Monday, May 25, 2015

Private Planets



"People who haven't watched Movies like Avatar and are unaware of the concepts of Death-star should avoid sarcasm"~A Failed Sci-Fi movie director
Every now and then we hear about people and corporations buying islands in order to develop a family resort or Very High Net Worth Individuals trying to buy private islands with sprawling pent houses in the name of privacy but still they end up criticizing the media and people for trying to spoil their privacy and freedom.

Then we have audacious people like Sir Richard Bronson who are trying to leave earth for quite sometime now with little success to cheer him up but we also have people like Elon Musk who is ambitious enough to develop rocket engines similar to soviet ones for his space program although with better and more practical goals among the people who are looking forward to leaving this planet; then we have a corporation(although not for profit) called "Mars One" who have set their sight on Mars like moving to Mars is their birth right and they shall have it no matter what.

Therefore contemplating private planets as the ultimate epitome of seclusion and privacy for Earth's ultra rich people in future(in order of a couple of centuries) may not be that far fetched after all; but the question which is more cumbersome is
How?
Firstly we should be able to develop technologies such as spaceships suited for Deep space travel along with it economic uses for the resources potentially extracted from other planets to make such a project economically viable even for potential "trillionaires" of future but wait a minute

Do we have planets close enough to our home in order to pursue this wildly impractical but literally heavenly dream of owning a planet?

Actually "Yes" and "No" both because we do have many suitable real estate options(Rocky planetoids and Moons of Gas Giants) in our Solar System but actually they are not classified as planets in the strictest sense of the word(which is that it should have a direct rotational axis around its star) in fact we have 146 moons in our solar system which are rocky enough to land quite a few spacecrafts.

Secondly we need Space entrepreneurs on the scale of a million times of Elon Musk and his SpaceX to fund such endeavors in the future and then the most important thing which is Pricing
So what should be the price of a planetoid up for grabs?
Logically guessing it should be based on its proximity to earth, Level of difficulty in inhabiting it, Extractable natural resources etc.

The most unimportant but necessary thing needed will be the survival of our current global order without any newer regulations and treaties which may get enforced in the future which could restrict investment outside Earth by private institutions because then unforeseen complications can arise between the governing bodies and the private investors in question which could lead to Legal battles over the control of real estate in space between contenders.

But we can only hope that they don't fight "Space battles" on the lines of European navies of 17th Century fought for newer colonies far away from Europe because by that time we humans would have matured or would we?

But i heard Europeans were quite wise and gentle in those days and they too had treaties but when the time came..............they played "Age of Empire:Gold edition" with each other.






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