If you are new to this website you will want to know, as early as possible … is this all real and legitimate?
The answer is YES it is.
This is NOT a novelty entity.
This is not a cunning scam.
We now have over 150,000 happy ‘Martian’ members from every nation (and we want one million by 2022).
It is 100% serious.
FACT… Now scroll down to see the evidence for that…
We are happy with the recent BBC TV documentary that went out on UK National BBC News and was aired at least twice on TV (first on South Today). It shows that the British media have now realized that this Mars Land Claim is a serious venture with strong legal foundations. Click ‘PLAY’ on the image below to see this short documentary by journalist Ben Moore.
For more evidence of our recent TV coverage (including Dr Davies’ recent interview on ITV’s This Morning (2 million audience)), go here: MEDIA
For the most recent (three since 2016) article in The Times newspaper to date, go here: The Times
Even the most pungent of British tabloid newspapers has produced a pretty decent article recently (the correction, an earlier article was complete fiction): Daily Star
These are just the very latest articles … there have been quite a lot of national and international pieces (our favourite was the New Yorker’s) over the last 4-5 years (we have links to them in earlier NEWS items).
- So what are we doing here? We have formed “The Martians”, a group of people from Every nation on Earth. For 10 years we have maintained a witnessed serious claim to “actual possession” of Planet Mars. We have based this claim on existing International Law which does apply to space. Mars, although well endowed with strategic value, is of course a difficult and rather barren place. International law has guidelines on the criteria required of a would-be owner-applicant to prove actual possession, sufficient to gain title ownership of the claimed land. Those criteria vary with the geological quality of the land (not strategic value). The legal platform for our pan-multinational communal Mars Land Claim is grounded upon those criteria advised for the acquisition of difficult, barren land. We have shown intent to occupy the land and have been claiming it for over 10 years. We have developed and maintained a detailed governance plan (including arrangements to hold all land open as common land with UN offered title to hold as trustee). We have employed the most powerful portable lasers (class 4) to regularly target Mars, creating a very small amount of geo-atmospheric control and benefit to Mars (through release of CO2 molecules from the soil). This can be considered to be somewhat trivial in physical/scientific terms, but it is more than symbolic… and it is not legally trivial.
- So we have maintained a technically correct claim of possession to land on Mars. We aim to get our claim appraised and “managed” at COPUOS (the UN committee which created the Outer Space Treaty 1967 (OST) and which meets every year, trying to further develop space law). They will find, as the UK courts already have, that our claim is sufficiently well crafted to give them a giant headache. Indeed, we have no doubt it will be received like a hand grenade! Some of the worlds top international law professors have noted that this claim would give the UN, or any international court, quite a shock. It will certainly not be easy to manage.
- We aim to use this claim to jolt the UN committee into updating space law (specifically the OST), not just to deal with our claim, but more importantly to accommodate the modern plans for space exploitation (mining etc), and to keep us all safe from aggressive weaponization in orbit around Earth and on celestial bodies. The risk from weaponization (even NUKES) in space is looming bigger with each passing year. There will soon be space forces up there. We cannot allow aggressive weaponization. The only law that can stop any of that is the OST, but it is currently being marginalized/pushed aside because it’s “bad for business.” The UN actually wants to update the OST, but it just can’t get enough cohesion in the committee to do anything!.. our claim can give them the jolt they need to make it happen.
- In order to achieve our goal (stinging the UN into updating OST), the legal construct of our claim must be technically correct and as strong as possible. A poorly crafted claim would be laughed out of court (and probably wouldn’t even get to an appropriate court). We have created a claim with such legal elegance that we are confident that it will not only serve us to influence development of space law, it will honestly give opportunity to all our members (people who join us here as co-claimants, “The Martians”) to provide their family descendants with vast areas of actual land on Mars (or huge $$$$$$$$ payoffs from governments and mining conglomerates).
So we are asking people to join us in this communal claim … but why?
