal arbitration.”
MILITARISATION OF SPACE A ‘HISTORICAL INEVITABILITY’
NASA as well as private companies such as SpaceX are all aiming to put humans on Mars in the coming decade or two. It’s a mammoth task in itself and it will be a long time until we have any viable human base on the rocky planet.
So it might seem a bit premature to be worried about countries putting nuclear weapons in space but world governments are clearly heading in that direction.
It was just under seven years ago that Air Force Commander Xu Qiliang of China’s People’s Liberation Army told state media that the militarisation of space was a “historical inevitability”.
As Scientific American pointed out in an article last year, China and Russia’s increasingly ambitious military space programs are improving the possibility of conflict in outer space.
“Space has become the ultimate high ground,” wrote Lee Billings, author of Five Billion Years of Solitude, on the search for alien life.
MARS FOR SALE
In order to finance his campaign and fund apotential arbitration process, Dr Davies is selling off bits of his land claim on Mars.
His campaign is about keeping space “safe and free from weapons” and he is hoping others will buy into the fight.
“We’re looking for people to join us in this campaign and in doing so those people will get a genuine and strong claim to vast amounts of land on planet Mars,” he says in a video posted on his website.
Through his website mars.sale, he is offering people the chance to buy 10 acres of Mars for just one US cent.
“The by product of all this is that we have constructed such a smart claim that it might actually get us the land title to Mars,” he said.
So far more than a thousand people have bought in, including plenty of Australians.
“For some reason our biggest group of supporters are Aussies,” Dr Davies said.
“The feedback we get from Aussies is that they recognise that we need to make a legally compelling claim in order to prove the weakness in the existing outer space treaty.”
So if you have lots of money and want to buy the possible slice of Mars, here’s your chance. Just don’t plan on sending any weapons there.
The Race To Space48:22
As the planet becomes more crowded, eyes are rising to the stars. The colonisation of space is no longer science fiction, it's big business, from NASA to entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. Frans von der Dunk is a space lawyer, and one of the few people in the world trying to bring some order to the space race.
Originally published as ‘Preposterous but technically legitimate’