Thursday, May 12, 2011

Like the Police but in Space

So who exactly enforces international law? Let's say I'm out in the middle of the ocean, I dunno, on a boat or something. And let's say some guy on the boat with me gets all uppity, so I do the honorable thing and stab him in the face. And let's say everyone else are a bunch of pussies, and they get indignant about it and want to turn me in. Who are they supposed to call? The Coast Guard? I don't think so, since I'm in international waters. Anyway, I can just look this up later, but I'm using it as a segue to something else. Like the awful segue I'm doing right now.

Have we decided who has jurisdiction in space yet? I mean, let's say personal space crafts become ubiquitous, and people are just flying up into space all the time. What if I stab somebody THERE and I got caught somehow. Who's allowed to arrest me? Am I still under the control of whichever country I took off from? I mean, I know we'll probably have laws from whoever colonizes the moon first, but what about open space? I think this is the sort of thing we need to plan ahead on.

That's our problem, I think. Are we planning ahead for these kinds of scenarios? Or are we just gonna go with space anarchy? Actually that would be kind of cool in a sci-fi kinda way.

Not that it matters anyway. NASA's broke.

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