Property Rights In Space?

ATKeiper writes "A number of companies have announced plans in the last couple of years to undertake private development of space. There are asteroid-mining proposals backed by Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, various moon-mining proposals, and, announced just this month, a proposed moon-tourism venture. But all of these — especially the efforts to mine resources in space — are hampered by the fact that existing treaties, like the Outer Space Treaty, seem to prohibit private ownership of space resources. A new essay in The New Atlantis revisits the debates about property rights in space and examines a proposal that could resolve the stickiest treaty problems and make it possible to stake claims in space."

Comments

Don't worry, there is plenty

[TheRealMindChild]

There's plenty of space out in space!

Re:Don't worry, there is plenty

[davester666]

When you are mining an asteroid as it's passing by Earth, ownership is determined by who has the most/biggest guns in the immediate vicinity.

And once you transport it back to Earth, it most definitely is yours.

For the most obvious example, see the treatment by the US gov't of the so-called "moon rocks". They claim ownership of every bit even after giving away a bunch of it to other countries.

Re:Don't worry, there is plenty

[aurispector]

Considering the enormous expense and effort that went into obtaining those moon rocks, it's not surprising they were technically "loaned" rather than "given away" as you mistakenly assert.

The point is there needs to be a legal framework in place so such expenditures are protected. The only way to spur private space exploration is to make it possible to profit from it. Otherwise it's simply a huge waste of money - what benefit does humanity derive from, say, letting the hyper rich shoot themselves into orbit for a short while?

Extraterrestrial resource extraction could mean endless supplies of things like rare earth minerals needed for high tech manufacturing. You do like cheap computers and cell phones, don't you?

Re:Don't worry, there is plenty

[dyingtolive]

Lagrange points?

I hear they got a lotta nice girls there. A HAR HAR HAR HAR.

Re:Don't worry, there is plenty

[thereitis]

The point is there needs to be a legal framework in place so such expenditures are protected.

I suggest that for starters treating all space bodies as public domain is the best way to go.

Otherwise, how do you separate people with plans in motion to go there from those who are merely being 'patent trolls' by claiming something and doing nothing with it? Or claiming something with the specific purpose of making sure someone else can't make use of it?

Having ownership in space seems destined to create an 'artificial scarcity'. Maybe I'm wrong, but an ownership based framework seems ripe for greedy people to abuse.

Re:Don't worry, there is plenty

[GoogleShill]

Think of all the time (money) a company will need to spend to figure out the best place to set up a mine on an asteroid in order to extract enough material to make it worthwhile. Why would they go through those efforts when a competitor can just wait for them to do that, then setup a new mine right next to it? The competitor can then undercut the original company's profits immensely as they have no R&D expenses to pay.

That's what I see happening with the public domain option you speak of, and it is one extreme. The other is allowing anyone to "stake their claim", which won't work as the first company with enough money will just pop around to every asteroid staking it for themselves and wait for someone to actually want to use one of them, then charge them ridiculous rents... Kind of like patent trolls, or the domain registry.

There needs to be something in between these extremes, like "stake your claim, but if you don't actively use it within 5 years, you lose it". Or, "stake your claim, but you must rent it for a reasonable rate".

I'll probably get modded down by the free-market fundamentalists, but there needs to be some sort of regulation to ensure that technical advancement can happen while allowing profit and competition. That's what makes a healthy capitalist economy.

Re:Don't worry, there is plenty

[icebraining]

We're talking about actual, physical matter here. Scarcity is a natural property of the system.

And we have thousands of years of experience dealing with such problems. It's not like property is a recent concept.

Re:Don't worry, there is plenty

[Dyolf Knip]

Well, stuff in space _is_ scarce, in the sense that it's not infinite, that is. Sure, there's _a lot_ of non-stellar mass in the solar system, but the parts of it that are easily accessible with current technology is really pretty limited. Luna, Apollo asteroids, and the occasional comet, mostly. And to make things even trickier, what happens when people start living out there permanently? That chunk of rock will be just as much 'their' property as any piece of terra firma.

