After a recent vertical landing of the SpaceX rocket was definitely clear: we live in the future. Soon people will conquer Mars, the company will start mining the resources on asteroids and the terrestrial planets will find dozens. Thank progress, what else to say. Yet life in the future will not begin without a set of questions to which the answer will be found before they arise. Here is a list of crazy problems people are already working on our specialists.
The Constitution Of Mars
Who wants to live on Mars? “I want,” you shout. Life on the red planet has been the dream of every fan of the cosmos for many decades. But the creation of human colonies on Mars is not just a logistical nightmare. It can also become political.
Remember the bad guy in total Recall who cut off the oxygen captured by the rebels areas of Mars? It turns out that this problem is real. At the international conference ELC in London suggested that power-hungry colonist might one day take control of the supply of oxygen on Mars, providing yourself unlimited power.
And there are other concerns. What if your Corporation will fire you and you’re stuck on Mars? ELC believes that the solution will be of the Martian Constitution.
The first sketches appeared in the summer of 2014, worked on them 30 scientists, philosophers, lawyers, and based on the Constitution of Mars must address these and many other problems. Composed of American, Icelandic, Mongolian and Japanese constitutions, it establishes the principles like the right to oxygen and the right to leave.
It also involves the political class, modeled after ancient Greece, where the government is elected and part is determined by lottery. It keeps the overboard political apathy and prevents the emergence of vested interests.
Although the current draft has no legal force, ELC considers it quite possible to implement real Martian Constitution.
What to do with the Mars revolution
The Constitution of Mars is not the only area of interest to ELC. In the summer of 2015, a conference was held by the British interplanetary society on an alarming scenario: what might happen if Mars dictatorship?
Dictatorship on Mars may be even worse than dictatorship on Earth. A tyrant may put people at risk from denial of water or oxygen. The revolution on Mars, too, may have disastrous consequences. One enraged citizen can break the walls of the colony or blow up the water, killing all inside. At a distance of 225 million kilometers from earth, the possibility of humanitarian intervention will be minimal, if at all feasible.
But not impossible. In addition to a strong Constitution ELC also considers academic question of the location of multiple and redundant sources of water, air and energy in the colony.
There are other considerations, like how strong must be the Martian government. Nobody would like to deal with the overly rigid state, but the hostile climate of Mars could not support a libertarian utopia. If you don’t achieve the right balance, you’ll produce resentment and revolution.
How to carry out a serious operation in space
Have you ever broken a limb? If so, you probably remember the intense pain followed by the sweet embrace anaesthetic and a day or two in hospital, if lucky. In deep space will not be so. Break a leg and have to deal with the inevitable nightmare of blood and pain away from the hospital.
Right now, any space in which we are present, is not deep enough to pose a problem. On the International space station actually has a procedure to “return that person to Earth as quickly as possible”. But for future missions into deep space, this option is not suitable. Since 1991, NASA is trying to figure out how to conduct an operation to save lives in the absence of gravity. Experiments have not yet been marked with success, to put it mildly.
The tests were carried out on rabbits during flights of the aircraft in the condition of microgravity and showed that the blood tends to cling to a working surface, rather than drain, which complicates the surgery. Opening the artery can cause the blood shot into the air and block the view of everyone. There is also a significant risk of infection. Since the particles do not settle, the air on the space station is filled with bacteria.
One option involves surgery on the patient through a small, fluid-filled dome, keeping the blood in place and the wound clean. But there remain challenges. Problems with excess weight (payload of the ship) meant that surgical suites are likely to be basic, and among the crew may not have the specialist surgery. Until you decide what to do with it, on long-term missions can be forgotten.
The law about the ownership of asteroids
In November 2015 the US Senate voted for the legalization of resource extraction on asteroids. This was a significant departure from previous space law, according to which the heavenly bodies belonged to everyone in the world. While American citizens still can’t own the asteroid, they can apply for the extraction of resources on it, and after saving all that extract. Regardless of whether you agree with it or not, this law opens some interesting possibilities.
For example, what happens if two competing companies will claim on the same asteroid? If these companies are American, then the U.S. court will resolve the dispute. But if one is American and the other Chinese? Despite the fact that the Senate bill overrides current space law in the international arena he has no such rights both in the United States. And there is no international legal framework that could resolve the dispute.
There are also questions about what it means to “receive” the asteroid. Do I need to physically land on it or is it enough to explore it at a distance? If the latter, then some lawyers are concerned about the possibility of a tsunami unusual statements from companies that have rights to the development of many asteroids, not landing on them.
How to save a warning for 100,000 years
Deep in the frozen heart of Finland, an underground disposal plant, Onkalo conceals a deadly secret. Being the ultimate destination of the most dangerous nuclear waste in the country, it stores the radioactive materials that will be safe for another 100,000 years. In 2010, Onkalo became the subject of a Danish documentary Into Eternity, which raised an interesting question: how can I ensure that people will stay away from this place for 100,000 years?
It may seem simple, but the ancient Egyptians tried the same thing with the tombs of some pharaohs, covering them with serious warnings. And they lasted exactly as long until we opened them and could not read kanji.
There is no guarantee that our descendants will speak any of our languages. When an American takes the original “Beowulf” and tries to read it in Anglo-Saxon (seemingly “native” language), do not understand almost nothing. So much English has changed in 1000 years. Multiply that by a hundred times, and the problem will become obvious.
