Canadian, UK Law Professors Condemn Space Mining Provisions of Commercial Space Act (examiner.com)

MarkWhittington writes: The Commercial Space Launch Act, which includes provisions allowing American companies the right to keep resources that they mine in space, was recently signed into law by President Barack Obama. While the act has been hailed as groundbreaking in the United States, the space mining title has gotten an angry reaction overseas. In an article in Science Alert, Gbenga Oduntan, Senior Lecturer in International Commercial Law, University of Kent, condemned the space mining provisions as environmentally risky and a violation of international law. Ram Jakhu, a professor at Canada's McGill University's Institute of air and space law, adds that space mining is a violation of the Outer Space Treaty and should not be allowed.

Comments

Sigh...

[MightyMartian]

Any treaty that is unenforceable isn't worth a damn. If the US, China, Russia or anyone else wants to go mine an asteroid, there's precious little anyone else can do about it.

Re:Sigh...

[MacTO]

Of course there are things that can be done about it, at least by a handful of superpowers back here on Earth.

If any of those powers see this as a big enough threat (and this is a pretty big if), they have the political, economic, and military means to take action. Since there is no practical means of doing this in space, any actions would be between the nations of this world.

At face value, I don't think that this is going to be labelled as a big threat simply because the cost of the exploitation of space is going to be prohibitive for the foreseeable future. That being said, that prohibitive cost also makes the economic exploitation of space suspect. It wouldn't surprise me if many nations see that suspect behaviour as have short or long term military objectives.

Re:Sigh...

[MightyMartian]

The Great Powers are going to be the ones licensing the mining. The answer to the threat isn't to nuke a competing nation's privately contracted asteroid mining installation, but rather to build your own.

Re:Sigh...

[LifesABeach]

If a space ship builder can build one craft, couldn't that same builder build two?

Re:Sigh...

[Anonymous Coward]

A private entitey gaining ownership over what is currently public could be looked on as theft from the public.

Re:Sigh...

[RubberDogBone]

By the same token, if aliens came to the Sol system to mine asteroids or take water, there is nothing the Earth can do about it. We lack the technology to stop such a thing AND we don't own the Sol system. We happen to be here but we have no claims to anything beyond the moon.

For a practical matter, aliens or space miners would not need to bother with the inner system anyway. There are tons of moons, rocks, asteroids and comets in the Oort cloud where they could mine freely and we'd probably never even know they were there, much less be able to object.

The lesson here is that space mining would probably work fine if you are coming into a planetary system from outside. You can do what you want if the natives are like us, unable to stop it.

Re:Sigh...

[khallow]

A private entitey gaining ownership over what is currently public could be looked on as theft from the public.

There are surprisingly few things owned in space by the public or anyone else. If some crazy dude with a bunch of robots can keep the rest of humanity from doing anything with the Moon other than look at it, then he effectively owns it even if no one else agrees.

Re:Sigh...

[donaldm]

A private entitey gaining ownership over what is currently public could be looked on as theft from the public.

There are surprisingly few things owned in space by the public or anyone else. If some crazy dude with a bunch of robots can keep the rest of humanity from doing anything with the Moon other than look at it, then he effectively owns it even if no one else agrees.

Note really a nuclear warhead is surprisingly easy and relatively cheap to build and deploy than it would cost a crazy dude with a bunch of robots trying to prevent a determined government from taking dibs on our Moon.

Re:Sigh...

[khallow]

Alternatively you could just make a bunch of those metal things impact earth and mine it from there (businesses of your proposed magnitude wouldn't care much about environmental or people issues such as wiping a small country off the map).

I did say the dude was crazy. Maybe he read too much Heinlein.

Re:Sigh...

[RockDoctor]

AND we don't own the Sol system. We happen to be here but we have no claims to anything beyond the moon

The claim to the Moon is pretty shaky. OK, so it's got a few rovers on it and a couple of footprints. Is that grounds for an eternal claim? Hmmm, would it work on Earth?

Aboriginal American to Hispanic Settler (just to shuffle the stereotypes a little) : "I say, old bean, would you mind moving out of New Mexico. My great^15 grandparents lived in that desert back when it bloomed, while your great^15 grandparents were having their hearts hacked out on top of a pyramid somewhere or fighting Arabs in Andalusia. Look there are their footprints!"

