Reading the Bloomberg news article “The U.S. and China are fighting Over Mars, but Japan May Win the Space Race” births the question “Who owns Mars?”.
First of all, I will like to give a summary of the news article.
An excerpt from the article reads:
“The U.S. and China are spending billions of headline – grabbing dollars in a tacit race to put humans on Mars. Japan prefers lower key missions in the opposite direction , sending mechanical explorers towards Venus and Mercury for a fraction of the price”.
The article gives us details of the different amount of million dollars investment each country has put as their space budget for the current fiscal year.
- U.S. (NASA) – $19B
- Japan (JAXA) – $1.62B
- *China – $4.21B
- India (ISRO) – $1.09B
Source : NASA, JAXA, ISRO, The Space Report 2016
*Estimated Chinese space spending 2015
It also goes further to quote the president of the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), President Naoki Okumura, “There’s definitely a “Space Race” going on: Who can get to Mars first?”
Some months ago, a UK doctor, Dr. Philip Davis was trying to lay claim to the ownership of Mars using the international law that allows people to claim ownership of land that is barren or difficult to settle. He has even started selling plots to some interested individuals for about £27 million. He said he was making the claim to Mars to get people to talk about the inadequate space laws.
Million dollars investments, space laws or not, who really owns Mars?
The bible in the book of Psalms 24:1 tells us “The earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants, belong to the Lord;”.
Belong here refers to ownership and we are reminded in the book of Genesis 1 that God owns everything because He made everything by Himself and saw that it was good.
The thing is we can say the world belongs to God in the same similar way we claim we have a right of property. We can claim any part of the world as ours because we presently in reside on earth and we’re looking forward to expand our territories by exploring other planets such as Mars. The truth is IT IS ONLY TEMPORARY. Our time in this world is just for a period.
Instead of laying our treasures on the things of the world we should do as the bible tells us in the book of Matthew 6:20
“Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy and thieves do not break in and steal” (NLT)
THINK HEAVEN! THINK ETERNITY!
Tolulope Olabisi
What do you think? Kindly leave a comment.
The earth is the Lord’s …