Our claim is technically elegant and correct. The pan-multinational construct will enable the claim to fit beautifully with all existing space law (all Treaty Law and Customary International Law). But we acknowledge some weakness. It is strong in construct but not very strong in scale. The truth is that the sustained and targeted use of powerful lasers still only influences the geo-atmosphere of Mars to an extremely small degree. The amount of early benefit and control that we provide to Mars is thus physically trivial. Yet we know from International law, that quite trivial amounts of influence/control/benefit have been used to successfully claim land during the last 100 years. See Las Palmas Island (Netherlands beat the USA), Clipperton Island (France beat Mexico) and Eastern Greenland (Denmark beat Norway). There was no requirement for human settlement and establishment of trade (because the land claimed was pretty barren and distant). So we know that our claim could be viewed as competitive for claiming the difficult land on Mars … but it would be great to make it stronger in scale. At this point, we do not know if we already have one of first Martian astronauts on board as a member! That would certainly give the claim a boost in strength! Realistically, we have two choices: increase the strength of the lasers or increase the number of people who share in the claim. We already use some of the worlds most powerful portable lasers. We might soon be able to double the strength of a laser but that would not add much to scale. If we asked all of our 151,000+ members (correct as of Nov 2020) to each import a powerful laser from Hong Kong and join us in laser applications to Mars, then there could be 150,000 times more CO2 molecules being liberated from the Martian soil. This would not be enough to deliver an atmospheric greenhouse effect (sufficient to generate a new Martian atmosphere …. see Elon Musk’s ideas about using nuclear bombs to do all this the ‘fast way’). So it would still be largely symbolic and would not add much “legal power” to our claim. It would, however, bring hugely increased risk of an accidental meeting of a high powered laser and an aircraft cockpit! This would be a disaster. So our instruction to our members is to leave the laser applications to the core founding team (we have strict standard operating procedures for complete safety) … we deliver the lasers within a sustained single act of possession on behalf of the entire communal claim. So, that leaves the numbers of members. It is indisputable; the more people who share in the claim, the more importance the project is seen to have. We aim to have one million members by 2022 … and we are now on course for that. One million members carries significant weight compared to a few thousand. Hence most of our membership to date has come from mass free issues and the use of vouchers. Only recently have we enjoyed an increasing number of members paying (very small fees) to join us. Why have we started charging for some memberships? … is it not better and quicker to keep with the free-membership strategy? … Well, as you may know (if you don’t, read on), we have decided to go through the UK legal system in order to legitimately access the international courts. We have just completed that, but it was not cheap. We don’t believe in sponging off the state, so have agreed to pay all the UK Gov’s legal fees as well as our own. Dr Davies and his team are happy to do that, but … in order to proceed internationally, we cant keep raiding our own savings (or rather, we probably don’t have enough). The steady aggregation of funds from the small fees payed by new members will definitely help us to stay brave when we try to kick down the legal saloon doors in Strasbourg (ECtHR), Vienna (UN-COPUOS), The Hague(PCA) or New York (UN). Why the standard price of £15 (approx $19) for a claim to 22 Square Km of Mars (average size for a claim is massive … approximately $1 per Sq km!)?.. Well, we calculated that compared to USA, there were more people living in India who could comfortably afford £15/$19. It seemed to be a fair and equitable price.
** OK, so with a technically elegant and legitimate claim, we just need big numbers to give it the strength in scale to really succeed in the UN or an international court. **
Any other strengths and weaknesses a would-be claimant/member might need to know?..
Strengths:
- Founder Dr Philip Davies did previously work within “aerospace” and under the UN … he was a senior medical officer in the Royal Air Force (UK) and is well aware how governments and UN committees conduct their affairs. During his RAF career he became acutely aware of the importance of the OST in maintaining world peace for the future … he became increasingly disturbed by the willingness of progressive governments to have it marginalized in favour of new laws and accords which facilitate space exploitation/mining. He is determined to maintain the strength of the OST against weaponization in space. He see that this means the OST should be updated to accommodate space commerce (with just a little control) in order to stay relevant. His determination to see this through will endure.
- The legal construct of the claim itself… the diamond cornerstone of which is the pan-multinational communal status of the claim. All other constructs for a celestial land claim would currently be barred by OST (Art. II and VI) and the nebulous force of customary international law… but a claim involving people from all nations, represented in equitable numbers… now that’s something else! Until we discussed it with them, most international lawyers had not considered that this unique type of celestial land claim would be so elegantly accommodated by existing space law. You see, when we compared our legal foundations to those of the 1979 Moon Agreement (MA), most of these lawyers reacted with a sharp intake of breath. Many of these lawyers already knew that the MA (a ratified Treaty at the UN) was, de-facto, a pan-multinational communal claim to all of the solar system for all humanity…. the MA claims the solar system as the “Common Heritage Of Mankind” … this communal claim faced no legal barriers… it was accepted into existing international space law with open arms (it is not extensively ratified, but that is due to commercial/political positions and nothing to do with legal foundations). We have allocated claims to nationals of every nation, dependent of national populations, human rights standards and state corruption statistics. Our construct is, in effect, an equitable representation of all humankind. The land claimed will be shared and held open as common land, with the UN being offered the legal title to hold as trustee. We do not advocate a sluggish, bureaucratic UN committee … rather a nimble, pro-commerce, space-users group to administer to the demands of new space exploitation. Not everyone will like the idea, but it is workable, is safe & fair … and has firm legal foundations.
