Millionaire Igor Ashurbeyli put his right hand on the blue-bound book:
- Today, assuming the office of the head of the nation of the space kingdom of Asgardia, I solemnly swear to be faithful to the spirit and letter of the Asgardian constitution and to be the guarantor of its observance. Protect the rights and freedoms of the Asgardians, defend the sovereignty and integrity of Asgardia. Serve her people …
And the children diligently sang the kingdom's hymn.
If they told me about it, even if they showed a beautiful video, I would shrug my shoulders: what was it really ?! This isn't shooting the new season of Game of Thrones ?!
Observer & quot; KP & quot; became a member of the parliament of Asgardia Photo: ALEXANDER MILKUS / kp.ru
But I saw everything with my own eyes there, in the Hofburg Palace - the old residence of the Austrian kings. He sat on a gilded chair in a pretentious hall filled with respectable men in jackets and ladies in formal dresses. At the inauguration of the world's first head of the space state. And not as a journalist, but as a member of the Youth and Education Committee of the Parliament of Asgardia. The artist Nikas Safronov was listening nearby. Diplomats from several embassies held their backs. On the screen - congratulations on the ISS from cosmonaut Oleg Artemiev.
Nikas Safronov at the inuaguration. Photo: ALEXANDER MILKUS / kp.ru
The story, which began just a year and a half ago, as a game of the sophisticated mind of several scientists involved in space technologies, businessmen, lawyers, as an intellectual anecdote, became a reality. Although with some theatrical (as, by the way, in any public action) touch.
Promotional video:
reference
The space kingdom received an unusual name in honor of the heavenly city described in Scandinavian legends. God Odin ruled the city.
For the sake of the inauguration, the parking lot at the famous Hofburg Palace was closed. Photo: ALEXANDER MILKUS / kp.ru
Territory - on the satellite
I heard about the Asgradians last September at the Astronautical Congress in Australia. Several cheerful and funny people - my old Moscow acquaintances came to represent the future country here. And I tortured them for two nights in a row, just like my friends are asking me now. In the end, everything turned out to be very simple: there is no requirement in the UN charter that a member state of the organization should have territory on Earth. In 1945, when this document was being written, no one could even imagine that an extraterrestrial country would be asked to join the UN. To join the United Nations, five conditions must be met. The country must have a territory, people, parliament, government and its head. This is what the cunning international lawyers from the USA and Canada have caught on to.
So, today Asgardia has territory - this is the Cubsat satellite launched at the end of last year. And who said that the state should have square kilometers of area? There are people - almost 200 thousand people registered on the kingdom's website and passed the check (verification). (And who said that the people should live on their territory?) Recently parliamentary elections were held.
I also decided to participate in them - at first out of banal curiosity. He wrote a program for the development of the education system of the space country. Now it is really possible to do amazing educational online projects by bringing together students and teachers from different continents. And he was unexpectedly elected to parliament (voting was also online).
Medal issued for the inauguration of the head of the world's first space kingdom, Igor Ashurbeyli. Photo: ALEXANDER MILKUS / kp.ru
And so I am hanging my only business suit on a hanger in the hotel closet. 110 people came to the first face-to-face meeting in the Austrian capital - from Russia, the USA, Colombia, Brazil, India, Peru, Great Britain, France, Israel, Iran - an international from forty countries. Nine teams of simultaneous interpreters sit in booths behind us, as if we were really at a meeting in a real UN.
We discuss each item, argue, vote, re-vote. The newly elected head of parliament Lembit Opek will not be overwhelmed - he sat in the British parliament for 13 years and even headed the parliamentary faction in Wales.
Inconvenient parliament
Everything in the Asgardian parliament is like in any other house of representatives. A couple of nerds who are ready to deal with a wrong comma and an extra word. Several experienced and completely unflappable lawyers. Three people who want to show off on the podium for any reason. But how proud I became of my new colleagues when it was time to discuss the provision that the entrance fee for new citizens of the kingdom could be 100 euros! The multi-tribal deputies waved their red mandate cards:
- For some, 100 euros is not money. And for some, this is earnings in a few months.
In general, we saved the future Asgardians from the contribution and from donations in exchange for a passport. For a while. So, if anyone is going to become a citizen of the space kingdom, they should hurry up.
