Who will be in Charge of the Martians?

What happens if NASA’s exploration—via the Curiosity—in Mars finds life (microbes) in the Gale Crater? How will politics on earth deal with this?

The profound thinker and author Matthew Ridley at the Wall Street Journal offers some ideas

Like the announcement of the Higgs boson last week, however magical the moment may be in historical terms, it will not affect most people's daily lives. We can celebrate, congratulate, revel in the detail and philosophize on the meaning, but earthly life will continue as if little had happened.

Pretty soon, though, a political angle will emerge. For one thing, politicians and journalists from countries other than America will start to grumble that this discovery must "belong" to all humankind and not just to NASA. The U.S. government, despite having forked out all the costs of exploring Mars so far, including the $2.5 billion cost of Curiosity, will probably agree. But who will end up making the key decisions?

The United Nations is almost bound to set up an agency to oversee what experiments are planned, but the U.S. may prefer a different body. Private consortia may conceivably start to plan how to go and retrieve a sample, dreaming of the riches to be garnered from displaying it on Earth. If so, nongovernmental organizations will quickly begin to worry about the safety of such a scheme and to champion the rights of Martian microbes to be conserved and respected in their lairs.

In other words, the discovery of extraterrestrial life would produce some predictably messy earthly responses.

As far as I can discern there has been very little public discussion of these issues. The Outer Space Treaty, opened for signature in 1967 by the U.S., U.K. and Soviet Union and ratified by 100 governments, says that no country can claim political sovereignty over land in outer space. The treaty does not forbid private ownership of land in space, however, and it would be up to terrestrial courts to decide if such claims were recognized. Also NASA has clear policies on how to prevent the contamination of one planet with the life of another.

If we hear a radio signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence, there's also a protocol in place, drawn up by the International Academy of Astronautics and invoking three principles: that the decision on whether to reply should be made by an international body; that it should be sent on behalf of all humankind; and that its content should reflect a broad consensus.

Maybe the preeminent Milton Friedman’s Sahara desert concept of politics may apply to extraterrestrial life: If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert Mars, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand microbes. :D