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Congress Can't Make Asteroid Mining Legal (But It's Trying, Anyway)
Jason Koebler writes: Earlier this week, the House Science Committee examined the American Space Technology for Exploring Resource Opportunities in Deep Space (ASTEROIDS) Act, a bill that would ensure that "any resources obtained in outer space from an asteroid are the property of the entity that obtained such resources."
The problem is, that idea doesn't really mesh at all with the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, a document that suggests space is a shared resource: "Unlike some other global commons, no agreement has been reached at to whether title to extracted space resources passes to the extracting entity," Joanne Gabrynowicz, a space law expert at the University of Mississippi said (PDF). "There is no legal clarity regarding the ownership status of the extracted resources. It is foreseeable that the entity's actions will be challenged at law and in politics."
The problem is, that idea doesn't really mesh at all with the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, a document that suggests space is a shared resource: "Unlike some other global commons, no agreement has been reached at to whether title to extracted space resources passes to the extracting entity," Joanne Gabrynowicz, a space law expert at the University of Mississippi said (PDF). "There is no legal clarity regarding the ownership status of the extracted resources. It is foreseeable that the entity's actions will be challenged at law and in politics."
And there's gotta be a ton of gold at the center of the earth, and platinum, same at the center of the Moon. The Big Dig. How low can you go. Inside the Moon, it does not get very hot, no molten lava to contend with. Who can get there first, and start the digging for them heavy noble elements of platinum, iridium, osmium, gold, all mixed in with nickel and iron. If the theory that the Moon was ejected from the Earth from a massive asteroid impact is correct. Inner planets don't have much moons, for whatever reason, our Moon is special. If the Moon was ejected in a molten lava state, then the heavy, non-oxygen-bound stuff (such as noble metals) had a chance to stratify and collect at the core (It's kind of interesting that there'd be any gold and platinum in the lithosphere of Earth, but volcanoes spit stuff up from real deep, moreover a lot of our nickel-platinum mines are actually asteroid-meteorite crash sites embedded into the lithosphere, that did not have a chance to sink deep.) All they gotta do is some seismic listening experiments to see if the Moon has a dense core, unless you can see through it with ultrahigh energy xrays or even neutrino observations, something that goes through it, and then you don't need seismic experiments. But otherwise it's time to blow some nukes up on the Moon, and place seismic sensors throughout its surface, to listen and probe its internal structure. If it has a core, and it's not molten, it's time for that gold rush, or more like platinum-nickel rush.
Technically, no.
You are bound by the treaties your country signed. In fact, they have more legal weight in the US than laws passed by your own Congress.
As an example, the US has signed Data Treaties with the EU and with Canada that give citizens of those countries more rights to privacy than you as an American would have (exception: if you are also a citizen of an EU country or Canada, you gain those rights in the US as well).
Same goes for any treaties signed for non-countries such as Antarctica (which you are bound to) and space (where those exist).
That's the law. That you choose to be a space pirate, is your own problem. I recommend wearing a gold colored space pirate outfit, with a cape and a cool helmet.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Article VIII of the treaty states:
"Ownership of objects launched into outer space, including objects landed or constructed on a celestial body, and of their component parts, is not affected by their presence in outer space or on a celestial body or by their return to the Earth."
So if someone attached rocket engines to a small asteroid and moved it, for example, that could be considered "constructing an object" and they would own the whole thing, including the asteroid which is one of its "component parts".
The Moon has more surface area that North America. Even if all of the nations of the Earth conspired and made a deliberate effort to explode the Moon, it can't be done. Mining operations that would produce minerals in quantities equal to the entire mining production of humanity from before the Sumerian empires until now and doing that on an annual basis would take billions of years to mine out enough of the Moon for you to even notice something was happening.
Relax, the Moon is going to be just fine even with extensive strip mining, and arguably it is better to have it happen up there than down here on the Earth while killing habitat for many animals and destroying whole ecosystems.
Only the smallest of asteroids will ever be completely mined out before mankind will have settled and occupied the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy.