Image created by AdamBurn

Once we humans master space travel, it won't be enough for us to simply visit distant planets; we must then

   1) Conquer or destroy whatever aliens we meet,

   2) Claim their planets, so that we can

   3) Steal all of those planets' resources for ourselves.

The U.S. Navy is already helping us prepare for #1 with their new railgun:

American corporations will help with #3, no question.

That leaves #2 untended. We can't claim alien planets without a flag, something we can thrust into the ground after we've eradicated all resistance (or before, for demoralization purposes). So recent Swedish design grad Oskar Pernefeldt has designed a conceptual International Flag of Planet Earth.

Before we look at it, let's look at the flag that you Star Trek geeks thought we would be flying:

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Now obviously we can't go using that; it looks like a freaking cross between the United Nations flag and the Subaru logo. 

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Can you fit a railgun on a Forester? And are we going out there to make peace? I don't think so. So that's out.

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Pernefeldt's design is instead made out of seven circles.

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It's presumably one circle for each continent, and makes one think of the Olympic logo. Which in turn makes me question whether all seven continents should really be represented, since Antarctica never bothers to show up to the Olympics, not even the Winter ones.

In any case, here's a rendering of the IFPE being planted on Hoth after we've "taken care of" their indigenous peoples.

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And whether or not you dig Pernefeldt's concept, you have to admit that the design thinking is sound:

Here are some more renderings showing the flag integrated in real-life scenes:

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I think it might be better if the flag featured seven circles all being fired out of a railgun, but maybe that's just me.