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FAA Could Extend Property Rights On the Moon Through Regulation
MarkWhittington writes When the Outer Space Treaty which, among other things, forbade claims of national sovereignty on other worlds, was signed and ratified by the United States in 1967, little thought was given to the idea of private property rights. Now, with companies like Moon Express and Bigelow Aerospace contemplating private lunar operations, that question has become a concern. According to Reuters, the FAA may have discovered a way to enforce private property rights on the moon without, it is hoped, violating the Outer Space Treaty. The idea is to extend the FAA's current launch licensing authority to cover commercial activities on the moon. The agency would license, for example, a helium 3 mining facility, giving the company running it control over it and as much adjoining territory as necessary to run the operation. The size of that territory, for which a particular company would hold property and mineral rights, could be considerable.
I wasn't aware the US owned the Moon or the rights to it...
Well, if the FAA says so, I'm sure the rest of the world will respect it.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Following this to its logical conclusion, this means that one day the moon could be entirely controlled by corporations, but not governments. I can't decide if this is a good thing or not...
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
who??
FAA can do anything they fucking want; nobody else in the world will give a shit. Do you really think if the Russian, Indian, or Chinese equivalent of the FAA pulled this that the US would take it in stride? Of course not. We'd claim they still don't have any right to reserve property on the moon.
And it would come down to who had the guns and is willing to use them. Which, to be honest, is all property rights really is anyway.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The Interstellar Commerce Commission should be established to keep Weyland Yutani in line.
Where the Fedzilla Government has dominion over everything, from the bedroom to the moon. Im sure there is a Federal Government, INC. flag at the bottom of the marianas trench.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
If you live in the US, you're already used to this...
Except for all the bad things that will happen as governments attempt to exert their influence over the moon and eventual colonies.
It'll all work out when space-dwelling humans get tired of Earth's bullshit and drop a few colonies on our little blue marble, though. Well, it'll suck for Earthicans, but they can take solace in the great taste of Charleston Chew.
My hobby is mixing canons.
Really? There will be no Moon/Mars stuff. Knock it off, just knock it off. Focus on fixing welfare, getting gas from the middle east and fighting flu, ebola and measles. And if you're done with all that, maybe you could get those pesky gangs and terrorists to stop doing naughty stuff.
How did it get there?
Come on, MST3k fans, you wanted to say this.
If another country's FAA-equivalent does the same thing with the same piece of lunar real estate, you could have a "private war" between the two parties. Would the USA and the other country back up the private parties' dispute? If they do, they will, in effect, be claiming sovereignty. If they do not, then it will be a private matter and the parties will have to settle it themselves, subject only to not breaking any laws of any country that they, as individuals or companies, are subject to (presumably that would be the country issuing the license, the country the company is incorporated in, and the country or countries that the individual is a citizen or permanent resident of).
The bottom line: Without a sovereign state and its legal system and guns to back you up, property rights mean little or nothing if someone stronger than you wants it bad enough to fight you over it.
So let me get this right the USA does not have a space launch vehicle let alone moon launch vehicle. China and Russia have both & they are not too worried about their people coming back.
A bit of an own goal for USA
This will work fine until the Lunatics decide to declare independence and enforce their claim by threatening to drop rocks on the Earth. :)
Providing we could actually send people & machines up to the moon to do crap, it would be just like the colonies. Remember that? Remember how all the countries left the New World alone since "Columbus" discovered it? Oh wait, I didn't get that text book, if I recall correctly, there was a lot of fighting over this new land.
So yes, let's fight over the moon also, because we have run out of things to fight over here on earth.
Be seeing you...
The FAA has real work to do here, for example regulating UAV's.
But that's no fun so to draw attention away from what they are not doing they need a squirrel.
The moon seems a great idea.
A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure...
why would you even want to stay here, right?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
First of all, how do you "mine" Helium-3? Isn't it a gaz? That's like the old joke "How do you mine for fish?".
Secondly, I think I saw that movie.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I am persuaded by your friendly and intelligent argument.
Your shining example of the beauty of humanity has convinced me that all people in America are inferior.
Thank you.
And as a Canadian, I pity the few good American people left that are stuck in this militarized and sold out corporate zone.
Get to fuck please America. You don't own the moon.
