The Mars manifest: which laws get a seat on the rocket?

Elon Musk’s Starship can carry 150 tons to Mars. That’s roughly 75 cars, or 300,000 pounds of carefully chosen cargo to sustain human life on a dead planet. Every kilogram matters. Every choice is scrutinized.

But here’s the question no one’s asking: If we could only take 150 tons of human civilization with us, including the laws, systems, and rules, which ones make the cut?

SpaceX has already declared Mars a “free planet” in their Starlink terms of service. No Earth government has authority there, they claim. It’s not theoretical anymore. The rockets are being built. The timeline is 2026 for cargo, 2030 for humans.

For the first time since humans walked out of Africa, we have a chance to start fresh. Not on land someone else claimed first. Not with borders drawn by ancient wars. A genuine blank slate, 140 million miles from anyone who could tell us we’re doing it wrong.

So let’s run the thought experiment: What deserves a seat on the rocket?

The Baggage Check

Look around at the rules governing your life right now. You need permission to leave the arbitrary lines drawn by people who died before antibiotics existed. You pay taxes to a government you inherited, not chose. You obey roughly 30,000 federal statutes and regulations before even counting state and local laws.

You didn’t agree to any of this. You were born into what philosophers call the “natural lottery.” Your citizenship, legal system, and economic structure were all assigned at birth like a cosmic dice roll.

Now imagine explaining this system to the first Mars colonists:

“So you’ll need 195 different currencies depending on which arbitrary lines you were born between on Earth.”

“Wait, but we’re all from Earth. We’re all on Mars now. Why would we—”

“Also, some of you have more rights than others based on which Earth dirt your parents stood on when you were born.”

“That seems—”

“Oh, and we’ve brought 74,000 pages of tax code. You’ll need lawyers to understand it. We’re sending them on the next rocket.”

The absurdity becomes clear when you have to pack it in a box and justify the weight.

What We Can and Cannot Change

Here’s where it gets interesting. The first Mars colonists face a unique clarity: they can’t change Mars’s atmosphere, gravity, or radiation. No amount of voting will increase oxygen levels. No committee can negotiate with the laws of physics.

But they can choose their human laws.

For the first time in history, a group of humans will be forced to distinguish between what’s actually fixed (nature’s constraints) and what’s merely inherited (human constructs). They’ll have to focus ruthlessly on what they can control: their choices, their systems, their agreements with each other.

Mars doesn’t care about your ideology. The atmosphere is indifferent to your politics. Radiation doesn’t respect your rights. These aren’t laws we choose—they’re reality we navigate.

Behind the Veil of Ignorance

The philosopher John Rawls proposed a thought experiment: To design a just society, imagine you don’t know who you’ll be in it. You don’t know if you’ll be rich or poor, healthy or sick, brilliant or average.

The Mars colonists are essentially behind a natural veil of ignorance. They don’t know who will get sick first, whose skills will prove most valuable, who will discover water, who will solve the oxygen problem. They’re 25 people (SpaceX’s initial crew estimate) who need to survive together or die separately.

What would rational people choose in this situation?

They’d likely choose systems that maximize freedom while ensuring survival. Inequalities only when they benefit everyone, especially the vulnerable. No grandfather clauses. No “my great-grandfather fought in a war so I get special privileges.”

Just pure rationality applied to the present moment and future survival.

The Wisdom in the Fence

But wait—before we throw everything out, we need to understand what G.K. Chesterton called the fence principle: Don’t tear down a fence until you understand why it was built.

Those 30,000 regulations? Many are scar tissue from disasters:

• Building codes exist because cities burned down
• FDA regulations exist because children died from contaminated food
• Banking laws exist because savings evaporated in runs
• Labor laws exist because factories consumed children

These aren’t arbitrary rules—they’re lessons written in blood. The question for Mars isn’t “what rules do we want?” but “what problems have we already solved that we don’t want to solve again?”