There is no reason to assume that there will be international characters like our symbol of radiation. More direct signs like skulls and images of death can only encourage further research. Team tasked to design the sign “Stay away”, which will last forever, find this activity interesting and challenging, but dealing with it as soon as possible.
How to preserve our culture for the future
Digital culture is not immortal. Systems are updated, data shivute, links break, sites go. Once all your digital photos, marked “likes” will be lost forever. For archaeologists of the future this will become a serious problem. As a result, modern scientists are trying to find a way to save our digital data on hundreds of thousands of years.
One solution could be to leave them in the form of DNA. In 2012, scientists have proven that you can take megabytes of data, convert them to DNA, take back and recreate the source code. Because of the importance of DNA can be assumed that the civilization of the future will know how to decrypt it. But we need to make sure that the DNA will last a long time, because it usually breaks up pretty quickly. While I plan to store it in the form of fossils.
We have learned to read DNA from fossils older than 700 000 years. And although the ancient bones were highs, glass granules suitable to preserve DNA better. Robert grass from the Swiss creates a library of “synthetic mineral glass” in an attempt to save as much of our culture, as long as they could.
And yet questions remain. For example, how are we to leave instructions for the future of civilizations on the theme of extracting this DNA? Or even worse: how can we help them to understand what is valuable? There is a possibility that even if the stored information is preserved for the next 700,000 years, the archivist of the future will consider it trash and throw it away. And how do we define what is really important to the civilizations of the future? Because for us the most valuable source of information about ancient civilisations is their garbage.
The flag of Mars and Earth
We humans do love our flags. They are symbols of all that we love, in their own countries. If you do not believe me, try to burn the flag of your country on fire in the center of the city. You will be brought to the hospital, and then in places not so remote.
As our species prepares for life in space, we will need to use the flag on a planetary scale. So dozens of respectable people spent a lot of time trying to create the flags for the Earth and Mars.
The most famous of them is perhaps the Martian flag, designed by Pascal Lee. Being a scientist working on the NASA HMP project in Antarctica, Whether as a joke, designed the flag of a terraformed Mars based on the French tricolor. To his surprise, he was taken from HMP database. In December 1999, astronaut John Grunsfeld even took him into space, making it a little closer to the official Mars.
Others tried to do the same with the Earth. In the 70-ies of James Cadle has created the flag of Earth. It is strongly associated with the experiments on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and he’s still hovering over different places SETI in the world. Not so long ago, a Swedish team developed a flag of the Earth with the specific intent to place it on Mars. This team has high hopes that it will get to Mars in 2030-ies.
Turning London into a city-state
Not all the questions of the future are linked to the cosmos. Some have roots in the near future of the Earth. In the UK one such issue is the separation of London and its transformation into a city-state.
The idea came in 2012, when London has avoided recession speed, leaving the rest of the UK order impoverished. Although in the near future this will not happen in high places are discussing this option as highly probable. The basic plan is to make greater London into a kind of European Singapore. The rest of the UK will be a separate country, and London will be exempt from subsidizing the rest of the country.
The ethics of raising children in space
In November 1620, peregrine white was the first English child born to pilgrims in America. It is highly likely that we will see the birth of the first child not of our world in the near future, on Mars or a multi generation ship that will travel in search of new Land. Although this point probably won’t come soon, it already raises a lot of difficult questions.
One question concerns consent. For example, a child born on the ship, no one to ask. As peregrine white was never asked whether he wants to return to England, and the first “star man” do not provide freedom of choice.
The other question is, how much freedom will get such space children in their lives. Once in the colony, living on the dusty plains of Mars, the child will be deprived of most opportunities to choose in life. The choice of school, choice of profession, choice of University, choosing to return to their home planet.
Other issues less related to the ethics of anthropology and more. Say, a multi generation spaceship will fly 500 years to a planet to colonize. What kind of people will emerge on the other end? Will the grandchildren of the grandchildren of the first team to feel any connection with Earth? If they want to colonize a new planet? If not, then what will? These questions are not only of academic interest.
The Independence Of Mars
Assume that the Martian colony is formed in our lifetime and will grow large enough to become samomoderirovanie, with a permanent population, without constantly changing teams of scientists. The logical question arises: “to be accountable to Mars?”.
And this is an important point. History shows that the colonies usually begin to abandon their owners after a couple of generations that often leads to revolutions. This process gave us the United States, made India independent and has led to the fact that Spain had lost control of 90% of Latin America. If this process occurs often on Earth, there is no reason to believe that he’s not going to happen in space. If we don’t find a way to avoid it.
Some scientists are already taking steps in this direction. Jacob Haqq-Misra from the Institute blue marble suggested that Mars should be independent from day one. His plan is that the colonists were deprived of earthly citizenship since landing on Mars. They will receive equipment, control of Mars and the freedom from earthly laws, while society does not take place so that they can establish trade relations with Earth.
However, this plan has problems. The rebels of His Majesty’s Ship “bounty” were left to themselves after secretly landed on Pitcairn island in 1789, and almost all were killed in the massacre. Given what we know about human nature, it is easy to imagine how something like this would happen on Mars.