Which means they've had 300 years to do the paperwork at their local galactic planning office, and didn't.
Of course, the poll question refers to interstellar travelers mining lifeless outer bodies analogous to Pluto, so the Baku are not germane to the situation. Also, I wish I'd gotten a POLL indicator in my thread title, but I didn't for some reason.
If United Earth Law is anything like ours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty Signatories to this treaty agree that Outer Space is the Province of Mankind and that usage and exploration of it can be done for the betterment of humankind. It appears to disallow private and state territorial claims while allowing resources to still be used. It is technically administered through the UN via Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space There is a later updated Moon Treaty but it has very few signatories and those who have signed it can't launch anything to space anyway. Luxembourg ratified the OST but recently has clarified its position to state that it would acknowledge ownership of resources extracted in space. So far it is the only nation to do so. So to answer your question, the solar system, most terrestrial territories within it notwithstanding, is the Province of Mankind. But the extractable stuff is under the protection of Henri Albert Gabriel Félix Marie Guillaume, Grand Duke du Luxembourg
It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'
I've long felt it was just a ploy by Ru'afo to force the Ba'ku to abandon the Briar Patch and its inherent healing properties, so that they had to age like the So'na. It's my headcanon that Ru'afo never intended for the collector to work, and was as astonished as he was that the simulator showed it doing so, because he thought it wouldn't.
Speculative backstory time: just being in the Briar Patch is enough to keep the Son'a alive, as their ships aren't shielded against the [whatever they were called; sue me]. They know that if they stay in the Briar Patch long enough, they'll get younger, and regain what they've lost. The majority of them don't want to wait. Ru'afo, however, is the titular insurrectionist of the story. He wants the Ba'ku to suffer and die, and really doesn't care how. As stated, it's mere speculation. But I wouldn't put it past the writers to have had this in mind somewhere along the way, even if they officially rejected/abandoned it as not part of their intended narrative.
But if you say that primitives should hold those rights, how about a star system with a species that isn't quite sapient yet, but very close (Let's say earth of 3 million years ago)? Or a planet with a flourishing ecosystem that could in time produce such a species ? (let's say Earth, 100 million years ago?) Or a star system with a planet that has primitive life ? (like Earth, 1 billion years ago). Or even a planet that could evolve life? Where do you draw the line? As for this Outer Space Treaty (quoting from Wikipedia) This was agreed upon in 1967. I'm curious as to how much of it effectively will go out of the window the moment it actually becomes commercially feasible and profitable to exploit such "celestial resources".
to me an existent sentient species is it - earth 100 million years ago could be settled by vogons, ferengi, whoever
I note that you assume that there were no intelligent beings on Earth 3 million years ago. That seems like a bold assumption to make. The genus Homo goes back only about 2,000,000 years.but the genus Australopithecus existed about 3,500,000 years ago, and members of that genus might have been intelligent enough to be classified as people according to United Federation of Planets definitions. Furthermore, in addition to Homo sapiens there are presently about 90 species of mammals with large brains on Earth that might possibly be considered intelligent beings and thus people. They included species of apes, of proboscideans, and of cetaceans. It is believed that the ancestors of humans and the ancestors of chimpanzees split about five to six million years ago, or maybe earlier. If sometime in the future chimpanzees are decided to be intelligent and people, then the question will be whether 1)humans and chimps separately became intelligent and their common ancestors were not intelligent or: 2) the common ancestors of humans and chimps were already intelligent five or six million years ago, and possibly much earlier. If some or all present species of proboscideans and/or cetaceans are intelligent, then there could have been intelligent beings on Earth millions of years before the first intelligent primates. As far as I know there have been proboscideans and cetaceans with large bodies and large brains - and thus potentially intelligent beings - for about twenty or thirty million years. According to the Voyager episode "Distant Origins" the reptile-like Voth species in the distant Gamma Quadrant are believed to be descended from dinosaurs on Earth. Presumably their ancestors became intelligent and created interstellar travel and left Earth and colonized the distant Delta Quadrant sometime before the extinction of dinosaurs 65,000,000 years ago. It is speculated that the Voth might be descended from an unknown species of the genus Hadrosaurus, the only known specimen of which dates from the Woodbury Formation which dates to about 80.5 to 78.5 million years ago. Or maybe they might be descended from some related species of duck-billed dinosaurs. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Voth I note that in 2011 It was suggested that the vertebrae bones of 45-foot long ichthyosaurs at one site were deliberately arranged in a pattern by some giant cephalopod that killed them and ate them and then decorated its lair with bones of the victims. https://www.livescience.com/16470-kraken-sea-monster-lair-discovered.html In 2013 a second set of strangely arranged bones was found, and a fossil of a cephalopod beak. https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain...vidence-revives-sea-monster-debate-8C11507013 This theory has found very little acceptance. But if it does happen to be correct there would have been giant cephalopods in the seas 250 to 200 million years ago. And cephalopods that might have been as intelligent as modern ones, or maybe more so. So it is certainly possible that there have been species of cephalopods as intelligent as humans in the long history of cephalopods in the waters of the Earth. So if all humans become extinct or leave Earth for greener pastures sometime the future, and the biosphere is still strong and healthy, it is possible that other species of intelligent beings might evolve on Earth in the future, before Earth becomes uninhabitable for complex lifeforms. So how long will Earth remain habitable for large and complex lifeforms that might evolve into intelligent beings? I have to wonder what proportion of habitable worlds in the Star Trek universe have one or more intelligent species evolved on them in the first 3 billion years, and what percentage in first 4 billion years, and what percentage in the first five billion years, and what percentage in the first six billion years, and so on. Since we don't have good statistics for such matters in the Star Trek universe we have know way of knowing what percentage of planets with life in the Star Trek universe will eventually have intelligent beings evolve on them or how soon it may be predicted to happen in the case of a specific planet.
It's true that I picked a somewhat random date, a bit before the advent of our current species and the status of other species can be argued. However, your reaction exactly underlines my point. Where does one draw the line?
Also, we have these star systems where several planets are inhabited, by different folks, and not all of them (perhaps not any of them) are interstellar. "Spock's Brain" shows an extreme case with three inhabited worlds within one star system, two pre-spaceflight and one post-spaceflight. Who gets to decide on the mining rights on the outer rocks? If the natives are aware of each other, and have worked out some sort of a mutual understanding, should outsiders respect that or go by their own, more universally accepted model? Nature may not abhor a vacuum, but any leadership ought to. Even within star systems, there are always takers. Legislation that defines "me" as the only legitimate taker should always be presumed. But which is the better way to keep Klingons from exploiting the dilithium of Backwater XII? To declare it UFP property, even though the Federation has no means of economically exploiting it yet, or to declare all "neutral" or "native" territory automatically off limits to everybody, so that when the Klingons get to it, the UFP can blast them to bits in the name of interstellar law? Timo Saloniemi
When you borrow a car, before you return it, you fill up the tank. (In the Book) Mote in the Eye of God, they had "intellectual" arks, where the next civilization capable of doing a little math, after the fall of the current, could get in and get a leg up to the atomic era, since there were no more fossil fuels on Motie World, to make sure that no dark age lasts more than a few decades. The moties who had rabid over population issues, could bomb themselves into the stone age and then build back up to Moon Rockets thrice a century if they were having a bad run of things. Man is going to leave Earth, and replace the fossil tables with artificial oil and artificial natural gas so that the evolved Golphers first in line to take over, don't get stuck on wood burning steam engine power for 50 thousand years. It's nice to think that we might be cool like that.
If a super advanced Alien Race arrived on our doorsteps tomorrow, it wouldn't be long before we figured out who owned not only "our" planet, but the Solar System as well. I'll give you a clue. . . .it wouldn't be "us"
A corporation could either incorporate in a country that didn't ratify the treaty, or estabish in a country where the government would take money to pull out of the treaty. Hopefully America will leave the treaties behind once the treaties get seriously in the way.
No. The bar for "decent movie" doesn't move just because Nemesis and Into Darkness went way below where Insurrection did. The mere existence of Battlefield Earth doesn't magically make Wag The Dog any better. At that point, I'd say it would be up to the Federation (or whatever interstellar civilization is visiting) to decide: Either they would begin developing the star system for their own use, or, they would make the system a preserve, in which case, if sapient life developed, they would no longer be able to decide to convert it back for their own development. Probably, at least in the case of the Federation, they would preserve it if sapient life appeared to be on the cusp of existing - if the monkeys are already banging the rocks together, so to speak. Depends on what you mean by "advanced". You probably mean it the way we generally do - physically advanced. But if they were super *psychologically* and *sociologically* advanced, then perhaps they wouldn't approach dealing with a less advanced species in the way we might expect from our own less advanced perspective.