Sounds like a rapidly weakening claim.

Incidentally, I wonder just how long-lasting those footprints are going to be. There is actually such a thing as "space weather", and they are not going to last for ever. Even without tourists and/ or trophy hunters.

What would be the market price of the footprint in the famous photo, I wonder? You'd need to do something like casting it in transparent resin - an aerogel, perhaps. Technically tricky, but given a high enough price, someone is going to work out how to steal it.

The treaty says no such thing.

[bistromath007]

It prohibits the militarization and/or colonization of space. It says fuckall about what to do with any stuff we collect there. What a disingenuous asshole.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[ShanghaiBill]

It prohibits the militarization and/or colonization of space.

The Outer Space Treaty does neither of these things. It prohibits offensive nuclear weapons in space, but does not prohibit conventional weapons. It does not prohibit colonization, it just prohibits exclusive territorial claims.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is also stupid. As unseemly as it might be to Canadians, an unrestrained land-grab in space is the most likely vehicle to spur progress. The "traditional" way a person or country laid claim to land on earth was you had to go there and establish a permanent colony. If we had a similar rule (instead of this stupid treaty) we would probably already have colonies on the moon and Mars by now.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[hey!]

It does not prohibit colonization, it just prohibits exclusive territorial claims.

Right, which does not necessarily prevent claiming materials found as private property.

That said, this is all a tempest in a teapot. At this stage of technology asteroid mining is about the worst imaginable investment anyone could make. It's a purely emotional investment, driven by enthusiasm, and it doesn't stand up to critical scrutiny. We don't even go after the valuable on the sea floor because the cost of finding and raising them makes that unprofitable. If there were hundred pound chunks of refinery-pure platinum floating around in the asteroid belt it would cost more to fetch and return them than they'd fetch on the market.

The economics of space travel is dominated by the cost of moving mass in and out of gravity wells and imparting the necessary acceleration to match position and velocity with targets. It follows that we're looking for stuff with the highest value/mass, and until costs drop by a couple of orders of magnitude there's only one commodity worth returning from space: knowledge. The first physical substances worth mining will be things useful in the pursuit of knowledge -- e.g. water that can be converted to rocket fuel without tankering to the outer solar system.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[MightyMartian]

And when we get to that point, we'll worry about it. Heck, various nations claim chunks of Antarctica, in one way or another, and thus far it's been meaningless flag planting.

But when we do get to the point where we can mine other bodies in the solar system, we'll have to come up with some sort of system of claims. The UN isn't going to be mining, it's going to be commercial and state players doing the mining, and we'll have to come up with a new treaty that will inevitably recognize the rights of those players to make what amount to territorial claims.

Probably the biggest concern, in my view, is privately-owned entities making claims independent of any national or international body.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading must be hard for somebody so stupid.
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.[3] 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.[4] The State is also liable for damages caused by their space object.[5]

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually there is one company that's in the process of setting up mining undersea.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[ColdWetDog]

Much of how one looks at this depends on your time frame. Certainly in the near (20-50 year) future, asteroid mining won't be economically practical. And for longer time periods it may never be practical. But, our ability to cast the future is very poor. If you have money to burn in the interim, you can make an argument that staking out the high ground (so to speak) is indeed economically sensible way to spend part of your (or better yet, some other poor suckers) money.

The big question is who gets to decide about this? A couple of bored, space nutter billionaires or some law professor somewhere?

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[ColdWetDog]

Just how did Weyland-Yutani get started, anyhow?

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[SuricouRaven]

And Argentina claims the Falklands. What eventually determined control of the islands wasn't any sort of legal code: It was being defeated militarily. If they had a good enough navy to beat the British, they'd have the islands right now. International law, like all law, ceases to exist if it cannot be enforced. This includes territorial claims.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[hey!]

