David Ariosto is the author of the upcoming Alfred A. Knopf book, “Open Space,” and co-host of the SpaceMinds podcast on SpaceNews.
In 1606, a group of English merchants, nobles and adventurers decided they needed three transatlantic ships to pursue riches in the “New World.” Rivals Spain, France and Portugal had already amassed immense wealth across Latin America, and England’s King James I was looking to catch up. The crown, however, was also wary of risking public money. So, in order to finance the effort, the men formed what became known as the Virginia Company, a joint-stock group that allowed investors to pool their money and fund voyages to a narrow peninsula with a freshwater source near the Chesapeake Bay.
King James granted the company a royal charter, giving it the power to devise its own leadership and establish England’s first permanent colony in the New World. Governance would come in the form of a corporate entity, with early colonists effectively employees whose rights and responsibilities were often dictated by company policies. Ultimate authority resided with the king, embodied in a governing council that wielded authority over local matters. But overarching control would more practically tree back to the company in London, whose influence touched virtually every aspect of colonial life.
If history is any guide, this may also be how the first Martian settlements are established.
With President Donald Trump beginning his second term, buttressed by the CEO of the world’s most powerful private space company, humanity’s corporate-driven future on the Red Planet may be closer than ever before. During his second inaugural address, President Trump promised to “pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars,” and send astronauts to plant the American flag on Mars.
It might seem a curious move for an administration that had launched the Artemis program, Apollo’s successor, which instead gave primacy to the Moon. President Trump, however, has “always been focused on Mars,” and considered the Moon merely “a stopping over point,” Doug Loverro, who served as NASA’s human spaceflight chief under Trump, told me weeks after Trump’s election win.
But, he added, “NASA instead turned it into a more complicated [series of missions regarding] settlements, the harvesting of water and making fuel. NASA created all of that. But I think Trump always believed Mars was the right thing to do.”
That sense of a coming pivot has reignited a time-honored Mars-versus-Moon debate as old as the Apollo program itself. Knowing there are finite federal contracts in any major space-borne endeavor, the industry has often been in conflict over this very dilemma.
Recently, however, many NASA observers had assumed that the question had finally been settled. The U.S.-led Artemis program, which includes 52 countries, has been focused on a human Moon landing, which would return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. Spurred on by India, but more significantly China, both of which have achieved uncrewed Moon landings, America is again making its own lunar play. Only this time, Washington is leaning more heavily on private companies, which develop their own spacecraft, rockets and infrastructure, all loosely organized under the Artemis umbrella.
This emerging geo-political competition in the cosmos, therefore, is not just a rivalry between nations, but also a contest of philosophies and competing visions for how best to pursue human development of space.
Absent the kind of unified national effort that once benefited America’s Apollo program, so far, only one private company — Houston-based Intuitive Machines — has been able to pull off a lunar landing. And yet even they are looking further afield. Despite that first commercial touch-down near the water-rich lunar south pole this past February, along with a recent $4.82 billion NASA contract for lunar communication and navigation services, company leadership told me it has nonetheless kept its eye on Mars in the event of a potential pivot.
The company’s liquid methane and oxygen-powered landers, in fact, employ just the sort of rocket fuel likely to be developed in the Martian environment, which Musk also uses for his mega rocket, Starship. That is because of trace amounts of methane in the Martian atmosphere, but more importantly, the ability to make methane from the carbon dioxide (which fills the Martian air) and hydrogen found in Mars’ ice. A more than century-old process called the Sabatier reaction, invented by the French chemist Paul Sabatier in 1897, discovered that when hydrogen is added to carbon dioxide under certain conditions, it produces methane, water and energy.
“The emerging geo-political competition in the cosmos is not just a rivalry between nations, but also a contest of philosophies and competing visions for how best to pursue human development of space.”
Because the Martian atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide, and hydrogen is the most abundant element in the known universe, using methane-powered engines could tap into a ready fuel source on the Red Planet (and beyond) once the local infrastructure is developed. That homegrown availability of Martian fuel could then start to remove the need and expense of bringing extra fuel from Earth, while also contributing to the more rapid growth of human settlements.
SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture, United Launch Alliance, are all developing such vehicles, as is the Long Beach, Calif.-based Rocket Lab, founded by Peter Beck. But it was the China-based LandSpace that garnered the first major win in 2023, sending the first methalox-fueled vehicle into orbit.
Methalox, which is just a term for rocket propellant that’s made up of liquid methane and liquid oxygen, has a similar density to kerosene, but burns cleaner and can be more efficient, allowing for smaller engines with comparable thrust. That, in turn, frees up more space for cargo. No matter how adept those first Martian settlements are in living off the land, they will still need lots of cargo. Until a local Mars industry emerges, life support systems, habitat construction technologies, rovers, communications equipment, medical supplies and spare parts will all have to be flown in from Earth.