Start with the simplest way to handle ownership claims and see where that goes: You have to go out and stick a flag on it to even have a shot at such a claim being legit. In person, or will a probe suffice? Define "probe"; don't want anyone spamming the surface of Mars with 1" radio cubes and claiming the entire planet as a result. For that reason, I'm inclined to limit ownership claims solely to putting boots on the ground. You own your unmanned probe and anything in produces using unowned resources (so automated factories are allowed), but the body as a whole is still up for grabs.

Of course, how much can you claim? The entire asteroid/cometplanet? Well that sucks. The EU founds a small colony on Mars just a few weeks ahead of the US and Chinese, so they get the whole pie? I guess you could make it a function of how many people you actually have there, but do they have to be there permanently?

And hey, who's going to enforce all this anyway? Considering the potential riches involved, nobody is going to accept a UN ruling that means that country A gets the piece of rock that country B just spent $10 billion putting a mining facility on because A sent a suicide volunteer on a one-way trip to put them on said rock before B.

I suspect that in the end, the 'border's will be decided in the traditional way. Namely, guys with guns moving them around until they conclude that getting a bigger piece of the pie for themselves would be more trouble than it's worth.

TL;DR?

[mcgrew]

Short version (it's a very long article)

There is precedent in the U.S. federal government's history of land grants to railroad corporations -- once the corporation owned the land, it had a strong incentive to increase the land's value by laying track. The situations are not quite parallel: in that case, the land rights only covered surface uses, not mineral rights; and of course, in the case of the Moon, the federal government has no land to grant. But while the general recognition of secured property rights would here take the place of grants from a previous governmental owner, the central premise still applies.

In the scenario envisioned here, the government would recognize claims and register titles, and claimants could then begin to grant, sell, and trade property deeds.

Re:TL;DR?

[jeffmeden]

In the scenario envisioned here, the government would recognize claims and register titles, and claimants could then begin to grant, sell, and trade property deeds.

Don't forget, that if you are short on cash you can sell the improvements for half their price, flip the deed over and mortgage it.

Oops, this is about the moon, sorry, I had it confused with a different fictional scenario.

Re:TL;DR?

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Outer space has no owner

Whoever goes there and brings the most guns owns it..

Re:TL;DR?

[garyebickford]

A valid question, with an interesting non-answer. IIRC according to the Moon Treaties, no nation may lay claim to any part of the Moon. But there is no language in the treaty regarding private claims. It is not certain that there is any legal connection between a private entity and a nation, especially these days when a corporation may have branches in 100 countries. So at this time nobody can say whether a private claim on the Moon would be legally sound. (Which effectively means, "first come, first served - try and stop me!") This is one of many areas of uncertainty today that are concerning everyone involved in space development.

Re:TL;DR?

[garyebickford]

Nope - according to the Moon Treaties, no nation may lay claim to any part of the Moon. But there is no language, or precedent, applying to private entities. I.e., nobody knows. This is a huge area of concern for everyone involved in space development. One fairly obvious outcome, should this not be resolved soon, will be "first come, first served - who's going to stop me?" And shortly thereafter, declarations to the effect, "We hereby declare the area of Tycho Brache to be sovereign territory." And then the wars. Hopefully a legal structure will be agreed before we get that far - that's essentially what happened in the European colonial period, but over five centuries a large body of treaties, laws and legal precedents were worked out that should be useful as a prototype.

Re:TL;DR?

[garyebickford]

Good point. I had forgotten. There are several treaties about space, and I believe the one that says "No nation can claim any part of the moon" was signed by the US. ... Ahh, here it is. The Outer Space Treaty, signed initially in 1967 by US, UK and USSR and over 100 countries since then, is described in Wikipedia as follows. So the interesting question is whether a private party is under the same restrictions by dint of being a subsidiary entity to a nation. The language in the last paragraph cited could be interpreted to mean that a private entity or its equipment or facilities outside the Earth's gravitational well are not subject to any nation's sovereignty.