Well, as I said it's an emotionally driven investment, which is not to say it's an irrational investment, so long as you understand that.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Rei]

Getting things *to* locations in space is inherently expensive. The cost of getting them *back* is not inherently so, if you don't insist on each return having a custom reentry vehicle and instead just shape it as its own reentry vehicle, with full expectation that it'll suffer some ablation during atmospheric entry. Some NEOs have only dozens of meters per second delta-V to reach earth intercept with an optimal trajectory and timing - a good baseball pitcher could do that unaided ;)

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Rei]

Things don't always come down to that. Look at the Cod Wars between Iceland and the UK. Three times Iceland pushed the UK - a nuclear power with hundreds of times its population - back further and further out its shores. The UK had the military ability to crush Iceland like an ant. But Iceland succeeded by combination of making it economically unfeasible for the British to fish Icelandic waters (net cutters, for example) and well-played international geopolitical maneuvering (for example, threatening to give the NATO base at Keflavík to the Soviets if the US didn't exert pressure on the UK, while also successfully positioning itself as a small weak state being bullied by a large powerful one)

Anyway, the Outer Space Treaty was well meaning. Think of the context of the Cold War and how that was all playing out. It seemed logical to think that both nations would begin laying claim to various bodies (or parts thereof), say by landing as many landers as they could to them... which would inherently lead to disputes, just like happens with worthless pieces of land on Earth - with the each side supporting their claim by military means, just like happens on Earth. It was seen as a ripe grounds for an unchecked military escalation, and while it would start out on other celestial bodies, it would progress to LEO and GEO, and then to Earth.

They were probably way overly optimistic about the space of advancement in space technology (remember, this was 1967) and overly pessimistic about everything else. They certainly weren't trying to "block commercial mining"; the goal was simply to prevent a space arms race between rival powers. Quite to the contrary, the treaty talks frequently about encouraging the peaceful use of space for the benefit of humanity. There's just one detail missing, which is to make explicit that corporations or individuals own what they mine. Without that, there won't be much of any "use of space" beyond exploration.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Returning the materials mined on asteroids to Earth would be economically infeasible due to the costs as you pointed out.

What may make economic sense is if they instead used those mined materials to manufacture things in space, for space. Suppose some company has an established orbital satellite factory that uses materials mined from asteroids as feedstock. They would have much lower variable costs than ground-based competitors, who would have to include the exorbitant costs of launching the satellite into space into their costs. Of course the downside is the massive fixed costs needed to build such a factory. So the company would be very highly leveraged, which brings great demand risk (if demand falls too far, the margin won't contribute enough return on the massive upfront investment and will likely cause cash flow problems).

So if someone such as Planetary Resources wants to succeed, they have to build a market, that is, build sufficient demand to sustain the massive upfront costs. They'll have to mitigate that risk somehow, maybe having some long-term guaranteed contracts (with some portion in escrow potentially) with companies/countries that will want to build space infrastructure, as well as partnerships with manufacturing companies that want to establish orbital factories. It will all have to be very tightly coupled. Having a huge cash reserve will also mitigate the demand risk, it would help enable them to weather an economic slump (though such a slump could eventually turn out to be a permanent decrease in market size).

There are so many moving parts I could see it failing miserably. If it does pan out though, it could be an extremely lucrative industry.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Rei]

The missing part is making explicit that an entity owns what it mines and has the right to work the mines it develops. I think given the context it's pretty clear that this was expected, but it is an oversight. You know, if one corporation spent billions clearing the overburden off an asteroid, then another company comes in and just starts mining the ore in question... that's a big problem. It needs to be controlled. Really, it should be allocated out in blocks, with exclusive rights given to use the blocks but only if they're actively working those blocks within a certain timeperiod from their last renewal.

On Earth this is done by nations auctioning off resource extraction rights, but since there's no national ownership of territory in space, no nation could rightfully profit from selling off resource blocks. Blocks would either have to be free or for profits go to an international fund. In the early days, since nobody knows whether space mining actually will play out to be profitable at this point in time, one would expect them to start out free.

But of course all of this would require a new treaty.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Roger W Moore]

As unseemly as it might be to Canadians, an unrestrained land-grab in space is the most likely vehicle to spur progress.

It is also very likely to spur wars over territorial claims...hence the treaty preventing such claims. However extracting material from the asteroid and bringing it back to Earth seems like a perfectly allowed action under the treaty so long as the company does not try to claim that it is a US asteroid which they are mining.