There is a way around anybody's law, regulation, or treaty. IMHO, the only reason the FAA is getting involved in this is to make money in the same way that the only reason the FCC is weighing in on net-neutrality is because they have figured out a way to make money off of it, initially in regulatory fees (which will be passed on to the consumer) or in a few years some sort of national internet sales tax.
In 10 years we are going to be living in rubble down here. It's already starting.
You are welcome. You may find yourself somewhat excused, by your humility and understanding.
I have no problem with companies having property on the moon, as long as they realize that they have precisely zero ability to actually enforce any property rights or hold anyone personally accountable for violating any such rights unless there is somebody who is personally there, or at least until they personally return to the earth.
In general, such ownership rights should immediately dissolve when nobody who represents said ownership is living there, only becoming permanent once large enough permanent settlements are built on the moon that a 24/7 law-enforcement infrastructure can be implemented to enforce such property rights.
Until that time, if you mess around with property that belongs to somebody else on the moon when nobody who represents them is there to physically stop you, without authorization from the company that owned it, you would probably encounter a lot of difficulties when you returned to earth, unless you happened to live in a nation that didn't respect the laws of the country that the company belonged to anyways.
The entire notion of property is a consequence of civilization, and if you don't have a civilization living there, then you can't really have any permanent property there either.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It seems the cabinet meeting went like this:
Obama: Is there anything we haven't regulated yet?
Secretary Foxx: We haven't regulated the moon yet.
Obama: Get on it! Don't leave anything without federal regulation.
Arrogance and stupidity in government obviously know no limits.
The fucktard responsible for this idiocy should be fired immediately
and replaced with a door stop.
I can imagine it now. "Right, so we can't claim sovereignty over the moon. What now?" "We're a republic." "So?" "We have no sovereign, and we sold off the national reserve, so there's no gold sovereigns either." (Open champagne, toast to sell...regulating the moon.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
...and when the "FAA-decreed" property rights conflict with, say, the property rights "granted" by Putin to his oligarch friends, or that Beijing gave to the company in China that'a a front for the PLA?
At least we'll finally see what combat in space looks like.
-Styopa
sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays!
God you people are fucking useless.
You must be mentally deficient if you believe that ALL Americans are somehow responsible
for all the problems you mention.
Most Americans are just "along for the ride" and are quite powerless, just as you are.
Aside from that, I'd really enjoy kicking your teeth in. You gutless faggot piece of shit.
So long as it's run by a single clone and his AI robot assistant, I got no problem with this.
(and if you don't know what I'm talking about, go here.)
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Space lawyer here, writing in personal capacity hence posting as AC.
The OST already has provisions guaranteeing a right to non-interference with legal activities in space (as opposed to say militarization, which is illegal under the OST).
What the FAA is proposing is merely a mechanism to enforce these existing rights under current regulatory regimes. There are no cops, courts, or administrative agencies in space - in fact there is no room under current treaty regimes for such entities to exist, since they all would entail claims of sovereignty, which are strictly forbidden. And even if such things were theoretically possible, they are impracticable for the foreseeable future.
So what we are left with is a situation where any jurisdictional claims and regulatory authority are explicitly tied to and derive from the citizenship of the people in space, the ownership of man-made objects launched into space, and the licensing authority of the states from which spacecraft are launched.
In the U.S., the FAA already is the regulatory body charged with licensing space launches. In the absence of an explicitly-defined specialized body in charge of enforcement of U.S. laws/regulations, including treaty-derived ones, with respect to space activities under US authority, the FAA has said that they will step in and leverage their existing status as the U.S. launch regulation authority to also fill this role in space as well.
Whether the FAA making this claim is appropriate or allowable under U.S. administrative law is a separate question from whether the U.S. has the authority to regulate its citizens and property in this way, which it certainly does. In fact, nothing is to stop the U.S. from writing laws that allow it to fine or otherwise punish strictly foreign entities, provided they interfere with activities that do fall under U.S. jurisdiction. Of course these would have to be enforced in American courts, but given the extremely international nature of most private organizations operating in space, that is not necessarily a huge barrier. As far as interference committed by one completely non-U.S. entity against another non-U.S. entity, the U.S. would likely have zero jurisdiction or authority, except the remote possibility that they would entertain such a private tort suit between them under the Alien Tort Statute - pun not intended!
