Psst. Wanna Buy a Planet?
The catch is the condition that the seller must build and maintain a space settlement, and provide transportation to anyone, of any nationality, willing to pay the price.
There are reasons to go along for a Congress focused on the well-being of the United States and its citizens, but we must save space, so to speak, by letting Alan Wasser tell them himself. (2)
The trouble with the proposal is that there is just nothing in it for the legislator, who is being asked to promote an undertaking that will very likely change the system he or she has mastered so well. Frontiers do that. After all, the opening of the American frontier had the effect on Europe of making some of the first (mostly monarches and religious bosses) last and some of the last first. Frontiers demand change in the way government is conducted to fit the new conditions. What if space colonists implemented a kind of Internet-moderated democracy that made representative democracy, our republican form of government, obsolete? Without a frontier, such things would be impossible, much as John Locke's ideas about equality were impossible to implement in Europe. Might not new ideas developed in space colonies also infect terrestrial populations, leading to some kind of anarchy (gasp!) in which the present bosses had trouble being bossy?
Come to think of it, there is one thing we could offer the Congressfolk that might serve their individual interests. We could offer space colonists immunity from prosecution for crimes committed on earth. Of course, our Congressional leaders may think that voting for a space settlement initiative that contained an immunity clause would entice the Justice Department to launch investigations of the "aye" voters.
On the other hand, Congress might come up with legitimate reasons for nixing the plan. Here's one: Is it wise to hand over the military high ground to a collection of CEOs whose canon of ethics amounts to some 300 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition?
Think it doesn't matter? Neither did the Pentagon in the sixties when some crackpot scientists at General Atomic raised the possibility of lofting nuclear battleships into space (see "The Point Loma Legacy"). The Pentagon thinks differently now. In fact, some of its denizens are calling the gulf war, with its space-based secure communications, reconnaissance missions and munitions guidance, "the first space war". (3)
Apparently, the coming "weaponization of space" includes such innovations as kinetic energy rods, solar energy
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