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

It PROHIBITS ALL appropriations claims. Your statement is wishful thinking bordering on self dillusion.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't say where the space object has to be launched from so if they launch the ore from the asteroid they own it. Still doesn't say anything about non-governmental exploitation. It might be held that a commercial enterprise would be charged to the government that regulated its launch facilities much like ships sail under a particular flag but that is by no means a certain thing.

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[Rei]

You know, you post as AC but it's really obvious who you are, you have the same writing style everywhere you post ;)

Anyway, here's what the treaty actually says:

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.

Any questions?

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like you're the asshole. See comment below.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[cavreader]

The US already planted a flag on the Moon and since then no one else has stepped foot on the moon:) Maybe the US is using the Mars rovers to survey the landscape looking for the best parcels of territory to claim just in case enough people actually travel there and start arguing over zoning regulations and eminent domain claims. If a sizeable number of humans ever leave the planet we will most likely take our prejudices, animosities, and god help us, our politics with us where ever we go.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

Things don't always come down to that. Look at the Cod Wars between Iceland and the UK. Three times Iceland pushed the UK - a nuclear power with hundreds of times its population - back further and further out its shores. The UK had the military ability to crush Iceland like an ant. But Iceland succeeded by combination of making it economically unfeasible for the British to fish Icelandic waters (net cutters, for example) and well-played international geopolitical maneuvering (for example, threatening to give the NATO base at Keflavík to the Soviets if the US didn't exert pressure on the UK, while also successfully positioning itself as a small weak state being bullied by a large powerful one)

Ah, but I'd distinguish on a couple of grounds. First, the UK was trying to encroach on waters already owned; no such ownership claim exists to objects in space. Second, "making it economically unfeasible for the British to fish Icelandic waters (net cutters, for example);" short of shooting down the rockets--which, again, would be in the equivalent of international waters, not territorial--how would you propose a country (and, for that matter, which country--who has the claim of right?) exert such force? Third, "positioning itself as a small weak state being bullied by a large powerful one;" again, how is anybody else being bullied? They're not being robbed of anything to which they have a claim.

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

(Different AC) A nation deciding that a resource is within its ability to assign ownership is that nation appropriating it.
Maybe part of the difference in thinking is whether you consider private property rights as stemming from the state or not. The laws concerning such do seem to be part of the state.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case the government is saying who owns a thing so it isn't the same as shipping. Its governmental in that if I took the thing they said someone else owned they would seek to harm me for doing it which means the right is being enforced by the government, not just the private entity.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

The big question is who gets to decide about this? A couple of bored, space nutter billionaires or some law professor somewhere?

Some billionaires or a couple of bored, space-nutter law professors.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the biggest concern, in my view, is privately-owned entities making claims independent of any national or international body.

This would be my ideal outcome. My biggest concern is seeing everything carved up ahead of time by governments.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[hey!]

I considered the near Earth object case. Clearly that's the easiest place to return material from; the problem is that it's coals-to-Newcastle. So far as we know the bulk of that material is stuff that's easy to get here on Earth: silicates, sulfides, iron, nickel etc. Judging from meteors found here on Earth there are exotic materials like iridium, but in trace quantities.

While there's no doubt lots of valuable stuff like platinum up there, I think people are picturing it as floating around as nuggets of largely native metal. The platinum deposits in Canada's Sudbury Basin were delivered by a meteor, but that meteor was fifteen km across. It contained a lot of Pt in absolute terms, but in relative terms the Pt was rare compared to silicates or nickel. The liquefaction of the meteor in impact separated the heavy metals into convenient deposits. If we tried to mine that object while it was in space we'd have had to crush and melt a lot of ore to get much Pt.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Applehu Akbar]

"The big question is who gets to decide about this? A couple of bored, space nutter billionaires or some law professor somewhere?"

Whichever of these parties has the money and the initiative to go out there, assay some asteroids, and start mining.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Applehu Akbar]

The Space Treaty was prompted by the moon race. Smaller countries didn't want to have to stand by while the mighty US and the all-powerful Soviet Union divide up sovereignty of space objects and shut everyone out.

