Ask any of my former students (particularly my tax students) and they'll tell you - my mind works in an odd fashion. I can find accounting and tax questions in almost any situation...aren't I just the life of a party? Finally, after much searching, I am happy to report that I am not alone! Zach De Gregorio, CPA has penned an editorial for Accounting Today urging accountants to start thinking about the Final Frontier....OUTER SPACE!

• The editorial can be found here.
• His U-Tube announcement about the editorial is here. (I am always amused by reading someone's writing, and then hearing them talk.)

At first you might be thinking, there is being proactive, and then there is space accounting. It's so far-fetched, right? Wrong!

• NASA is starting to recruit for jobs on Mars.
• There are private companies working towards putting people into space:
  • The company Zach works for, Spaceport
  • Elon Musk's company, SpaceX
• There are still arguments about how much the Apollo mission (where Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon in 1969) cost.
• There's been an allegation of a cybercrime committed off-planet.

The accounting community can't even agree on the rules to use internationally on this planet....they're going to agree on rules to use in OUTER SPACE? If they truly do discover life on Mars, I hope the life form already has an accounting system and refuses to change...just to make things really interesting.

But I digress. Time for your feedback.

Questions

1. Name one accounting issue/question you would have related to colonization of Mars. Would it also have been a question for Jamestown over 400 years ago?
2. Would you personally want to work/live/vacation on Mars, or any other non-Earth option? Why or why not?
3. Would you want to work for a company life SpaceX or Spaceport? Why or why not?
4. Based on the two articles presented here, do you think Anne McClain committed a space crime?