As it stands, the FAA's main weapon to enforce these kinds of claims would be to merely deny launch licenses to entities it saw as violating the right to non-interference. This is by no means a trivial weapon, since it effectively denies any assistance from U.S.-regulated satellite companies, ground control, etc. etc., and most countries would be disinclined to pick a fight with the agency that could in theory cut off all of their air traffic to and from the U.S. But this is nothing resembling an attempt to create property rights in space. It's merely a clever way to enforce already existing and widely-recognized rights in absence of a better enforcement mechanism. And really, who else is there to do this kind of thing currently? NASA? They are in the exploration business, not the regulatory business. Until Cognress steps in to clear things up, the FAA is the logical choice to handle this kind of thing.
Incidentally, this is not a new idea - we discussed this very idea at length in a space law seminar I attended at a very well-known D.C. law school I attended few years ago. Frankly, I'm rather surprised that it's taken this long for the FAA to publicly articulate it.
Ahh kats and your eternal wisdom.
America thinks they have this all figured out but eventually somebody set us up the bomb.
We can't leave now. If no one stays to stop them, the fascists will try to take over the world.
I won't be an old man looking back at Nazis 2.0 and know I did nothing.
That's an incredibly ignorant comment. The Outer Space Treaty fairly explicitly recognizes the right for a nation to enforce the property and activity rights of its citizens in space. It's one of the primary reasons for the treaty existing at all. The FAA isn't saying Americans will own parts of the moon. It is saying that if I spend a billion dollars to build a mining company up there, it's not going to let someone else mine in the exact same place while my operations are actively going on, since it might damage my investment up there and discourage further exploration or development. And once I've pulled up stakes, anyone can move in there.
It's a pretty damn sensible approach, actually.
From the article; "However, for the system to work, a lot of legal and diplomatic work has to be undertaken so that other countries would agree to such an arrangement and participate in it. "
In other words... the FAA has an idea. It needs lots more in the way of international treaties to *work*, but they have an *idea*.
Trifle not with Dragons, for you are crunchy - and go well with catsup.
you are saying there will be hookers and blackjack?
They think they not only own the world now, but all other worlds. Truly the Ferengi of human society...
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"As usual, somehow an American agency has decided they have jurisdiction to claim/enforce property rights on something which international treaty forbids."
Any international treaty is worth just as much (ie jack shit) unless the international body ( I guess the UN) has spaceships and space marines to enforce the treaty.
I really want the FAA involved in more things :\
I'm not sure how the FAA will regulate anyone whose on the moon, with say, that Helium 3 mining facility. It seems it would be terribly costly to send inspectors, and if they're not a US-based company, how will they ever have any hope of having jurisdiction with regulations? It seems like a crazy idea to me.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Clearly at some point we will need property rights on other planets. Right now it's not a big deal because the expense of traveling to the moon or another planet outweighs any potential financial benefit, but that will not always be the case. Property rights protect people and enforcing them is probably the most important function of government.
Damnit, now they're gonna bring down the Nazis living on the moon.
Let's read the treaty, shall we?
Article I
[...] Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies. [...]
Article II
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.
Article VI States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty. The activities of non- governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty. [...]
There's a lot more to it, but let's look at these three parts:
Article I: The Moon is free for every country and state to use.
Article II: No country or state can claim the moon in any way
Article VI: Every country is responsible for what its people do. You can't sneak around articles I and II by claiming that it technically wasn't the government that claimed the moon and tried to interdict access to large parts of it. It it's your people doing it, then you're responsible for them.
This would be a lot clearer if the USA had signed The Moon Treaty, but it seems quite clear that if Bigelow Airspace wants to land on the Moon and claim part of it for themselves then the USA would be responsible for their actions there and Bigelow would be unable to do anything that the government of the USA could not also do under the Outer Space Treaty.
The only loophole that I can see is the usual one, which is "I know I'm breaking the rules that we all agreed to, but you can't stop me."
basically *every* private entity or public entity, be it the FAA or some guy selling property fall under the sovereignty of a nation state, which fall under the moon treaty. Checkmate. Trying to redefine term by saying "yeah but I am not a sovereign natioN" fail the litmus test : you are a sub entity, belonging to a sovereign nation. You are not an independent entity in a vacuum.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It's more like a continent, albeit without an indigenous population.
Thanks to Giovanni Caboto's (John Cabot's) landing in North America, the English had (or still have?) the oldest continuing non-indigenous claim to the "land mass" of North and South America. But as we all know, other world powers successfully claimed and settled most of South and Central America and much of North America.