Today the Soviet Union has disappeared completely and US manned programs have been sidetracked by anti-science fears. Time to stand by and watch China occupy the nearby bodies. Will it cooperate with or compete with the various private initiatives?

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Rei]

. So far as we know the bulk of that material is stuff that's easy to get here on Earth: silicates, sulfides, iron, nickel etc. Judging from meteors found here on Earth there are exotic materials like iridium, but in trace quantities.

Not at all. In a similar thread I linked to a USGS study on the prospects of space mining that showed that for an entire class of asteroids the average precious metals concentration is 28 ppm, with findings as high as 200ppm. In bulk, not concentrates, no overburden. I mean, that's insanely rich deposits. The richest gold mine on Earth is something like 40ppm - with lots of overburden. Most are 1-2 orders of magnitude less rich than that.

The problem with Earth is that most of the precious metals in the planet have sunk into the depths, with the crust mostly containing only that which has been deposited by later bombardments. But asteroids (with the possible exception of large ones like Ceres) are undifferentiated. Look at 16 Psyche, for example - it makes up 1% of the total mass of the asteroid belt and it's an estimated 90% metal. Ever seen anything like that occurring naturally on Earth? ;) Now Psyche itself wouldn't be an ideal target, it's a main belt asteroid, but still, it drives home how much these objects are not like Earth.

The platinum deposits in Canada's Sudbury Basin were delivered by a meteor

I think you're mixing things up. Sudbury is mainly mined for nickel - the platinum is recovered as a secondary product and is not the prime mining target (while not precious, nickel is a rather valuable mineral (nearly twice as valuable as copper), and Sudbury is one of the world's best deposits). And its minerals, while the result of a meteor strike, didn't come from the meteor itself. The meteor (now believed more likely to have been a comet than an asteroid) overwhelmingly converted to vapor and plasma and was blasted into the upper atmosphere and circulated around the Earth. The giant "wound" however, penetrated all the way down to the mantle, which bulged up and diffused with a giant pool of liquified rock and let to melt differentiation mineralization processes, creating areas of very rich deposits. The key issue is that overwhelmingly the minerals at Sudbury are believed to be terrestrial-sourced igneous deposit, even though the concentrations were caused by an impact.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Rei]

First, the UK was trying to encroach on waters already owned; no such ownership claim exists to objects in space.

It's not that simple. In each case Iceland was pushing the boundaries of law on ownership of seas. Remember, there was a time where there was no such thing as coastal waters, and then later when there was no concept of an EEZ. In fact, Iceland was the first country to lay claim to an EEZ for fishing (Britain cried foul, but they helped pioneer the concept by laying claim to ocean-bottom mineral resources a couple years earlier in a different kind of EEZ). Now every coastal state has an EEZ, but back then it was a new concept.

For your other two points I think I may have lost the thread here. Or maybe you did. Either way, my point was that larger states can't always successfully bully smaller states by military might in today's international world. I don't see why that wouldn't apply to space as well.

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[Rei]

National ownership and private ownership are two entirely different things. The US has no right to grant or deny access to an asteroid, under the Outer Space Treaty. But once there's property in question within the United States (having been returned to the surface), ownership of that property is a key issue that needs to be decided by law. The US has made clear that it considers that the private property of the company in question. This is in no way "national appropriation by claim of sovereignty" to the asteroid. It's just saying, "Yup, you mined it, you own it, we're not going to confiscate it or anything of the sort"

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying 'you mined it, you own it' is a claim they can assign private ownership to something that is currently not viewed as privately owned. Even though the USA government is not directly controlling it they have decided they can grant ownership, which means they think they have the right to grant it, and enforce it (take it and they'll arrest you).
    If sovereignty wasn't involved the law would be irrelevant. I would take it as a claim to sovereignty if one country said of another's land that if you mine something there you own it.
    As I said I think people have very different views on private property (e.g. is ownership something the state grants), but I guess I should have added sovereignty.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

While I don't disagree on the "spur progress" part, if you green light this, how long until China and Russia lay claim to about 1000x as much as the USA can?

Just a thought from Canada.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[hey!]