Starship, in that sense, is the real game changer. When it comes to settlement-building on Mars, there is nothing comparable. Capable of carrying up to 165 tons (150 metric tons) of cargo into orbit in its fully reusable mode, or roughly the weight of a blue whale, its 33 methalox-guzzling Raptor engines constitute the most powerful launch vehicle ever built. (The most powerful of China’s Long March class rockets, by comparison, can send up just 25 metric tons, though future Chinese rockets are expected to have payloads more comparable to Starship.) Starship, given its sheer size and composition (stainless steel is relatively radiation resistant), could, in fact, be used as the first permanent human facility on Mars.
And Musk clearly wants to use it. Now, with a new Trump presidency, boosted by the cash and cachet of the SpaceX founder, he may get more of a chance. During the campaign, Trump routinely appeared with Musk, who often sported his signature black “Occupy Mars” T-shirt during rallies. Days after the election, the two men watched a Starship test flight together at SpaceX’s Starbase in South Texas.
On Jan. 2, the SpaceX founder made his position even more clear. “We’re going straight to Mars,” he posted on the X platform. “The Moon is a distraction.” His company, in fact, plans to send five mega rockets to the Red Planet in 2026, when Mars’ and Earth’s orbits are more closely aligned. If successful, crewed flights would then be expected in as soon as four years’ time.
The Case for Becoming Multi-planetary
During the campaign, Musk — who believes humanity needs to become multi-planetary to survive — claimed that a bloated bureaucracy under then Vice President Kamala Harris, who had chaired the National Space Council during the Biden administration, “would destroy the Mars program and doom humanity.” Harris, an advocate of returning astronauts to the Moon, presided during a period of belt-tightening (particularly during Biden’s debt ceiling negotiations) that resulted in the cancellation of projects like NASA’s VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover), a rover mission to the Moon’s south pole. NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) — the agency’s main launch vehicle for returning to the Moon, and a direct competitor to Starship — has also faced a growing price tag and numerous delays.
Meanwhile, Musk’s companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, have been subject to fines and a bevy of investigations that Musk has complained have stunted Starship’s progress. Now, poised as he is to have an outsized influence on space, his vaunted place atop the planned Department of Government Efficiency, which has a mandate to “slash excess regulations [and] cut wasteful expenditures,” means many of those Federal Aviation Administration regulations and investigations will likely just go away. It also could spell an end to SLS, as the focus sharpens on Mars.
Part of that potential shift (or acceleration) toward Mars may be that “we really didn’t go all in on Artemis,” explained retired U.S. Space Force Lt. Gen. John Shaw.
“We talked about it,” he told me late last year. “But where’s the infrastructure? Where’s the lunar domain awareness infrastructure?” Shaw, who served as deputy commander of U.S. Space Command from 2020 to 2023, believes there are three potential options for the new administration.
“We’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.”
One: Maintain the status quo, acknowledging that the U.S. can’t afford SLS or Artemis to the extent it requires to compete with Chinese lunar ambitions.
Two: Invest more meaningfully in the kinds of resources needed to beat China back to the Moon, leveraging SpaceX’s Starship and supporting programs.
Three: Pivot to a “leapfrog” strategy, which means pushing past the Moon and focusing instead on Mars as the main national prestige goal.
The administration’s thumb, it seems, is now firmly on the scale toward Mars. But how that happens depends as much on the directive as it does the personnel.
Enter Jared Isaacman.
NASA’s New Leadership
Last month, Trump tapped the billionaire entrepreneur and Space X’s Polaris Dawn commander to run the agency. Like Musk, Isaacman made his money in financial transaction software before leveraging his fortune into space travel. An influential associate of Musk who had already commanded two private missions atop SpaceX rockets, Isaacman — who still requires a Senate confirmation — vowed in a Dec. 4 post on X, that “Americans [would] walk on the Moon [again] and Mars” — a statement that seemed to indicate America’s lunar ambitions were still very much in play. NASA had, of course, already signed lunar landing system contracts with both SpaceX and Blue Origin, valued at more than $4 billion and $3.4 billion, respectively.
However, given Isaacman’s apparent frustration over the two-contract approach to the Moon, given that “budgets are not unlimited,” it now seems less likely these programs will continue as planned. Instead, we may see a pivot. In fact, with upgrades to propulsion systems and aerodynamic aids, there is little reason commercial Moon landing systems could not be modified for the harsh realities of the Red Planet, according to conversations with top commercial and NASA leadership. Atmospheric and gravitational differences, not to mention surface conditions, are, of course, distinct between the two celestial bodies. But both still require precise engineering systems and sequences for entry, descent, and landing, as well as the capacity to operate autonomously.
