Can a City on Mars Secure Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? People Will Decide for Themselves.

If we agree with the Declaration of Independence that human beings have a natural right to consent to a government to secure their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then we can foresee that people settling on Mars will want to establish such a government.  But will they succeed in doing that?

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, Robert Zubrin, and Charles Cockell give us a wide range of answers to that question.  The Weinersmiths say no:  this cannot be done, at least not within the next 100 years, because we don't know how to keep people alive on Mars, and we're not going to be securing their liberty or their pursuit of happiness if they're dead.  That's why Mars sucks.

Cockell agrees with the Weinersmiths that Mars sucks, but he does believe that we can develop the technology for securing at least the minimal conditions for some people to live on Mars.  Since Mars is so awful, however, he foresees that few people will want to live there.  He thinks a few adventurous scientists (like himself) will go there to study Mars in searching for answers about the origins, development, and diversity of life in the universe.  And yet, even these few scientists will not want to stay on Mars for long.

And if eventually a larger number of people go to Mars to establish permanent settlements, Cockell worries that their governments on Mars will tend to be tyrannical because of the "problem of oxygen":  the concentration of power in a centralized government that controls the artificial life support systems that provide oxygen and other resources necessary for life will exercise absolute power over the people, whose obedience will be enforced by the threat of withdrawing their life support.

To overcome this tendency to Martian tyranny, Cockell insists that we will need to design economic, social, and political institutions that limit, divide, and decentralize power to protect liberty; and in doing that, we can draw lessons from the liberal institutions for promoting liberty on Earth, particularly in the history of the United States.

Zubrin insists that the Weinersmiths refuse to take seriously the ways in which the technology of supporting life in space can reduce the risks to human life that come from space travel and living on a planet like Mars.

And just as the Weinersmiths exaggerate the threats to life in space, Zubrin argues, Cockell exaggerates the threats to liberty.  Actually, Zubrin claims, "the case for Mars is liberty."  "Whether they wish to or not, Martian cities will compete for immigrants.  The ones with the best ideas will draw the most people.  This is why dystopian totalitarian space colonies controlled by villains who tyrannize their subjects by threatening to cut off their air will remain mere fictions.  A successful extraterrestrial tyranny is impossible because no one would move there" (Zubrin 2024: 11-12, 187).

On Mars, Zubrin argues, there will be a Darwinian cultural evolution by natural selection that favors liberty.  "The evolution of Martian cities, like that of biological species on Earth, will be governed by natural selection.  The cities that attract the most immigrants will grow" (Zubrin 2024: 12-13, 152).  And those cities that attract the most immigrants will be those that secure liberty--the liberty that fosters the innovative inventiveness in technology necessary for human surviving and thriving on Mars.

Although Zubrin does not cite Locke, he is restating Locke's argument for immigration as cultural group selection that favors free societies.

I don't know how to resolve this debate.  But then perhaps we don't need to.  Ultimately, people will decide this for themselves.

Now that Elon Musk and other space entrepreneurs have shown that it's possible and even likely that privately organized space travel with little or no dependence on governmental space agencies can send a crewed spaceship to land on Mars in ten or twenty years, we can expect that this is going to happen.  Then people will decide whether to go to Mars or not.

If Mars really is as awful as the Weinersmiths and Cockell say it is, then Cockell is probably right in predicting that only a few scientists and professional astronauts will be willing to go.  They will voluntarily agree to face the dangers of space.  And as they spend years in space travel and on the surface of Mars, they will provide the best test of whether life and liberty on Mars is possible.  Over the years, people will learn from their experience and decide whether it's worth going.

As long as this is all voluntary and based on informed consent, I don't see anything wrong with it.

Now, I know that the Weinersmiths have warned that we know very little about the possibility of "space babies": we don't know whether people in space will be able to safely reproduce and rear their young without damaging effects from space on the children.  And surely even if the adults have voluntarily assumed the risks of space travel, the fetuses and the children will not have consented to this.

But don't we rightly allow people a lot of freedom in trying out experimental reproductive technology--in vitro fertilization for example?  This imposes a risk on the offspring to which the offspring cannot consent.  Would this also apply to reproduction in space or on Mars as risky experimentation chosen by the parents?

The Weinersmiths say that before we do this, we should experiment with sending mice, or preferably primate animals, into space to see if they can safely reproduce offspring that can grow to healthy adulthood.

I can see the argument for doing that.  But I can also see that if we allow men and women to voluntarily go to Mars, they will eventually engage in their own sexual and reproductive experiments in space.