200 parts per million might be insanely rich, but it also means you have to process over 300 pounds of ore to extract 1 oz of platinum. That's nothing to a terrestrial mining operation which might crush several tons of rock to recover a single ounce of gold, but remember they do that with mass-is-no-object machinery and consuming, from a spacecraft point of view, unthinkable amounts of power. In space operations mass and power matters a great deal.

I'm not saying it won't happen eventually, but it won't be profitable until we're measuring cost per pound to orbit in pennies rather than thousands of dollars.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

US manned programs have taken a hiatus because the ROI on any manned mission is lousy. The various space programs initiated by the US using un-manned probes and drones has provided a wealth of scientific information at a relatively cheap price tag. And why in the ever living fuck do you think the US has become anti-science? Last time I checked the US has contributed quite a bit of the science and technology the world uses and copies today. And the best way to get another US manned trip to the Moon is if China ever attempted to do so. Do you really think the US would stand by and let China grab the ultimate high ground using technology copied from the US and Russia? So far China's manned Moon program is on track to happen on the same day Linux conquers the desktop. After the USSR ceased to be a threat the US decided to take a good look at space programs that were affordable yet offered ways to gather scientific information on the entire solar system. The US Moon landings were enormous technical achievements but they would probably have never happened if the US and USSR were not trying to one up each other during the Cold War. The manned Moon programs also provided cover for the US development of it's ICBM's. If you are engineering rockets to get to the moon how much harder would it be to modify the same rocket to drop a nuke on Moscow? If the earth was scheduled to blow up in the near future and we wanted to migrate a sizable population to Mars to maintain the human race we could do so. (The Moon would not be a feasible destination because it's orbit would most likely go haywire with no Earth to orbit. No telling where it would end up flying off to.) The technology is just about there, cost and budgets would not be a factor, the public would understand people dying during this adventure and would not demand Congressional hearings every time something blew up unexpectedly, and we would be pretty well motivated to get the program up and running ASAP. However, the world is not currently scheduled to be blown up, cost and budgets definitely matter, and the motivation to move people to Mars is really not there. In the future private corporations may attempt a manned mission to the Moon or Mars but they won't do it for free. They will expect a ROI. The private companies now putting rockets and payloads into orbit would not exist if they didn't expect to make money or at least break even. The private corporations are benefactors from the trillions of dollars spent on space related R&D by the government over the years. And that is the way it should work. The government has provided the heavy lifting in terms of financing and R&D but private companies can build upon the government efforts and move forward with making things more cost effective and taking the existing technology and improving it much quicker than any government could do it.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[drinkypoo]

200 parts per million might be insanely rich, but it also means you have to process over 300 pounds of ore to extract 1 oz of platinum. That's nothing to a terrestrial mining operation which might crush several tons of rock to recover a single ounce of gold, but remember they do that with mass-is-no-object machinery and consuming, from a spacecraft point of view, unthinkable amounts of power. In space operations mass and power matters a great deal.

Getting the energy into the ore is easy. Getting it out again is the hard part.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[khallow]

I'm not saying it won't happen eventually, but it won't be profitable until we're measuring cost per pound to orbit in pennies rather than thousands of dollars.

In other words, it won't be profitable until the mass for that machinery and propellant comes from somewhere much cheaper than Earth, say the asteroid you're mining.

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[guruevi]

So you'd have to find objects that provide: oil/kerosene (a fuel), liquid oxygen and/or hydrogen (a catalyst) and your precious metal all in close proximity near earth, find multi-billion dollar investors to mine stuff we can easily find on earth.

Alternatively you could just make a bunch of those metal things impact earth and mine it from there (businesses of your proposed magnitude wouldn't care much about environmental or people issues such as wiping a small country off the map).

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[rtb61]

So the fine point on mining or colonisation is whether it is a territorial claim or a development claim. If you can get up there and colonise or mine, then pretty much you are entitled to claim what you are actually colonising or mining, as a developmental claim. As a territorial claim it should of course be banned, you can not point to the sky and claim to own it all because you have lots of nuclear war heads. It might seem odd compared to claims on earth but in all seriousness it will most likely suffice for the next hundred years or so and we should be doing all we can to promote the space race over stupendously destructive earth bound wars for profits and egos. There is a whole galaxy out there waiting to be explored, experienced and enjoyed.

