If you’re doing a comparison with anywhere on Earth, the obvious one would be Antarctica. There absolutely are permanent settlements there even though it’s barely livable, but really only for relatively short term visitors to do scientific research and/or enjoy the experience of being one of the few people to travel there. It absolutely isn’t a functioning economy that runs at a profit. (Some places inside the Arctic Circle, maybe, but that wouldn’t be the case if shipping the exploitable resources back to somewhere that felt more like home cost spaceflight prices per kg). The profitable segment of space is the orbital plane around earth, ideally without the complications of people in the equation, and that’s what SpaceX has actually spent the last decade focused on.
Antartica is also an interesting comparison point for the social and legal systems since it’s also small numbers of people from different missions living on extraterritorial land. I mean, they’re not really particularly well sorted out, it just turns out they involve far too few people and far too little competition to be particularly problematic.
If you’re doing a comparison with anywhere on Earth, the obvious one would be Antarctica. There absolutely are permanent settlements there even though it’s barely livable, but really only for relatively short term visitors to do scientific research and/or enjoy the experience of being one of the few people to travel there. It absolutely isn’t a functioning economy that runs at a profit. (Some places inside the Arctic Circle, maybe, but that wouldn’t be the case if shipping the exploitable resources back to somewhere that felt more like home cost spaceflight prices per kg). The profitable segment of space is the orbital plane around earth, ideally without the complications of people in the equation, and that’s what SpaceX has actually spent the last decade focused on.
Antartica is also an interesting comparison point for the social and legal systems since it’s also small numbers of people from different missions living on extraterritorial land. I mean, they’re not really particularly well sorted out, it just turns out they involve far too few people and far too little competition to be particularly problematic.