The Outer Space Treaty represents the basic legal framework of international space law. Among its principles, it bars States Parties to the Treaty from placing nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in orbit of Earth, installing them on the Moon or any other celestial body, or to otherwise station them in outer space. It exclusively limits the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes and expressly prohibits their use for testing weapons of any kind, conducting military maneuvers, or establishing military bases, installations, and fortifications (Art.IV). However, the Treaty does not prohibit the placement of conventional weapons in orbit. The treaty also states that the exploration of outer space shall be done to benefit all countries and shall be free for exploration and use by all the States.

The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet, claiming that they are the Common heritage of mankind.[2] Art. II of the Treaty states that "outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means". However, the State that launches a space object retains jurisdiction and control over that object.[3] The State is also liable for damages caused by their space object and must avoid contaminating space and celestial bodies.[4]

Homesteading

[tmosley]

Governments tend to prefer to pretend that natural rights don't exist, imagining that the rights of the people come from THEM. But the truth is that they do exist. Homesteading is one such right. By mixing one's labor with the land, whether it is rolling plain, or an asteroid, one gains ownership of that land.

Governments have the guns though. But then, the space miners would have the asteroids, so I would guess that they would leave them be after the first asteroid made a near miss of the planet.

Re:Homesteading

[SuricouRaven]

Your 'homesteading' right is ultimately defeated by an even more natural right: The right of he who has the sniper rifle to shoot you and your family from a safe distance, then come loot your home and take over your land.

Rights are an artificial construct, and exist only so long as they can be enforced either directly (Employ enough guards to secure your home against any threat) or indirectly (Have a government that will, reasonably reliably, either defend you or remove the economic incentive for attack by finding and imprisoning the attacker afterwards). A right that is not in some way backed up by physical force simply doesn't exist: You can whine all you want about your 'right' to property, but it won't do you one bit of good if there isn't ultimately the threat of violence to back it up.

In space violence isn't very practical, so property rights would be backed up by the threat of governmental seizure of the earthbound assets of offending companies or individuals... and again, you still need the men with guns sitting around somewhere just in case a CEO converts all company product to gold and tries to hide it in an abandoned mine. Not that any of them would be that stupid, because they know that if they defy a court ruling long enough sooner or later violence will happen.

Re:Homesteading

[Niris]

Read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein. They had prisoners who mined on the moon, and when they rebelled against the government, they hurled down moon rocks. Good little story.

Re:Homesteading

[jythie]

'natural rights' are meaningless. Rights only exist in so far as something strong enough can stop people from violating them. Take away that state force and it just comes down to people having the resources to stop others.. in other words, become states.

'Homesteading' has nothing natural to it.. it was a piece of paper from the government saying that they would let you go settle in someone else's territory, and if those people got uppity you had the backing of the military.

Re:Homesteading

[tmosley]

You are an idiot. Homesteading has existed for all of history. One guy with a sniper rifle can't take away someone else's land because everyone recognizes the rights of the homesteader, while very few recognize the rights of the thief. The thief/murderer will be killed for his crimes, whether by police in a state, or by aggrieved relatives in an anarchic state.

You shouldn't talk about things you have no background in. Rights are no more artificial than society. They both exist, even if pigheaded fools like yourself claim they don't.

Re:Homesteading

[perrin]

Natural rights is an interesting topic, indeed. However, if there is ever a right that is entirely artificial, then it is property. The labor mixing argument has largerly fallen out of serious consideration in philosophical circles these days, being subject to way too many intrinsic problems.

Like, if I make a a glass of juice and pour it into the ocean, does that make the ocean mine, or did I just waste it?

Once you start looking at the enormous variety of property claims that exist, then you realize that property is better regarded as a cluster of disparate right claims rather than a single "has" or "has not" claim to owning something.

