James Thompson is a professor of political science at Hiram College and an author.

AURORA, Ohio -- The other day, Stephen Hawking announced that the human race needs to colonize another planet within the next hundred years or face the threat of extinction. Last November, Hawking said that we need to accomplish this colonial feat within 1,000 years. Apparently our situation is becoming exponentially dire.

Or, maybe it's not.

Other commentators have already noted that humanity's best options for dealing with major catastrophes - be they man-made or natural - are to be found here on Earth rather than in space. For instance, it will require less effort to deflect an incoming asteroid than to create a large Martian colony; the atmosphere on Earth will always be more hospitable than the Martian atmosphere, no matter how bad it gets on this planet, etc.

Setting aside apocalypse-premised arguments for space exploration, therefore, I'm inclined to consider the prospects for Martian colonization on their own merits, and as a political scientist - as opposed to a "hard" scientist - it occurs to me that there is a problem rooted in the very nature of democratic life which needs to be addressed before we can take any of this colonization business seriously. Namely, we need to consider the regime-threatening instability generated by political factions.

As the inhabitants of contemporary democracies, we tend to take the endurance of democracy for granted. The U.S. regime, of course, serves as the prime example of such solidity. Yet the stability of American democracy is due in large measure to the fact that the Founding Fathers - and James Madison, in particular - had an acute appreciation of just how unstable democratic life can become.

In fact, Madison recognized such instability as the chief flaw of democracy. Thanks to his study of previous democratized environments, particularly in ancient city-states, Madison saw that the rise of competing political factions is inevitable in a democracy; that to try to get rid of factions requires getting rid of democracy itself. And he also recognized that factional competition can imperil the existence of a democratic regime.

In No. 10 of "The Federalist Papers," Madison notes that the solution to the problem of factions lies in the nature of republican - which is to say, representative - government. Rather than having a direct democracy, in other words, the United States would enjoy a republican regime in which citizens elect their fellow citizens to represent their collective interests in Washington.

Perhaps there will be some future bill that makes a difference for Mars, but this is not it. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 22, 2017

This sort of regime mitigates the factional issue in multiple ways. Most importantly, Madison notes that, because representative government allows for scale - in other words, it's possible to have a very large country when every citizen isn't asked to vote on every issue - the factions will have a difficult time achieving permanent dominance over the regime.

So my question for the pro-space-colony people is this: How will we resolve the factions issue on Mars?

We can't create a large Martian colony - with, say, a minimum of a million inhabitants - from the get-go. So what do we do?

Of course, the answer might be that, since it's a colony, and not an independent state, the Martian outpost will be subject to the laws of Earth, and more specifically, perhaps, to the authority of the American regime. But what happens when a Martian colonist kills another Martian colonist? Who on Mars will have the executive authority to administer justice, once the case has been ruled on by the regime back on Earth?

The great architect of democratic stability never would have assumed that a democratic Martian regime would inevitably be stable. Rather, Madison would have been highly skeptical in that regard and likely would have recognized that the regime type most suitable to Mars is a principality, since, among other reasons, in an effective principality, the factions are suppressed. In which case Madison would have turned to the most famous theorist of principalities, Nicollo Machiavelli, whose teachings in "The Prince" provide a detailed description of the many malevolent acts which accompany that regime type's creation and perpetuation.

Machiavelli lived and wrote during the Renaissance, roughly five hundred years ago. May 3 was his 548th birthday. But the unsettling implications of his thought have never been more relevant than they are now, at the dawn of what could turn out to be the second Space Age.

James Thompson is a professor of political science at Hiram College and author of the recently published novel, "The Prince of Mars."

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