For the purposes of this discussion, I would consider any Viking-era or other pre-1400-claims by Asian, European, Polynesian, or other non-indigenous governments to have been abandoned well before the time of Columbus. It's only been 40-odd years since American last left its footprint on the moon, so you can argue that this claim has not been completely abandoned for lack of settlement. You can, however, argue that the signing of the Moon Treaty effectively abandoned all sovereign claims over any real estate with the possible exception a limited-use easement-like claim to places where the US assets are still on the ground and the land a few feet either side of those locations (that is, the US might have a claim against another country tearing down the flags or relocating the landers so they could mine the minerals, but it could not claim mining rights to those patches of lunar real estate).
When the existing treaty was drafted nearly 50 years ago, space flight was still in its infancy, and realistic scenarios envisioned today hadn't yet been dreamed of. Perhaps it's time to revise the existing treaty, or negotiate a new one?
I am not a number - I am a free man!
And it would come down to who had the guns and is willing to use them. Which, to be honest, is all property rights really is anyway.
If all claimants to property agree* to respect a common set of laws and legally-enforceable dispute resolution procedures and where those dispute-resolution procedures are functioning well, then property rights are a matter of law.
If they do not, then it can easily become a matter of which party has the biggest guns and is willing to use them and/or which party has the sovereign or non-sovereign backer with the biggest guns and who is willing to use them.
* "agree" can be read "are compelled to, under penalty of being sanctioned by a government which has a means of enforcing its will." For example, I "agree" to respect local no-trespassing and no-filing-false-land-title laws if for no other reason than I don't want to go to jail.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Which thief would you prefer picking your pockets? The US, China, or Russia? Yeah, the US is corrupt. But it's just as corrupt as everyone else...and we've got dazzling movies and fast food.
Oh, I'm sorry did I not show enough concern for the details of your multilayered legal maneuvering? Should I pay more attention to your Federal Lawyers and Corporate Lawyers.giving each other handjobs over coffee? Because for a second there I thought we were actually talking about EATING AWAY AT THE FUCKING MOON.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Why can't we just settle this like the five year olds we are. Just be the first to lick it and no one else will want it anyway.
The FAA has jurisdiction? The dumb arse that things that an U.S. agency holds any legal jurisdiction over another country is so funny.
rail gun slug should be hollowed out with a little charge in the center and some mining debris. Ought to be able to hit something with that.
You don't want to get Finland angry mad by claiming property rights on the moon. You've seen how bad Linus gets is when he's angry, now think what a whole country of them would do.
>>Technically the US does since we landed people on it first
Technically North America is owned by the american natives ( also called Indians)
So if the USA is owned by the indians, and the moon is owned by the USA,
then the moon is owned by the Indians.
aaaaaaa
I can see from your attitude you're from Quebec.
It'll be the same old rules: If you can keep it, it's yours.
What right has FAA to say anything about the moon.. NONE... If I go to the moon and claim a piece of property, it's mine and there's nothing FAA can do about it.. But then again, getting to the moon is the culprit now...
I wasn't aware the US owned the Moon or the rights to it...
Just like Marvin the Martian we planted flags on the moon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X--eVVNzhtc
therefore it's ours.
Watch the capitalist swine walking on two legs and drinking booze. Might be a funny show if they didn't ruin the wold for the rest of us in the process.
Just reclassify the moon as an Inner-Space region
what I was thinking was more like a non-recoil pistol, since I would be flung back unless I had my back up against a rock
Currently, what you want is the HK G11. It has a rotating breech using caseless ammo so that it gets rid of the issue of angular momentum caused by ejecting shells. The recoil in the direction of the firing can be handled with training to fire from the hip and center of mass but is minor compared to other gun operations that will cause the firer to spin along an additional axis. Of course, HK never moved the gun to full production, but of course, countries don't already have moon based either (no matter what conspiracy theorists will tell you).
Then we can all meet in an international court to show that what the FAA wants doesn't mean shit.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
They could stop you from tampering with somebody else's equipment (and vice versa), but I doubt the owners of said equipment would enjoy any special rights over the area (and certainly not mining rights!). The treaty is basically saying that ownership of objects remains attached to the objects, even in outer space, but that doesn't mean the owners of such objects can claim exclusive access to or control of the land on which they operate.
They'll have an active moon base by 2019 and it won't matter what the US, a third world country, says.