110 people came to the first face-to-face meeting in the Austrian capital. Photo: ALEXANDER MILKUS / kp.ru
- And we do not need the Defense Committee, we will not create an army! Let there be a Security Committee! - The first and only Romanian cosmonaut Dumitru Prunariu came to the podium.
We have formed twelve commissions. We will develop and pass laws.
And yet, all two days in Vienna, I tried to figure out - why Ashurbeyli all this story with Asgardia? Is this an imitation of a country in order to put a hand on the constitution of a space nation in the royal palace? Or is there an unusual project behind it - like any non-standard undertaking?
So far, it seems to me, even I, a parliamentarian, do not fully imagine what Asgardia can turn into, how it can affect the history of mankind.
I remember a hundred years of history. In the 1920s, a romantic engineer Friedrich Zander lived in Russia. Duralumin rotary-wing aircraft were still in the air, and he designed rockets and crammed Esperanto - he was sure that the flight to the Red Planet was beyond the mountains, and the crew would be astronauts - an Englishman, a Frenchman, a Spaniard. We haven’t gone to Mars yet. But Sergei Korolev, a student of Zander, went further. And he became the person who was the first to send a person into outer space. The Queen's goal was the flight of astronauts to Mars.
I think Ashurbeyli, who has been associated with the most secret military and space projects for many years, is not saying something. He does not look like a man whose ambitions are limited to the title of "leader of the nation" and the solemn inauguration in the royal palace. Igor Raufovich is already a well-known and influential figure. And public recognition, I think, is enough for him as the director of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society in Israel. In this country, he has long been restoring churches and farmsteads of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Mandate card. Photo: ALEXANDER MILKUS / kp.ru
Lunar currency
No, it's getting deeper here. The new state means new laws, a new financial system, taxes, international relations. Why waste time on changes in the laws of existing states, which are still not keeping pace with progress, if you can create your own new, real kingdom from scratch? And no longer depend on anyone.
And that's when it all comes together. And the fact that the first documents of Asgardia were developed by tough lawyers - specialists in international law - from the USA and Canada. And the fact that the head of our Supreme Court agreed to become the head of the department of the Hong Kong University, an expert on space and international economic law, Yun Zhao. And Ana Diaz, an expert on electoral law and a UN consultant, took over as head of government. Such people do not participate in masquerades. They already know how to assess the prospects of the project. This means that Asgardia's plans to be recognized in the international arena and become a UN member are not so illusory. And then…
“In the near future, we must create our own currency, a national bank, a prosecutor’s office, and an Accounting Chamber,” Ashurbeyli says. - That is, all the bodies that a normal state should have.
What the currency should be has already been invented. It will be called "solar" and … will be attached to the mass of the moon. By the way, the first colony of Asgardians should be located on the satellite of the Earth.
And here is another of the plans of the leader of the space kingdom (close and distant):
- Deploy a network of satellites in low orbit that will provide coverage of the entire Earth with the Internet. In high Earth orbit, hang satellites that will give the Asgardians access to all digital technologies. Moreover, the receiver and transmitter will be a chip, which is also an electronic passport of a citizen.
As knowledgeable people whispered to me, satellites are already being developed. Moreover, a unique secure protocol was invented, which will connect spacecraft into a single network. Knowing the past of the head of the nation and his current interests, I have no doubt.
- To deploy space structures with artificial gravity, protected from cosmic radiation, which will make it possible to live outside the Earth for as long as necessary (this is in a 25-year perspective).
- Create a space fleet that will protect Earth from threats emanating from space. Including from meteorites and space debris accumulated in orbits.
- Open representative offices of Asgardia on all continents.
- To interest 2% of earthlings in joining Asgardia - the most creative, creative, romantic and enthusiastic. Then the population of the kingdom will approach
150 million people. Asgardia will become one of the twelve largest countries in terms of population and one of the twelve best economies on Earth.
Paradise in space.
- Asgardia is a reflection of the beautiful and ancient dream of mankind for a divine and peaceful earth in heaven. A place that people have always longed for so passionately. A place where there is no pain and hatred, only love and joy - this is how the head of the cosmic kingdom in the palace of the Austrian monarchs concludes his reading of his program.
We go to the hall where balls are usually held. The tables are now set in it. On the podium is the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Each guest has a plastic box with a gold medal on their plate. In its center is the profile of Igor Ashurbeyli.
ALEXANDER MILKUS