The Kingdon of Tycho

Definition of success: A man who falls down 9 times and stands up 10 times. – Old Chinese Proverb.

While children’s TV shows and movies, especially those featuring superheros and supervillains, are primarily aimed at entertainment, they do have some educational qualities to redeem them.
For instance take the good role model that the evil villain gives to young impressionable children.
Week after week the evil villain tries to take over the world. He (occasionally she) thinks up some evil scheme, invests lots of time and money building advanced machines and working out to the last detailed how to neutralise the superhero, who is the only person who stands between them and total world domination.
Week after week the supervillain gets off to a great start. Catching the superhero by surprise he defeats him once, twice, even three times. The evil villain believes that this time he has got it right, he has left no stone unturned, he has thought of every angle, there is no loophole for the superhero to escape.
But week after week just as the evil villain is about to achieve his victory, just as total power is within his grasp, the superhero bounces back and in one unexpected, cataclysmic plot twist, the superhero defeats the villain at the eleventh hour.
On the surface this might seem to be a simplistic, even stereotypical, story of good versus evil.
But from the evil villain’s point of view it is a story, week after week, encouraging him to never give up on his dream. The evil villain pursues his dream of total world power week after week with dogged persistence.
Remember the “hero” has to win every week, the evil villain only has to win once. By that I do not mean to imply some prophecy of doom. What I mean is while you might fail 99 times, as long as you have worked hard, followed your dream and given it your best shot you are not a failure.
In the end you only have to succeed once to be a success.
So take a leaf from Dr. Evil’s super-villain’s handbook and never give up. As long as you can see your goal you can reach it.

Believe it. Achieve it.

Here is a YouTube Video of the Earth as shot by the KAGUYA(SELENE) Moon probe.

I could watch images like these all day long.
And yes I am becoming something of a YouTube Junkie. I have just moved house from a rural area with no broadband to a town where I can get broadband access to the internet, so YouTube is still a novelty to me .

Yes, you can own land on the Moon.

The main obstacle to owning land on the Moon, or indeed any other celestial body, used to be that there was no legal system of property law, or indeed any law, on the Moon and thus no rights of ownership could be created. No right of ownership can be established without a legal system of property ownership in place. And for such a legal system to be put in place you need a properly functioning government.

The Kingdom of Tycho(TKoT) solves this problem, at least for the Moon, by establishing a legal system of land ownership under the government of the Sovereign of The Kingdom of Tycho. You can now legally buy, sell, claim and register your Lunar real estate.

However when most people ask “Can I Legally Own Land on the Moon?” they mean will the legal system of their country of residence recognize their ownership of land on the Moon and the short answer to that is “No”. But this is not really much different from the situation that exists with established, recognized countries. If you wish to own land in France, for instance, you go through the French legal system to buy that land. You don’t ask the government of one country for a title deed to land in the territory of another country. And similarly if you want to sell or mortgage your land, or if there is a dispute over ownership etc., you go through the legal system of the country where the land is, not the legal system of the country where you happen to live. Different countries have different laws regarding the ownership of land and the rights and obligations about what you can and can not do with your land.

What can happen is that the courts of one country can acknowledge the ownership of property in another country as part of a legal settlement between parties, say in apportioning assets under a divorce settlement. However this is not legally giving title to the property merely acknowledging that it exists.

The Kingdom of Tycho has no recognition from any existing Earth based country so the legal titles given by The Kingdom of Tycho are unlikely to be upheld by any other country’s legal system. So at the moment obtaining a title deed from The Kingdom of Tycho is no guarantee that the legal system of your country will recognize your ownership of your Lunar real estate. Owning or claiming land on the Moon is very much a speculative activity. And as with all gambling do not gamble more than you can afford to lose, no matter how much you might support our goal of space settlement.

The use of Bioplastic and Desktop Manufacturing will allow our Moon base to become self sufficient in spare parts at a relatively early stage.

Bioplastics are plastics made from renewable biomass sources, such as vegetable starch or microbes, rather than petroleum as traditional plastics are made from. Obviously we don’t expect to find petroleum on the Moon but by growing crops to produce plastic we will be able to produce our own plastic.

When combined with Desk Top Manufacturing bioplastics will allow us to manufacture a large number of different items, from spare parts for equipment to every day objects such as cups and plates, and so reduce the amount of items we will need to import from Earth. Importing stuff from Earth will be very expensive and in the initial phases of our Moon base we expect our budgets tom be exceedingly tight.

Bioplastic is also biodegradable and so used parts, and items such as broken plates, can be added to our composting system and used to grow new plants. Thus we can completely recycle components and items from everyday use. This also means that if items imported from Earth are also made from biodegradable bioplastic we can use them to increase the biomass of the Moon base.

All in all bioplastics are good for the long term success of our Moon base and all plastic items used in all stages of the Moon base development, right from day one, should be made from bioplastic so that used and broken equipment can be recycled and added to the amount of Biomass on the Moon.

It is important to maximize the amount of biomass added to the Moon base in order to create as big an ecosystem as possible for our CELSS. The bigger the ecosystem the more robust it will be, and remember our ultimate goal is not an “arctic research station on the Moon”, but a city and an entire country, so we will need really big ecosystems to support tens of thousands, if not millions, of people.

By maximizing our use of bioplastic in our designs even for the first mission we will help our long term goal of building a new country by firstly reducing the amount of mass that has to be expensively imported from Earth, and secondly “dual purposing” that mass as biodegradable plastic that can be added to our CELSS.

Here is a NASA animation about the constellation program that I just found on YouTube.

This is stirring stuff, and a great use of American tax money . And while I agree whole heartedly with the sentiment, I have my doubts that NASA will fly anything like what is depicted in this video to the Moon. I am more sure now than ever that if we want to go back to the moon then we will have use our own resources to get ourselves there.