This is wisdom, not baggage. The ability to learn from history without being enslaved by it.

Direct Democracy at 25

Musk has proposed direct democracy for Mars—every colonist votes on everything. No representatives. No congress. No parliament.

It sounds refreshing until you do the math. Athens tried direct democracy with 30,000 citizens and it lasted 186 years before collapsing. Mars will start with 25 people.

But here’s the twist: When you can’t leave if you don’t like the laws, when everyone depends on everyone else for survival, when every decision has immediate life-or-death consequences—maybe democracy becomes real instead of theoretical.

The colonists will have perfect clarity about the impact of their choices. No distant consequences. No abstract policies. Just immediate feedback from reality itself.

What Actually Makes the Manifest?

So what would rational people choose to bring?

Start with what you can’t escape: Mars will kill you if you’re careless. These aren’t laws—they’re constraints within which all choices must operate.

For human laws? The manifest would be surprisingly short:

Property? Yes, but transformed. When every tool could mean survival, “ownership” might look more like “stewardship until someone needs it more.”

Money? Perhaps, but what backs it when there’s no gold, no government, no army? Reputation and contribution might be the only currency that matters when everyone knows everyone.

Justice? Essential, but what does prison look like when you need every able body? Restoration over punishment. Solutions over blame.

Governance? Has to exist, but probably nothing Earth would recognize. When the person who fixes your oxygen system also grows your food and serves as your judge, hierarchy flattens fast.

The shocking part isn’t what makes the list—it’s how short the list would be. A few pages, not thousands. Principles, not precedents. Guidelines, not rigid codes.

Present Choices, Future Consequences

What definitely won’t make the rocket:

• Currencies tied to Earth nations that no longer have meaning
• Political parties based on Earth’s ideological divisions
• Inherited nobility or inherited poverty
• Artificial borders within the colony
• Regulations written for problems that don’t exist on Mars

The colonists will have to focus on what they can actually control: their actions, their agreements, their responses to challenges. They can’t waste energy on what they can’t change: Mars itself, Earth’s decisions, the laws of physics.

This forced clarity—this inability to get distracted by the uncontrollable—might be their greatest advantage.

The Mirror Back to Earth

Here’s the uncomfortable question: If these minimal rules make sense for Mars, if they’re what rational people would choose when forced to focus on what truly matters, what does that say about Earth?

We have enough food to feed everyone, but we don’t. We have enough resources for everyone to live decently, but they don’t. We have the technology to solve most basic human needs, but we haven’t.

Why? Because we’re running Society Version 247.3.1, built on patches to patches of code written when the fastest communication was a horse. We spend our energy maintaining inherited structures instead of solving present problems.

The Choice Point

We’re at an unprecedented moment. For all of human history, we’ve been stuck with incremental changes to inherited systems. Revolution just meant replacing one group’s arbitrary rules with another’s.

But Mars changes that. It’s not about overthrowing anything—it’s about building something. Not tearing down fences blindly, but asking whether we need fences where we’re going.

SpaceX will attempt cargo flights in 2026. Humans follow in 2030. That’s not science fiction—that’s a schedule. The question isn’t whether humans will govern Mars, but how. And once we see humans thriving under rules they chose rather than inherited—rules focused on what they can actually control—how long before Earth asks: “Why are we still playing by dead men’s rules?”

The Invitation

I’m not advocating we tear down Earth’s systems tomorrow. Most of those fences are load-bearing, and we’d be foolish to remove them without understanding what they prevent.

But I am suggesting we start distinguishing between what we can and cannot change. Between systems that serve us and systems we merely serve. Between what deserves a seat on the rocket and what belongs in Earth’s attic.

Every generation inherits a world and leaves a world. We’re the first generation that gets to consciously choose what we leave behind—not just on Earth, but on two planets.

The rocket is being built. The manifest is being written. The only question is: Will we actively choose what goes on it, or will we just pack whatever fits and hope for the best?