In context of the TFA, they apparently do not pause to consider that any property has to be grounded in some national law or another, or an entirely new body of law with their own courts has to be created for them.

Space has no need of such antiquated notions of property. Once we start getting there, we need agreements (and contracts) to delineate who can do what where, and those agreements will probably and hopefully cover vastly overlapping areas, not create artificial borders etched in stone like an Africa carved up by Europeans - whichi was and will be a blueprint for endless future conflict.

Re:Homesteading

[shutdown -p now]

I don't know whom it was written by, or whether it even says what you claim it says, but the notion that "North American Indians were sedentary farmers" is plainly wrong. Yes, they didn't have horses before Europeans arrived, which is why they used sled dogs instead. They most certainly never had the notion of individual land ownership, either - it was all collectively owned by the tribe. Pretty much no known culture at this level of development groks private ownership on land - this pattern was repeated again and again elsewhere in other colonies, e.g. with Australian Aborigines and Maori.

If you can defend it, it's yours

[Attila Dimedici]

There are currently no governments with the ability to enforce their laws in space. Therefor if you can get to it in space and defend it from those who want to take it from you, it's yours. Of course, if you want to sell some of it back on earth, you will need to get governments to agree to let you sell it (unless of course you smuggle it in, but that is yet an additional expense).

Similarity to the New World...

[Tomster]

Property rights in space will likely be determined by who gets there first, and who can muscle away the competition, either by military or political means.

Personally, I'm terribly excited about the upcoming prospects for things like asteroid mining and permanent settled colonies on the Moon and Mars (as a couple good early candidates). It looks like we are on the cusp of an explosion in private commercial space flight, exploration, and development. And with China getting into the game, we may have another space race.

Re:Similarity to the New World...

[Fluffeh]

I'm pretty sure but not 100% sure helium 3 is there in some abundance.

Actually, the amount of it is amazingly tiny (one to fifty parts per billion) but that is vastly more concentrated than anywhere on earth.

Trickle Down Theory?

[Bob9113]

There are asteroid-mining proposals backed by Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, various moon-mining proposals, and, announced just this month, a proposed moon-tourism venture.

Just shows that Reaganomics got it part right -- if you keep giving more and more money to a smaller and smaller sliver of society, they will find things to spend it on. Unfortunately, not cost efficient things that trickle down to smaller businesses, entrepreneurs, and working people. They spend it on ever more gigantic toys. "Oooh, Larry, let's build a billion dollar spaceship!" Great. Too bad we don't have a thousand small businesses spending that money on labor, rent, stock, and taxes instead.

Re:Trickle Down Theory?

[dpidcoe]

They spend it on ever more gigantic toys. "Oooh, Larry, let's build a billion dollar spaceship!" Great. Too bad we don't have a thousand small businesses spending that money on labor, rent, stock, and taxes instead.

Unless they can wave a magic wand and have the spaceship assemble itself out of the dollar bills that they keep in their swimming pool, it would be pretty hard to keep the money from spreading out everywhere. I'm pretty sure that the billions they spend on the rocket go to all sorts of useful things such as workers to build the rocket, the space to build it in, the engineering firms to design it, the small companies that make crazy one-off things that really only have use in a rocket (don't underestimate how much stuff that no one has ever built before is required), and the payroll taxes to hire all those people.

Re:Trickle Down Theory?

[Bob9113]

Velocity of money does not change significantly based on who is spending it. Every transaction has subsequent transactions that support the economy, and they cancel out. The question is the efficiency of the transaction under consideration. Does that spaceship, a giant chunk of capital, a great heaping pile of allocated GDP, produce wealth as quickly as a thousand small businesses? (please be rigorous in your consideration of the definition of "produce wealth")

Re:Trickle Down Theory?

