Taking Issue With The Outer Space Treaty

tekan writes: "The National Review has an interesting article about the challenges ahead for the settlement of Mars (or the Moon), as well as how Law and sovereignty issues factor into colonizing these bodies." Perhaps most interesting are the reasons cited for entering into the treaty at all -- which had little to do with keeping space a peaceful utopia.

Comments

International Space Development Conference

[apsmith]

Having just returned from the National Space Society's 2002 ISDC meeting in Denver, I've had a crash course in space law... The conference chair this year, Wayne White, is assistant director of the space law and remote sensing institute in Mississippi, and an entire day of the conference was devoted to these issues.

From what I learned, there is a large body of national and international law about space that rests on this treaty and a few others (space liability, rescue and return, etc.) and throwing this one out is unlikely. But, these treaties do have a fundamental problem in not providing any mechanism for private property rights in space, nor particularly envisioning any sort of settlement process. There are a large number of ideas for how to fix this - Alan Wasser's proposals mentioned in the article are one of them. There's also Declan O'Donnell's United Societies in Space that advocates extending common law rules to outer space, and of course there's the Lunar Embassy that's taking advantage of the current ambiguities to sell property on the Moon and other bodies.

What's needed is a push from the US State Department to get these things resolved - there are apparently individuals there who would know what to do to get a new treaty worked out or current treaties amended, but there's been absolutely no support from higher up for it. Write your congressmen or directly to the State Dept. to express your views if you feel a legal property regime for outer space is important!