Comment by mandevil
1 day ago
International space law (starting with the Outer Space Treaty of 1967) says that nations are responsible for all spacecraft they launch, no matter whether the government or a non-governmental group launches them. So a server farm launched by a Danish company is governed by Danish law just the same as if they were on the ground- and exposed to the same ability to put someone into jail if they don't comply with a legal warrant etc.
This is true even if your company moves the actual launching to, say, a platform in international waters- you (either a corporation or an individual) are still regulated by your home country, and that country is responsible for your actions and has full enforcement rights over you. There is no area beyond legal control, space is not a magic "free from the government" area.
While that's all true, it does hilariously increase the difficulty for the government showing up and seizing your server hardware...
They don't need to do that if they go after your ground station operators.
To escape the law you need to hide or protect something on earth (your ground station(s), downlinks). If you can hide or protect that infrastructure on earth, why bother putting the computers in space?
Because you need an enormous amount of energy to run the servers. You may hide the downlinks but you still need power.
4 replies →
ASAT missiles have existed since the 80s and multiple countries have demonstrated the capability to destroy something in space.
Meanwhile, you, the actual human being the government wants to coerce, are still on the earth, where someone can grab you and beat you with a wrench
Maybe not so much... they'll just grab you. Obligatory XKCD.
https://xkcd.com/538/
Unless you go up there with it and a literal lifetime supply? Although I guess if you don't take much it's still a lifetime supply...
What if you’re a stateless person? (Not an easy status to acquire these days, but any US citizen can just renounce their citizenship without getting a new one, for example.)
Being stateless has an end result of "literally anyone can fuck with you" more than "no one can fuck with you".
What if you just launch it in secret and don't tell anybody?
Unless you invent some new launch method, a dozen or so countries will immediately know.
Shortly afterwards, amateur astronomers will spot it. https://gizmodo.com/amateur-astronomer-catches-fleeting-glim...
1 reply →
nations are responsible for all spacecraft they launch, no matter whether the government or a non-governmental group launches them.
Nations come and go. In my lifetime, the world map has changed dozens of times. Incorporate in a country that doesn't look like it's going to be around very long. More than likely, the people running it will be happy to take your money.
Generally though, countries don’t disappear: they have a predecessor and a successor.
A successor may take possession of the land, but that doesn't mean it will also take responsibility for the previous government's liabilities.
2 replies →
Those kinds of countries don't tend to be the kinds of countries with active space programs.
And more critically - they have successor states.
The Russian Federation is treated as the successor to the USSR in most cases (much to the chagrin of the rest of the CIS) and Serbia is treated as the successor to Yugoslavia (much to the chagrin of the rest)