[StormyWeather]

Yea, we should definitely take that money away from people who want to build spaceships and further the entire human existence, and give it to small business owners selling beanie babies on eBay, new fad get skinny quick schemes, and plastic disposable toys retailers. /me slaps you with a fish

Re:Trickle Down Theory?

[DM9290]

I know it's been said a dozen times in response to you, but you described exactly what is necessary for trickle-down to work. If the rich guys are spending money, then that money is circulating and doing our economy good. If the rich guys are sitting on a pile of cash in the bank and not spending it (or investing, or anything else to keep it moving) then that is when it actually hurts the economy. Having them spend metric buttloads of cash on crazy inventions is not only good for the economy and the lower-class folks in it, but it's also good for society because, heaven forbid, they might actually discover something useful -- even if it's not quite what they were trying to do.

If the government is spending money, then that money is circulating and doing our economy good. If the government is sitting on a pile of cash in the bank and not spending it (or investing, or anything else to keep it moving) then that is when it actually hurts the economy. Having it spend metric buttloads of cash on crazy inventions is not only good for the economy and the lower-class folks in it, but it's also good for society because, heaven forbid, the government might actually discover something useful -- even if it's not quite what it was trying to do.

if I have a choice between letting rich guys waste money and letting the government tax the rich guys and waste the money. I have more reason to support the system that actually lets me vote and participate and is at least officially supposed to be looking out for the publics best interests and not merely itself. That system is a democratic government - not private ownership.

Hell... with enough courage the government might even figure out how to put a man on the moon someday. oh wait.. it did that already!

Re:Trickle Down Theory?

[dpidcoe]

The question is the efficiency of the transaction under consideration. Does that spaceship, a giant chunk of capital, a great heaping pile of allocated GDP, produce wealth as quickly as a thousand small businesses? (please be rigorous in your consideration of the definition of "produce wealth")

Firstly, good on you for clarifying that (seriously, more discussions need to be that way).

Secondly, the efficiency of the transaction is going to be an extremely complex analysis, especially as you'll have analyze the 1000 small businesses that it's to be compared against (what kind of businesses? how saturated is their market? how interested are the business owners in their business?)

Speaking from my experience working R&D in a company that builds things that no one else has ever built before, I know that a project such as a spaceship isn't going to get completed without involving tons of small businesses. Even small R&D projects usually end up contracting tons of outside machine shop work (even though we have our own machine shop, a lot of places do it better/faster/cheaper, or do things we flat out can't do), and all sorts of obscure businesses that you'd never even think would have anything to do with the project (example: contracting one of a kind high pressure tanks for compressed gas from a 20 person company that manufactures rockets. It was part of a project to make a better high energy density battery).

While contracting those businesses to build something new doesn't necessarily increase wealth in the strict economic definition, it does several things that aren't going to be directly factored into any economic calculations:
- Provides an income stream to small businesses who rely on this sort of stuff in order to stay in business. They might in turn use that money to create wealth according to the definition used in economics.
- Creates innovations that other people/businesses can then leverage to produce wealth. e.g. once an awesome high energy battery hits the market, someone else can use it to found a new company that makes powered exoskeletons for paralyzed people.
- Keeps people employed. If those people don't have money to spend, the economy will tank no matter how much "wealth" you've created.

As for small businesses, it really depends on the business. Years ago I worked for a small photography company. It was based out of the owners garage and employed maybe 30 high school students and 10 photographers part time on the weekends. Every single bit of cash that company earned went straight into increasing the wealth of the owner, while everyone else got minimum wage. If I ran the numbers right (we all knew what each other made, and we knew how much cash we took in during a weekend job), the profit margins were obscene. Yet we still were using broken equipment repaired with duct tape and beating up our own vehicles to transport equipment to/from the jobsites. The owner wouldn't even drop the ~5k it would have cost to switch everyone over to using digital cameras. Hardly the utopian ideal of a great small business working hard for the economy

And one parting thought: From what I remember from macroeconomics, investing in infrastructure is a good way to increase wealth. So on paper, if we tax everyone who makes more than 150k/year at 90% and implement a 100% death tax for the next 20 years in order to invest it all in making a world class road system, 100mbps fiber to everyone's porch, and a powergrid so smart that it becomes self aware, it should do wonders for the economy right?

