Although everyone has their eyes set on settling and colonizing in space, I believe, it is even more important to first create our first settlement on Earth. In fact, I believe we should put all of our current resources on creating a settlement on Earth. Why?

I believe that the fastest way to get us to space is to unite on earth in our efforts in a physical way and not just digital. The biggest factor to this, is to create hardware. It is my belief that is far more expensive to contract out all of our hardware builds. We, the citizens, combined, have the knowledge, the desire and the resources to put us in space. But only combined physically. If we continue to only be in the digital realm until there is space hardware that we can go to, this will take too much time, the most valuable resource of all, so why waste it?

So let's imagine this, a City on Earth, perhaps something like the Venus project, able to house all Asgardian citizens (1 million people?) for the main purpose of designing, building and launching hardware into space. I believe this to be the fastest way to get us to our destination.

Let's dig deeper.

First the challenges, finding a place to put this settlement. Other than a few remote islands in International waters, every place on Earth has either a Country/Nation or a International Treaty (ie Antarctica) governing. We ideally want something that's not remote either and not land locked, access to waterway and oceans are key. So what do we do? find a Country willing to give us the land? Does anyone know a Country willing to do this? Buy it? This is the challenge. I don't think any sort of boat or floating settlement would work considering the costs of a project like that. Again, time is valuable, efficiency is key, plain old land is the most efficient.

How do we finance the building of this settlement? The government of Asgardia needs to kick in here to have funds and I would rather we spend funds on this than ordering more launches or outsourcing hardware, again, this should be the absolute focus in my opinion. Second, is every citizen that wishes to move here, gives all their wealth to this project and I think that should follow for any citizen moving to any settlement of Asgardia, the idea being everyone is equal, a clean slate when you move there and if everything you need is provided, housing, food, clothing, etc why do you need money? A resource based economy perhaps? There is the challenge if you want to travel and buy stuff from other Countries, perhaps there can be allowances of some sort. Then in this case your future wealth can be measured not by money, but how much knowledge and time you have/give to society. Maybe a different discussion around this.

Eventually, funds will limit us, I think that we can get the city built, but the next step is to build the hardware to send to space, again, we are all contributing our knowledge and time but what about resources such as elements, the land we would have most likely would not be an abundance of minerals, or exotic materials, we can get some basic elements from salt water, the air, but that is about it, in space we have plentiful of minerals but, we need to get there first. I have not solved this problem, and I put it out to society to think this one over. The only thought, is we can create intelectual and digital resources of which we could sell/trade for elements, I just don't know how feasible that could be.

But if we can get past those challenges, we can design, build, launch hardware and then eventually humans, focus on mining and manufacturing settlements first until we build what we need to build and supply what we need using the resources in space.

An earth settlement also provides our government with a temporary place to live and operate, in the future the settlement can be used for immigration from earth to space as well as import and exporting of goods, an embassy for our citizens, base for peacekeepers/humanitarian aid serving other Nations of earth  and provide a model city for the rest of the world to look it.

A city with a "venus project" ideal, maybe not exact, solves many issues for Asgardians as well including, poverty, hunger, universal basic income, elite 1%, automation job loss, debt, education etc. Again, maybe not exact, that can be open for discussion, but to get us to space as fast as possible, I believe if we can take on these challenges and solve them and build our first settlement, space will come faster, sooner, for Asgardians, and all of humanity.

Borders; the ultimate defining principal of any Nation, without them, who are we? Even if we settle and colonise space, what do we define as are borders? In this discussion I will analyze and speculate the various Border options and what I think would work best for Asgardia. Ignoring the Outer Space Treaty, OST, for now, as it can be rewrote and signed by Earth Nations giving the opportunity of our legitimacy.

Space in fact has not even been defined definitively by Earth Nations, however most except the 100km rule. With this rule do we claim our border at the 100km rule? This will not work in my opinion. Part of becoming a Nation is to be recognized by the other Nations of the world, namely key Nations such as the G5 and G20 Nations. A lot of these Nations have assets, civilian, scientific and military in nature beyond this region and given their interest they would not legitimize our call to be a Nation if that would place their assets within our borders.

So even though we are the Space Kingdom, perhaps we do not mean literal space. So then how do we define our borders?

I see two foreseeable options, both options have the same concept for other planets and large moons in which that settlements on these bodies are treated with the same regard as colonization and eventually the citizens of these bodies will need the ability to govern themselves and declare independence. Although that would take hundreds of years most likely.

First option is that everything beyond Geosynchronous orbit could be classified as our borders. This has a higher chance of being accepted by other Earth Nations and gives Asgardia the greatest control in space to oversea government, civilian, industrial and military activities ensuring the peace is kept and law is followed. This also gives Asgardia the greatest control of resources which is how our Nation will thrive. This is the hardest option however, even though it is easier than the 100km rule, it will still be a difficult task to convince the Nations of Earth to legitimize our being.

Second option is to only define borders surrounding our settlements, whether be in space, ie space stations, or on celestial bodies, ie moon colony. I don't think any Earth Nation would have an issue of this (ignoring the OST), unless they also have vested interest in the locations of which we would choose to place our colonies. This however extremely limits the control Asgardia has to ensure peace and law is kept. In this scenario, space is essentially international waters, a lawless, uncontrolled region of Earth. Nations and Corporations also have free reign over the resources if we don't place settlements near those resources. It may the easier option, however, this option will eventually be a lead cause to some of the same issues we see on Earth, mainly war and crime.

Our aim is to be peaceful and keep the peace in space. For this, I see only the first option to be viable to meet our goals. It won't be easy and will take a much longer time to convince and legitimize our being among the Earth Nations.

There are other options, these are the most straightforward and most likely to happen in my opinion. Leave your comments. Keep the conversation going.

Read my next blog on an Asgardia settlement on earth and how we can live in Asgardia within our generation and not just our grandchildren's generation.