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Asteroid Mining Bill Introduced In Congress To Protect Private Property Rights

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-can't-take-the-sky-from-me dept.

MarkWhittington writes: "Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) announced on Thursday that he was introducing a bill along with Rep, Derek Kilmer (D-WA) called the American Space Technology for Exploring Resource Opportunities in Deep Space (ASTEROIDS) Act of 2014 (PDF). The act is designed to protect the private property rights for entities mining asteroids and to otherwise encourage asteroid mining. The bill is in apparent reaction to efforts by companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries to locate and mine Earth approaching asteroids for their resources.

The crucial part of the short piece of legislation states that the resources mined from an asteroid would be the property of the entity undertaking the operation. This language gets around the provision of the Outer Space Treaty that says states are forbidden to establish national sovereignty over celestial bodies, which would be a prerequisite to the United States allowing a private entity to own an asteroid. It rather grants mineral rights to the asteroid, something the treaty does not mention. There is no enforcement mechanism in the event of a dispute with another country, however."

8 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Absurd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How can any nation grant right over something outside its sovereignty?

    1. Re:Absurd by GrumpySteen · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's a long history of this sort of thing.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

    2. Re:Absurd by OzPeter · · Score: 4, Informative

      How can any nation grant right over something outside its sovereignty?

      You do know what country you are talking about don't you? sovereignty (especially other peoples) hasn't generally been at the top of the list of discussion points for quite a while(*)

      * And by quite a while I mean it .. just look at how Hawai'i became a state.

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    3. Re:Absurd by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How can any nation grant right over something outside its sovereignty?

      This just codifies a long-standing common law treatment of international resources. Anyone from any country can take their ship into international waters and gather resources. Once the fish / kelp / crab / whatever is aboard the ship, it's their property. This just says we should treat space resources the same way.

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  2. thank goodness by Cardoor · · Score: 5, Funny

    i was afraid that privateers were running out of things to rape here on earth

    1. Re:thank goodness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And don't worry about no enforcement mechanism if another country disagrees...we can simply go to war with them to protect the "rights" of some corporation going against the good example the US set on the moon. Bravo!

      I for one, look forward to saying how bravely my children fought and died to protect the rights of some corporation to profit by mining some asteroid's natural resoruces. Be the first on your block to have a kid killed to fight for some corporate interest in space!

  3. Dispute procedure. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Funny

    In event of dispute, deliver minerals to other claimant. Without controlled deceleration.

  4. Doesn't change much by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This law merely codifies what has already developed as the consensus among significant space-faring nations.

    Since the world already accepts the premise that objects originating in outer space and brought to earth belong to those who retrieved them them (currently only Gov't agencies, but foreseeably private actors as well), and Article IX of the OST establishes a right to non-interference with outer space activities (outside of explicitly banned activities such as militarization, etc.), the lack of sovereignty or property rights over celestial bodies already presents no legal bar to their mineral exploitation.

    Of course, the flip side of this is that someone else could completely legally set up a mining operation on the other side of the asteroid, and provided they are not interfering with your own operations, there is really nothing you could do to enforce a "claim" in the sense that we do here on earth.

    As I read it, this introduced bill does nothing to change existing rights and duties under the current legal framework, but I suppose it does provide some assurance to prospective miners that, in the U.S. legal system at least, there will be no drastic changes to the current understanding.

    IANAL (yet) but have interned at NASA.