“I could easily see a situation where Trump says “I don’t need two Moon landers. Jeff, you focus on the Moon. Elon, you focus on Mars,” explained Loverro, NASA’s human spaceflight chief during Trump’s first term.
Meanwhile, Isaacman’s ties to SpaceX — a Blue Origin rival — are well documented. As of June 2021, his company, Shift4, had invested $27.5 million in SpaceX. And while Isaacman says he plans to leave the role of Shift4 CEO if confirmed as NASA administrator, he also says he will “retain the majority of my equity interest” in the company.
“I do lean SpaceX on a lot of issues especially when it comes to government or defense/aerospace industry waste and stagnation,” Isaacman posted on X in June. “But not a blind follower. On the flip side, it’s clear many others will blindly take the anti-SpaceX position simply because of Elon or other nonsensical reasons.”
In 2021, his company noted in a shareholder letter the existence of a “5 year global strategic partnership with SpaceX Starlink,” a satellite internet constellation with nearly 5 million users. The service is designed to provide high-speed, low-latency broadband internet where traditional infrastructure is limited or unavailable, with nearly 7,000 small satellites currently in low-Earth orbit.
Earth, however, is not Starlink’s only potential market.
During a Nov. 7 meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group, a community-based forum supporting NASA, a presentation slide focused on future Mars communications and satellite relay services zeroed in on the development of a “Marslink” constellation, using “multiple SpaceX satellites placed in Mars orbit to provide full visibility and interoperability for ground and orbital assets.”
“This is just a very basic first step,” Musk posted on X the next day, referring to connectivity speeds capable of transmitting at least 4 megabits per second across the distance between Earth and Mars. Speeds of that nature can typically handle basic web browsing, emailing and the streaming of low-quality video.
“Earth and Mars will ultimately need >petabit/sec connectivity,” Musk wrote.
The Beginnings of Martian Governance
SpaceX’s Starlink is on pace to net an astounding $11.8 billion in revenue for 2025, with its first direct-to-cell phone constellation now complete and has surprised industry analysts with its rapid growth. But it was the promise of future off-Earth markets during beta testing years earlier that drew comparisons with that 17th century Virginia Company and the early Jamestown colony. Buried in the beta software agreement of the Starlink app was the following sentence:
“For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”
“It’s likely that the resulting push toward Mars, which will inevitably rely on private enterprise to shoulder much of the risk, will offer favored companies like SpaceX much of the reward.”
Published in 2020, it may have seemed like a joke at first, given there are no Starlink satellites presently orbiting Mars. Musk is also somewhat known for similar gags. Still, in an interview with Law360 that same year, then SpaceX general counsel David Anderman seemed to double down, reportedly saying he was drafting a Constitution for Mars while working at the Hawthorne-based space company.
“I think SpaceX will move to impose our own legal regime,” he told the New York-based legal news service. “I think it will be interesting to see how it plays out with terrestrial governments exerting control. I do think we are going to have a pretty important role to play in what works and what laws apply.”
Neither Anderman nor SpaceX responded to requests for comment on those reported statements. But the ideas predictably spawned a firestorm of controversy.
In an article published in SpaceNews, entitled “No, Mars is not a free planet, no matter what SpaceX says,” Italian space lawyer Dr. Antonino Salmeri argued that “refusing any Earth-based authority over Martian activities conflicts with the international obligations of the United States under the Outer Space Treaty, which naturally take precedence over contractual terms of services.”
In fact, Article VIII of the Outer Space Treaty says that states are to “retain jurisdiction and control,” of registered space objects and “any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body.” It relies on a concept known as quasi-territorial jurisdiction, whereby a state continues to maintain its authority over ships, aircraft and spacecraft, even while operating in far-flung autonomous or semi-autonomous regions. Even if SpaceX launched from non-treaty member countries, the crafts would remain bound under international law by the company’s home country.
“The bottom line is, if Musk wants to go to Mars and establish a settlement, the U.S. government’s going to get involved,” explained Michael J. Listner, attorney and founder of Space Law and Policy Solutions.
Under Trump, however, these reins may be significantly loosened.
The Trump administration, which made regulation-cutting a focus of its campaign, also has a history of skepticism when it comes to international agreements — perhaps most notably the 2017 announcement of America’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords. It’s likely that the resulting push toward Mars, which will inevitably rely on private enterprise to shoulder much of the risk, will offer favored companies like SpaceX much of the reward, much to the chagrin of its competitors. This may also include a great deal of leeway in how future settlements are structured, or how charters are bestowed.