Weaknesses:
- We have already mentioned some weakness in scale (which we are addressing by increasing the number of co-claimants). The other is the lack of international legal expertise within the core team. At the start we educated ourselves. Then we outsourced. This was costly, but most useful. The most benefit we’ve gained towards the legal development of the claim (and our approach to courts) has been in evolving a progressive co-operative relationship with a few of the worlds very top academic lawyers in the field of International space law. Although not directly involved in the business of our claim, these top lawyers have provided invaluable advice and direction. In return, we have kept them up to date with our progress (including court notes, documents and Judges’ decisions). Additionally, two other world-leading experts agreed to act as judges in our international moot court competition (for international law colleges/students), the Mars Prize (pending completion of current real-court events): our thanks here goes to Professor Philip De Man (EU: represents Belgium at the UN) and Professor Fabio Tronchetti (USA & China).
- FUNDS: Dr Davies has paid for all the legal fees including those of the UK Government (High Court Fees!). Without asking new members to pay a small fee (originally all claims and membership was free; there still are a number of free vouchers out there) we might not be able to continue towards ECtHR and UN (the next target). Thanks to media coverage from The Times and BBC (in UK recently) the recruitment has been buoyant, such that by next year, we should have enough to enter the next chapter of our legal journey. So… available funds are hopefully not going to be a significant weakness any more.
SO, WHAT OF THE LEGAL ROUTE SO FAR?… AND WHERE NEXT?…
We filed the claim with the UN (UNOOSA) in 2016 (see below in the evidence section).
We knew from email negotiation with the UK Government that they were quite twitchy around this subject matter, especially when they realized that the claim was serious, with a very original and competitive construction. The UN had advised us (at the time they received our claim submission) that in order for the claim to be appraised at UN-COPUOS, we would have to get a national state member to present the matter to committee.
So, we decided to be brave and test out the UK Gov’s resolve on all this. When they refused to help us get to the UN, we took them to the High Court (or rather we asked the judge for permission).
The approach to court was not to have our claim appraised (a UK court does not have jurisdiction to do so)… it was to demand that the judge compel the UK Government to facilitate our access to an appropriate fair trial by introducing our claim to COPUOS (or another appropriate international forum). Well, the UK Gov certainly did not want to be the delegation to throw a hand grenade (our claim) into the UN committee, so they fought us all the way. The almost 20 pages of their grounds of resistance insisted that there was no firm procedural rule in “UK LAW” that should force them to help us. In the course of their ‘defense,’ they admitted that they couldn’t tell if our claim would prove legitimate within international law or not. They just asserted that their reasons for wriggling out of any obligation to help us was based on an interpretation of UK Law that just had to be “tenable”… the High Court Judge agreed … and just last week the Court of Appeal Judge also agreed … the UK Gov’s interpretation of the law (and actions there on) was, he thought, at least tenable. Both judges also agreed that they could not say, with any authority, if our claim was or wasn’t legitimate within international law … so whilst they all (Gov and judges) acknowledged that our claim could possibly succeed in an international court of law, the UK Government could be permitted to escape having to help us get to such a court.
Of course, we 100% expected this result (although the positive comments about the possibilities for our claim within international law were indeed a bonus). All along, we knew we would need to get to an international court if a nation state would not agree to introduce our claim to the UN committee. In order to get to the European Court of Human Rights (which applies in law to the UK after Brexit, as per HRA 1998), we had to exhaust the national legal system. We have just done that… so now we have up to 6 months to prepare a legal justification for application to ECtHR. This will be a big challenge, but one we are ready for. If we get there, we will probably win. The ECtHR is much more progressive about positive obligations being applied to the responsible state. They will mandate that the UK Government provides us with access to a fair trial with jurisdiction (the UN). That way, we will finally get our claim to the UN.
BUT, but but … now that our claim comprises people from every nation (yes, that includes Vatican City and North Korea (thanks to college staff)!!), we are not only holding on to a claim that is uniquely legitimate, we are also able to approach any of the 95+ nations that sit at COPUOS. We just need one of those delegations to agree to raise the matter of our communal celestial claim to the committee. There is a lot of friction at the committee right now (the Artemis Accords has stirred things up a lot)…. we do expect some nations to have genuine sympathy for the communality and ethical goals of our claim. We need just one delegation to agree … just one. That, of course, will remove any need to go to the ECtHR (although we think that will be fun and media worthy).
