EU–Tharsis

The European borders clearly do not follow the relief of Mars. In the Middle Ages, national borders followed natural barriers that provided protection and that people rarely crossed anyway: high mountain ridges, broad rivers and deserts. In the last few centuries, colonial powers drew straight borders for their new colonies on maps. Antarctica, the place most like Mars, has no permanent inhabitants, but it already has borders and even territorial disputes over the rights to mine resources exposed when the ice melts. Here, borders are perfectly straight and follow lines of longitude. Today, no country, company or individual can own land on Mars. However, landers owned by the states that sent them might one day form the basis of claims like those made by explorers who planted flags on Earth. In any case, spacecraft carry the flag of the country that sent them (see pages 112 and 137).

Will there ever be borders on Mars? If so, what purpose will they serve, and whom will they separate? On what principles will they be drawn? Will the landing sites of spacecraft already there matter? Who will own the land within them: companies, countries or individuals? And will Earth ever again be a planet without borders?

Above, we have projected a map of European countries onto the Martian Tharsis rise to illustrate distances; the borders have no relation to the Martian surface. Tiny white circles show the size of two large Italian volcanoes. The Martian volcanoes are much older, and lava has flowed from their vents for much longer, allowing them to grow so large. The map gives a literal meaning to the Hungarian expressions “going up to Budapest” and “going down to the countryside”.