Early outposts could resemble those early company towns that sprang up on America’s frontiers, where coal miners, lumberjacks and railroad workers carved out a living in remote, harsh environments. There, corporations created communities to house their labor forces. In such isolated locales, often devoid of external competition, workers frequently faced steep housing costs, low wages and looming debts that had to be worked off before they could leave.
Still, leaving was an option. On Mars, it might not be.
Perils of The ‘New World’
In 2012, a Dutch nonprofit announced their “Mars One” project to send four astronauts on a one-way trip to the Red Planet. Never to return to Earth, their mission was to build humanity’s first permanent settlement. The group was, in fact, roundly criticized for its lack of logistics and medical concerns, as well as critical gaps in hardware planning, and it eventually declared bankruptcy. But news coverage of the mission prompted further questions about the nature and perils of extreme isolation, following months of travel, regardless of the arrangements at the outset of the journey.
Here again, the parallels to Jamestown are striking.
Back then, getting to the “New World” reflected a perilous, months-long voyage, fraught with high mortality rates, limited navigational tools and countless unknown dangers. Inevitably perhaps, those realities set the stage for tensions between three groups: the early settlers, principally concerned with establishing a defensible, self-sustaining colony; distant investors, eager for a return on their investments; and the English crown, which tended to view Jamestown as a long-term extension of its imperial influence and a newfound source of economic gain.
“The bottom line is, if Musk wants to go to Mars and establish a settlement, the U.S. government’s going to get involved.”
The Trump/Musk approach to Mars will likely further blend national interests and private enterprise, with less regard for conflicts of interest. But given that Musk says he expects one million people to live there in roughly 20 years (a figure that even the most optimistic Mars observers openly doubt), it makes sense to discuss more of what those societies might resemble.
If Martian settlements begin to grow and evolve, they will likely do so with varying and competing social and legal structures. A SpaceX settlement would likely look very different than one devised by authorities from Beijing. Martian immigrants could also eventually find themselves the focus of bidding wars between colonies, shaping the very future of Martian society as competition for talent, labor and innovation develops. The dichotomy is aptly captured in the 2016 science fiction film, “Passengers,” in which Chris Pratt’s character as a mechanic is given a preferential spot aboard an interstellar spacecraft heading to the planet Homestead II, all while taking on debt along the way. In a January 2020 thread on then Twitter, Musk said Mars “needs to be such that anyone can go if they want, with loans available for those who don’t have money.”
But the comment drew comparisons to early indentured servitude, in which early settlers of the American colonies signed labor contracts without salaries (or for minimal compensation) to repay debts they accrued to gain passage there. The first such servants began arriving in Jamestown in 1607, filling a need for cheap labor in a system developed by the Virginia Company. The workers typically were bound by four-to-seven-year contracts in exchange for a spot aboard the ship, as well as food and lodging upon arrival.
Conditions were harsh, and servants could be sold or loaned out to other colonists or distant corporate managers for the time of their contracts. Those agreements could also be extended as punishment for attempting to break the contract by running away.
A growing reliance on enslaved Africans would eventually render the use of indentured servitude obsolete, while 19th-century legal reforms would later undercut the practice, even though it would reemerge with Asian immigrants throughout the Caribbean and South America. Today, debt bondage and human trafficking remain prevalent in many parts of the world — a kind of indentured servitude that is difficult to police on Earth, let alone 140 million miles away. In fact, how legal structures might be practically applied to Martian colonies is not inherently clear. Perhaps an Earthly legal overseer would need to be included in those early colonies to keep them in line, reporting back to regulatory bodies, despite the 23-minute delay of one-way communications from Mars to Earth.
Meanwhile, given that Mars would still require a diverse workforce to thrive, competition between settlements seems likely. For those like Mars Society President Robert Zubrin, who takes a longer view, that competition could help sidestep the potential perils of governance.
“The ones that have the best ideas and create the most attractive forms of society are the ones that will draw the most immigrants,” Zubrin told me in late November.
It’s certainly possible. Of course, if the past is any teacher, new world competition can also breed inequality, marginalization and conflict, Zubrin acknowledged. The challenges of living on a foreboding planet such as Mars — where residents would face radiation exposure, limited gravity, toxic dust, punishing temperatures and extreme isolation and confinement — may exacerbate these divides and lead to a far more dystopian reality than either Trump or Musk have acknowledged thus far.
Still, with reservoirs of water, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, the building blocks of an advanced civilization are already there. A human settlement would be a pivotal moment — a day when humans were considered not merely Earthlings but also Martians, with all the technological and exploratory benefits that could pave the way for a truly space-faring civilization. If planned well, there may also be a chance for some improvements. As Thomas Paine wrote in 1776, we would “have it in our power to begin the world over again.”