In reality, I suspect that it would create a new class of superrich, all of whom are nephews of politicians and/or working as power/phone/road company management.

Awesome ...

[gstoddart]

Bring on the space pirates.

But, more seriously, I think the problem was when that treaty was signed, it took the resources of a nation-state to get someone into space. And now increasingly, it's private corporations doing this.

At some point, someone will actually land something on an asteroid or something and say "we own this now", so at some point, this really is going to be needed.

This life-ending Asteroid has been brought to you by Coca Cola.

Who will enforce it?

[davidwr]

A property right without a sovereign to back it up with arms if necessary leaves me at the mercy of anyone bigger than me who wants to take my claim away.

A property right with a sovereign to enforce it with arms if necessary may put that sovereign in violation of treaties it has already agreed to.

Even if it doesn't, such a sovereign would have to be willing to stand up against the combined military might countries who are willing to go to war to defend the "right of all mankind" to "own" the asteroid or whatever piece of property is at issue.

In other words, any country which says it will back a claim to "space real estate" is betting that the rest of the world won't care or at worst, will just whine about it but take no real action. Any person or company making such a claim is betting the same AND betting no other person or company will attempt to fight the claim by force.

You don't need porperty rights to mine

[Hentes]

I don't think ownership of celestial bodies is necessary to conduct business on them. We shouldn't write laws concerning the future, because we simply have no idea what space enterpreneurship will be like. Once we have reached a level where getting profit from outer space becomes possible, we can create our laws while having much more information available. TFA's claims that private space projects are limited by legal problems is bullshit, ambitious space activities are limited by financial and technological problems, not legal ones.

Re:The 51st State?

[Motard]

We planted a flag. That's how these things are done.

Later on, the shooting starts.

no problem

[frovingslosh]

existing treaties, like the Outer Space Treaty, seem to prohibit private ownership of space resources

No problem. When you get to your asteroid or whatever, you just declare yourself an independent space faring nation. You certainly have far more claim to that title than those who didn't get there. And you'll want to do that anyway, otherwise all of your profits will be taxed by the earthworms who think they are entitled to most of your profits and to tell you how to do things, even though they took mo risk and provided no service to you.

property rights in general...

[alienzed]

how about we solve the lunacy of the concept here first...

small problem

[slew]

Small problem. When the US planted the flag, it was to memorialize the event, not to claim the moon for anyone. The plaque with the flag says "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”

Likely part of the reason that the Nixon ordered the US flag (vs the UN flag or both) planted was that he caved to congressional pressure. At the time, a rider attached to the house appropriations bill for space funding would have required the US flag be planted (under the justification that the US taxpayers funded it). Even though that rider did not survive to the senate, its mere existance was probably part of decision process.

Another problem is that although the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter pictures show that the flags appear to still be there, they are likely to be bleached out white (the surrender color).

Nasty Twist

[Roger W Moore]

In other words, the same rules as we have on Earth. A government claims a land because they want it and they have the means to defend it...

Sort of...but with a nasty twist. Whoever has control of large amounts of material in space and the ability to transport it back to earth will actually have the biggest guns. So if we let corporations loose in space without some viable means to prevent large chunks of rock hitting the Earth they will end up not just with more spending power than governments but with more military might than them too. I'm not sure this is a good environment for democracy to flourish.

The SU owns Earth's moon

[joh]

We've owned it since we stuck our flag in it. If you don't think that's legally binding, talk to Christopher Columbus about it.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Columbus_Taking_Possession.jpg

Hmm, I think the Soviet Union first got their insignia on the moon with Luna 2 in 1959.

What now?