Only Two Countries Can Still Claim Antarctica

> The government owns all land until it is transferred/sold to a private owner. That's not a new thing: that precedent goes back to Day 1 of the United States, and maybe further I think you are talking about the fluidity of borders and lands worldwide. In reality, country borders are based on if land can be defended from other claimants ( [link] ). This is the final arbitration, even after exploring existing treaties (which arent always followed, [this video] ). The idea that the US federal government owns land until it's disseminated is one of those american myths that the US Govt tries REALLY hard to let alone, despite most federal lands being originally acquired by fiat and in the last 200 years by eminent domain (sometimes a front for private parties like the railway barons). Almost any private vs federal case can raise issues that can be elevated to the supreme court where the USG has a lot more to lose, regardless of the outcome. So they make lots of small steps, wisely. When they run into a case, even if they lose, the USG will simply work around the small setback.

In my opinion before we even get to that point Elon and others will first have to figure out how to include only people with psychological and physical profiles conducive to such a lifestyle. Even one unstable person could cause entire pods or groups of pods to be destroyed and mass evacuations, assuming evacuation is feasible. Limited versions of these experiments have occurred on earth with sub-optimal results. There are also some long term low-gravity induced health issues that will have to be addressed and that is work-in-progress. Here [1] was some recent discussion on this as well. I suspect that initially there will be teams of robots belonging to different governments and maybe a small handful of astronaut engineers managing them locally with bigger teams back here on earth. I envision robot-vs-robot sabotage leading to problems here on earth. The same may occur with asteroid mining despite there being vast numbers of asteroids to mine. At some point there will probably be more space-soldiers and defensive equipment than engineers. The folks that wrote the fictional series Star Trek had the optimistic view that humans would clash in a major world war in 2024 and then all get along swimmingly afterwards. I do not share their optimism but then my view would have entirely changed the Star Trek series into a different kind of show. To really answer your question I think we would have to fully understand how the land in Antarctica is managed and how we ended up with people