Despite reiterating what the Outer Space Treaty says, this is just as useful as laying claim to it. "Whoever is sitting on it can claim it" is the more probable result, should it come to that.

whoever can haul cheap cargo there reliably ,including military hardware ,then

praise Elon and set blasters to stun!

Space launch and space vehicles are very vulnerable. This means that any space launch company can be strong-armed by any nation state or even reasonably armed non-state actor unless they're defended by a nation-state.

Only until they start being able to drop rocks on things...

Giving a private company potential WMD's is a whole other question though.

Sure. If you can drop kinetic projectiles from orbit or higher, you don't need nukes.

But you have to build a lot of infrastructure to either get that mass up there, or compel that mass to change momentum.

One drone with a shaped charge could take out a fueled launch vehicle and make the bad unusable for an annoyingly long time. I hope that there are plans to defend against this.

Dropping rocks on Earth to declare independence is the plot of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

I highly doubt a commercial company can argue for authority and sovereignty of a whole planet.

Let's be real, if there was easier ways to get to mars and if it had resources useful to earth, then we'd already be mining there or such.

>I highly doubt a commercial company can argue for authority and sovereignty of a whole planet.

It doesn't seem like SpaceX is claiming Mars, just establishing that Mars isn't governed by an Earth country, which was already established by the Outer Space Treaty.

Original explorers from Europe were commercial companies

It won't be the company that gains sovereignty, so much as the people who colonize