How would governments on Mars or different planets function and interact?
Life on Mars
Living on Mars is something many people think of and want to achieve, Elon Musk the CEO of SpaceX says “perhaps 40 or a hundred years later, Mars could be home to a self-sustaining colony of a million people” [1]. Before looking at the governmental structure of Mars it would be beneficial to first look at how life is on Mars. Before having humans actually go to Mars there would be many supply ships sent first to help sustain. Life on Mars would be a glass dome at first until Mars is terraformed to support life like earth[3]. 
[4]
Depending on Mars and Earth’s position communication between the two planets can also take from 5-20 minutes[7], making video communication between the 2 plants being practically impossible with our current technology, with this kind of delay makes it much harder to communicate clearly with Earth.
Type of Government
For Mars to have a functioning society, some type of government has to be in place, whether it is a democracy or dictatorship or anything else. Elon Musk believes that the government on Mars should be a direct democracy[5].
There are also many other opinions as to how Mars would be governed, Peter Voelkl thinks that initially we can let Mars be governed similar to Antartica[6]. Because they are in a similar legal state, there are international treaties that state any space on foreign planets cannot be claimed by any country[2]. However, since it will most definitely take time before we can be self-sufficient on Mars, letting each country have their own little settlement would a good idea as governments on Earth can give whatever support they need to stay on Mars. One downside to this idea would be looking at human history we can say with relative certainty that at some point colonies on Mars will want to become independent, and having an interstellar war although would be like something out of a science fiction novel is not something we want in real life. And Randy Segal of the law firm Hogan Lovells says: “The whole of space law contemplates that those of us on this planet share the rights and responsibility to make space something we can all share together”[2]. Segal believes that the world should work together to build a functioning society on Mars. An issue that will surface with this method is that even on earth we do not have a unified type of government, if an urgent issue arises on Mars it may take very long for all the nations to make a decision together.
Specific laws on Mars
As the environment on Mars is vastly different from Earth it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there should be some special laws in place, Musk gave some policies on the removal and addition of laws[5], however something that is more relevant to specifically Mars would be possibly a law that heavily punishes wasting resources, vandalism and other acts that can heavily danger other habitants on Mars. Especially in the early days of colonization a loss of resources can result in millions of dollars put into sending an emergency supply that may or may not arrive in time[1].
Interactions with earth/other colonized planets
How Mars interacts will largely depend on how Mars is governed. Without closing this case first it is hard to discuss how Mars will interact, when acting as settlements from earth Mars would most likely be trying to become self sufficient and receiving a lot of aid from earth. At this point it is unlikely that humanity would be trying to colonize another planet at the same time, and even if we tried, the colony on Mars would most likely only interact with them through Earth as a medium if at all. What will be interesting is when Mars establishes it’s only government, when Mars becomes self-sufficient and declares it’s own “Country”. Mars will have to start trading goods with other countries. Mars will have to be able to make practically everything on the planet itself as buying from earth will have very heavy transportation fees. Therefore, any non Martian items will be very expensive on Mars or will have to be bought in bulk. As a country Mars will not only have to buy but also sell to other countries, it would seem quite difficult to profit off of anything on Mars, however Mars does have an abundance of minerals[8] which would most likely be the main source of profit in trading with earth or any other planets.
Conclusion
Until Mars can be completely self-sufficient without earth, it would be practically impossible to set up their own government as trading and getting necessities becomes very expensive. Personally I think that treating Mars like Antartica is the best way to go at the start, this method should be used until we become a much more advanced civilization, where we can travel around Mars with relative ease and be self-sufficient. After Mars becomes independent from Earth the specific structure of government would be hard to predict. However, no matter what type of government it is, inter-planetary trading should only occur with very profitable items as a lot of the profit will be lost in transportation. That’s my idea of society on Mars, but who knows maybe by the time Mars can be self-sufficient, technology will have advanced exponentially and none of the values we have today will matter at all.
“I think that Mars is gonna be a great place to go,” Musk says. “It will be the planet of opportunity.”[1]
Citations
[1] National Geographics, Elon Musk: A Million Humans Could Live on Mars By the 2060s, NADIA DRAKE
[4]Phys.org, Matt Williams : When will Mars be close to Earth?
[5]YouTube, Recode: Martian Democracy | Elon Musk, SpaceX | Code Conference 2016
[6]Quora, Quora users : What type of government would a settlement on Mars have?
Interesting question. If mining minerals would be the main source of profit in trading, then there would be a lot of mining happening on Mars. Do you think that mining the minerals would pollute /harm the environment on Mars?
Thank you, I haven’t quite thought about the environment yet but I believe that since terraforming Mars will be essential to living on mars anyways, the environment will be largely artificial. As well as mining minerals will likely not cause much damage to the ecosystem on Mars so it should be okay.
Great job Eric! Amazing post.
I never really thought about the government system if we move to mars. It was really informative to read about how we can go about that. I think it was an important topic to think about.
Your post was informative and written in a way that made it enjoyable to read. I appreciate seeing the different ideas people had for the way Mars would govern itself, and also the consequences of each idea.
Great post! Would the process of implementing governments apply to colonizing other planets in the future?
That is, like, so true. Honestly, living Mars is probably not happening until we’re on our last legs so cheers to the future generations 🥂
Good post by the way 😄
Well done! It was informative, well written, and interesting to read.
I am happy to know what Mars’s future government may look like, with all the pros and cons. I am sure it will be interesting if/when it happens, too.
I enjoyed this presentation as it wasn’t a typical astronomy project. I liked how most of his answers were his own opinion. It was really interesting seeing his opinions come out in this project
Really good opinion and a good job taking all of human life interactions into consideration. For example, the communication between earth and mars. Also the type of government. Lots of good detail.