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Bill Confirming Property Rights For Asteroid Miners Passes the Senate (examiner.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the dibs-on-ceres dept.

MarkWhittington writes: The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee announced the passage of a bill called H.R.2262 — SPACE Act of 2015, which is designed to facilitate commercial space. The bill has a number of provisions for that purpose, including extending the "learning period" during which the government would be restricted from imposing regulations on the commercial launch industry to September 2023. The most interesting and potentially far-reaching provision concerned property rights for companies proposing to mine asteroids for their resources. In essence, the bill confirms that private companies own what they mine. The bill is a compromise between previous Senate and House versions.

7 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. National level? by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How can this be at the national level? Surely this is something that should be hashed out at the UN rather than proposing national laws for something that is already outside your jurisdiction.

    --

    Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    1. Re:National level? by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >> How can this be at the national level?

      The assumption seems to be that the US will get there first and claim whatever it finds for the US. (Seems reasonable.)

      >> Surely this is something that should be hashed out at the UN

      Surely you understand that the US only uses the UN when it needs to have a resolution bottled up in committees until the news cycle moves on. When we're talking about money, life or property the UN has and will be ignored.

    2. Re:National level? by idontgno · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The history of claim-jumping argues against you. More efficient than prospecting on your own someplace away from other claims, is to let someone else do your prospecting for you and then take the claim for your own. If they're working an asteroid, presumably it's rich enough to make it worth taking from them.

      The Earth is big but humanity has always been willing to kill each other for chosen and desirable bits of it. Space probably won't be different, because even if Space is different, humanity is still humanity.

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    3. Re:National level? by careysub · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The history of claim-jumping argues against you. More efficient than prospecting on your own someplace away from other claims, is to let someone else do your prospecting for you and then take the claim for your own. If they're working an asteroid, presumably it's rich enough to make it worth taking from them.

      The Earth is big but humanity has always been willing to kill each other for chosen and desirable bits of it. Space probably won't be different, because even if Space is different, humanity is still humanity.

      I'm sorry this not the Wild West in space*. Not even the bill just passed lets you claim an asteroid - which is still explicitly prohibited by international treaty. It lets you claim the the stuff you got from the asteroid only, which is quite reasonable.

      Translating notions of "claim jumping" to a space mining operation does not take into account the vast differences. For one, asteroids never had ore concentration processes, beyond what differentiation on formation might have accomplished, and space mining relies on the high average abundance of siderophile** elements in various classes of asteroids. The entire asteroid will be the ore body, and even a small one will vastly exceed the scale of plausible human mining operation. The whole point of space mining is the lack of scarcity up there. Earth mining practices are based on the fact that scarcity is normal.

      *In science fiction this is called a "Bat Durston", translating notions of the Wild West into a space opera. For good reason these are looked upon with derision.

      **The rare iron-loving elements that sank to the core of the Earth.

      --
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  2. Re:Is it just me ... by Rei · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If a US company launches into space, reaches an asteroid, mines it, takes the stuff, and lands back in the US.... they want to know whether the US government is going to let them call what they mined their property. They could care less what Tajikistan thinks. The launch, operations, and returned goods would be within the US. If someone from some other country wants to try to intercept and destroy them en route, that's a "hurdle" this doesn't address. It's also not a realistic scenario in the near-term, or even mid-term, future.

    --
    The yellowcake is a lie.
  3. Re:I have a new law too by Pseudonymous+Powers · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's about who the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow belongs to. That's about as realistic as asteroid mining. Leprechauns, space mining, same thing. You can talk all you want, fantasize all you want, it will never happen. Ever.

    Bah! You're just as bad as the rest of the space nutters on Slashdot. How many times do I have to tell you space nutters? Space doesn't exist! It's just a sheet of canvas that God put up above the Earth to keep us from seeing what else is on his desk.

    Space nutters!

  4. Re:The first word spoken on Mars ... by ClickOnThis · · Score: 4, Funny

    An old joke from comedian Robert Klein...

    Neil Armstrong missed a great commercial opportunity when he placed his foot on the moon. With all of Planet Earth listening, he should have said 'Coca-Cola.'

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    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.