If there is no double spend between the later arriving block from mars and the block earth already mined the next block could acknowledge both. Basically making the blockchain a blocklatice. If I haven't missed anything the only reason it wasn't done like this from the beginning is that when the orphan rate is low it' not worth the additional code complexity.
Interesting! A block lattice seems like a nice thing.
It would be problematic with regards to money creation though. As we get more blocks per 10 minutes, we get more block-rewards (new bitcoin) per minute.
It also seems weird to 'amend' history by saying some other stuff also happened.
Thinking of this, could you maybe use this to somehow block a payment by adding a 'past block' that already spends the bitcoins in your payment?