Heck, the US can't even build high speed rail, they're that backwards, and their idea of fast Internet is 1/20th what real countries have.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Other countries with economic and military leverage might hold them to it.
Please tell us when you find any (with leverage against the U.S.).
The Russian military is no longer really a match for the U.S, and China is pretty much tied to U.S. interests because of heavy investment in the USD. In fact China would probably act to *protect* Americans seizing large swaths of the moon for commercial purposes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, they're just offering to help US companies avoid conflict with other US companies (where by "US companies" I mean "entities that for whatever reason, whether launching from the US, using US-made vehicles, using US tracking stations, etc."). This doesn't prevent conflict with, say, a Chinese company. But it does establish a useful beginning for cooperation between orbital-capability nations, to jointly prevent conflicts between their respective companies.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Well there is hope. According to at least one economist, the potential availability of resources from space (including materials, information, energy, etc.) could improve the mean standard of living of everyone on Earth by a factor of 10 within 100 years.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
That's an incredibly ignorant comment. The Outer Space Treaty fairly explicitly recognizes the right for a nation to enforce the property and activity rights of its citizens in space. It's one of the primary reasons for the treaty existing at all. The FAA isn't saying Americans will own parts of the moon. It is saying that if I spend a billion dollars to build a mining company up there, it's not going to let someone else mine in the exact same place while my operations are actively going on, since it might damage my investment up there and discourage further exploration or development. And once I've pulled up stakes, anyone can move in there.
It's a pretty damn sensible approach, actually.
Correct. The OST gives nation states the power and the responsibility to apply their laws to the actions of their citizens in space.
Its been long enough after Apollo that I'm happy with anyone who wants to go to the moon doing any damn thing they want with it
In the end, I'm on the side of the guys with space travel.
Now that would really be something to see. (moon's gravity = 1/6 Earth's)
"I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate."
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Most of the comments seem to be focused on the paranoid idea (justifiable in a lot of cases) that the US is doing a land grab.
What about from the other way? you have a moon base (say Space X or such went there "because it's there") and China's rocket lands 10 feet away a few years later. They open the door and tell you to get off their land. Who do you go to to keep 'em from doing that?
Jurisdiction issues cut both ways.
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
Movies Same Old rehashed shit and Plastic cheese? At least Fucking Judas got 30 bits of silver for fucking selling out!
The UN will have to devise a more specific treaty and will then agree to create a supervisory and licencing body along will an armed enforcement arm. This will eventually fund the UN operations completely though fees and resource taxes.
It left junk... Kind of like shooting a bullet at it, really. So...if I shoot a bullet into the air and it lands somewhere, I can stake a claim to it? COOOL!
Yea Native Americans have been putting up with this shit for over 500 years. Some white asshole shows up lost and sticks a flag in the ground and says "Look what we discovered! This land is ours." Discovered?? Their were over 40 million people living here then you didn't "discover" shit and it wasn't yours to take. Many years later the Sons of the theives land on the moon sitck a flag in the dirt and say "This land is ours."
Same soup just reheated.
Thank you Europe for sending all your thugs and theives over here so they could gang up and steal the whole friggin Solar System.
Just because you showed up somewhere doesn't mean you fucking own it.
private people can go and secure homesteads. government just wants a way of controlling it in a sneaky way. nothing prevents a person from a nontreaty nation from going and making a claim. the first settler / astronaut from Monaco could claim the whole kitten kaboodle
Did any of you *read* the whole article?
"But the letter also points to more legal and diplomatic work that will have to be done to govern potential commercial development of the moon or other extraterrestrial bodies.
“It’s very much a wild west kind of mentality and approach right now,” said John Thornton, chief executive of private owned Astrobotic, a startup lunar transportation and services firm competing in a $30 million Google-backed moon exploration XPrize contest. "
They're basically saying that this might be a start at further international law to govern the issues of commercial development off the Earth, not the actual solution. And, frankly, I think it's a good thing to start doing. Off-Earth commercial development, not additional international law, that is. Of course, one will follow the other.
Oh, the trials and tribulations of a network geek! Read about them at: http://www.ryumaou.com/hoffman/netgeek/
The real problem isn't the FAA or the US its the UN and the stupid Outer Space Treaty. If everyone were to use that treaty for the purposes it as written for and wiped their arses on it the problem would be solved. :D
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
and this solar system. deal with it.