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Many of our ancestors risked everything to try to make lives for themselves far from where they

were, staking a claim on some unsettled bit of land.

Perhaps our descendants will as well.

So it's Sci-Fi Sunday again here on SFIA, where we look at popular concepts from science

fiction and ask how they might function in the real future, and I thought for this afternoon we'd take a look at how folks would actually go about claiming asteroids,

planets, or solar systems,

or even potentially galaxies or uninhabited parallel universes.

And the immediate worry about that, once you've gone and staked a claim on some nice rock

you're going to go mine for space gold, is someone sneaking in and jumping your claim,

or for that matter, strolling in to serve you some official papers

saying your rock is their rock, or just kicking your teeth in and taking it by force.

They might be pirates or hired thugs or the legitimate new owners setting in their military,

for a given interpretation of the word legitimate, obviously.

It probably goes without saying that any race into space is likely to involve a lot of folks

heading out hoping to make a new buck or new home or both, and the morality of them,

...