SO, WHERES THE EVIDENCE FOR ALL THOSE ASSERTIONS? … PROVIDING EVIDENCE WOULD HELP GAIN TRUST … OK, HERE GOES…
- Our claim was submitted to the UN in 2016 (several formal documents including an application to register the land on Mars: ‘MarsReg 1’). It is thus filed with the UN. This is important as it confirms all we have claimed and also means that when, in future, it becomes acceptable for companies/people to own property on Mars (maybe 100-150 years time), our legitimate claim will be first in line to be considered … FACT. Now, it wasn’t an admin clerk at UNOOSA who acknowledged our claim … it was the Chief … he replied by email to us, confirming receipt and understanding of our claim submission. He also copied our documents and sent them to other senior UN staff, the senior UK Counsel to the UN in New York and another high ranking Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) official. He does helpfully state that as secretariat to COPUOS, the UNOOSA cannot actually do anything with our claim…. if we wanted it submitted to the committee we would now have to get a state delegation to raise the matter directly … that was good clear advice … which we have acted upon!..
- CLICK HERE TO SEE THE EMAILS CONFIRMING THE FILING OF CLAIM AT UN IN 2016.
- We have had several email/phone conversations with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague (this is the court that has most experience in arbitrating on the biggest disputes over land/territory claims. The latest was China v Philippines over the Spratly Islands (that process cost $60 million+). They do stand ready to arbitrate in the matter of our Mars Land Claim as long as there is consensus for this from the COPUOS (UN) committee. They have bespoke rules for arbitration in disputes involving outer space activities (really!). We mainly discussed things with the Deputy Secretary General at the PCA … we are keeping him informed or our progress:
- CLICK HERE TO SEE ONE OF THE EMAILS DISCUSSING PCA READINESS TO ARBITRATE ON OUR CLAIM.
- In 2019, we took the UK Government to the High Courts (specifically, the Foreign Secretary and his Foreign and Commonwealth Office). We demanded that the Judge award a mandatory order, compelling the government to present our claim to the UN (COPUOS). Neither the UK Gov nor the Judge sought to question our “business practice” and indicated that it was for international law to decide on our claim … they just wriggled out of any responsibility to help us get to an international forum/trial with jurisdiction. Of course, we expected that!)…
- This is what the UK Government’s lawyers and the Judge agreed to state (their reasons for not helping us only had to be “tenable”):
“… whether a “pan-multinational communal
claim” is recognised in international law and, if so, whether it falls within Article
II of the 1967 Treaty are complex questions governed, again, solely by public
international law. In any event, even if such a species of claim were recognised to
exist and/or not to fall foul of Article II, this would still not establish that the
Claimant has a procedural right to have his land rights claim referred to COPUOS
by the UK as his national State.”
“… the FCO’s view that to submit the Claimant’s land
rights claim to COPUOS would be contrary to its obligations under the 1967 Treaty
is at least tenable, meaning that there was no error of law.”
- So, of course, we then had to take the UK Gov to the Court of Appeal (in order to access the ECtHR in Strasbourg, we must first exhaust the UK legal system). Again, the Judge made no criticism about our business practice. He just agreed that he could see no firm procedural rule in UK law that would mandate the UK Government to help us (we say there is in the ECHR, if it can be seen as engaged). He also thought the reasons the government gave for not assisting us were based on an interpretation of law that was questionable, but still at least “tenable”…
- CLICK HERE FOR A COPY OF THE ACTUAL COPY FOR THE APPEAL COURT JUDGE’S DECISION (Fri 13th November). So, next stop is ECtHR in Strasbourg (<6 months to prepare).
OUR PLEDGE:
We will do our best to honour the trust placed in us by those people who join us (The Martians) as co-claimants and members.
We understand that some of those people join us because they too are concerned about world peace and our safety in a world where the Outer Space Treaty (OST: the only law stopping NUKES being placed 350 km above our heads) is being pushed aside and risks being dropped altogether because it’s seen a bad for business. We will do our best to use the legal construct of our claim to jolt the UN into updating the OST to keep it relevant and strong.
We also understand that for many of our members, they joined with the dream of providing their future families with vast areas (9 km – 35 km) of land on Planet Mars. Well, our claim certificates are NOT novelty gifts (unlike all those other “businesses” selling novelty celestial deeds …. remember, these are legitimate claim certificates, not worthless novelty deeds). We will do our best to make this dream a reality. We securely maintain the records of all transactions for future registration purposes (the details of both purchaser and the intended claim certificate owner, if both are different).
We will keep our members updated by email, social media and via this NEWS section of the main website.
Now, take a deep breath; do you wanna be a Martian?.. [there’s NO going back!] … you do? … then this way please … JOIN THE MARTIANS!
MR
November 2020