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[Rei]

I don't get your argument. How is saying "I'm not going to take it from you" equivalent to "I hereby claim an asteroid in the name of the United States"? So do you think that the US government is required by the treaty to confiscate the material? Or if not, that some other entity is?

I don't get your line of argument. If a private entity mines an asteroid - the very using of space for the benefit of mankind repeatedly discussed as being beneficial in the OST - then what exactly do you think should happen to it? How should the government treat that material when it returns to Earth? Because everything is in the ownership of someone, whether private or governmental - the law doesn't account for things that no entity has a right or responsibility to.

And anyway: even if the government declared a right to confiscate (rather than an obligation to *not confiscate*) goods returned by private mining - in what way would the claimed right to confiscate the goods be a claim to confiscate the mine? If the US government confiscated a couple tonnes of copper would that be the same as the US government confiscating a copper mine? Of course not, one is the production facility, the other is a product.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Rei]

You don't have to pre-enrich it to those extremes. With a delta-V requirement of only dozens of meters per second, your cost to lob either single-stage concentrated ore, or even raw ore, back to Earth... hmm, let's do some calculations.

Solar panels for space usage are generally cited at 300W/kg (although with a large fixed installation one could probably do a lot better with concentrated solar or nuclear... and there's a lot of room for improvement on that 300 figure.. but let's go with it). 1kg to a NEO surface probably costs around $20k. So about $67 per watt. Let's go with a required delta-V of 50m/s. A coilgun shooting sintered ore would require 0,35 watt hours/kg at 100% efficiency... let's say 0,5 for losses. So $33 pays for 1kg return per hour. Let's say that of every kg you send to Earth 90% reaches the surface and is recovered (the rest ablating on reentry or being lost at the recovery site), so $37/kg. Let's assume that we only want to recover precious metals (even though nickel is worth about $10/kg, for example, and there's lots of other stuff worthwhile), and let's assume that the average precious metal price is $20k/kg (2/3rds the value of gold). If you only got a single hour's worth of returns out of it, you would only need to have refined your precious metal concentration of 0,5% to justify your costs to send it to Earth. From a single hour's worth of returns. If you got 20 years out of it, then your cost per kg to send to Earth (from the power perspective alone) is $0.0002/kg, and 200ppm ore at $20k/kg precious metal would pay for itself 19000x over.

This is why people complaining about the energy required to send things to Earth are not even close to having a valid complaint. It's a non-issue. Getting things to an asteroid is hard, but getting bulk material sent back is easy. It doesn't have to be concentrated. Heck, rather than the energy to send it back one should be more concerned with the energy to mine and sinter it into large shaped blocks for return, that's much more significant (probably in the ballpark of 0,1 to 5kWh per kg, depending on the methods employed - hundreds to thousands of times more than the energy cost to launch it back to Earth). And of course the capital costs to get your hardware sent there - your mining equipment, your coilgun or other launch method (heck, even a torsion catapult would work ;) ) sent there, etc and keep it operational. And the vast amounts of prep work that would need to be done to convince investors that the technology is ready. But that said, the economic potential is huge.

Note that if one felt some reason to concentrate ore (probably not economically justifiable), there's lots of relatively easy "first stage" concentration methods available that can eliminate a large chunk of the bulk.

In general, for asteroid mining, even if your capital costs are 1-2 orders of magnitude more per unit throughput, it's probably a solid economic decision. 3 orders of magnitude, maybe. 4 or more orders of magnitude, probably not. Now it's easy to be pessimistic about people's ability to make and launch lightweight, microgravity-and-vacuum tolerant mining hardware, even for a couple orders of magnitude more money. But I personally would not put so much doubt in engineers' ability to do that sort of job. It's not going to happen tomorrow. Or next year. Or next decade. But in decades after that, it's certainly possible.

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[Rei]

No need to "wipe a small country off the map". Take any of the countless areas on Earth with low populations of ideally nomadic people and offer them a nice chunk of money if they'll be willing to, every few years with long advance warning, move out of the impact zone along with their livestock. Or simply pick an area with no people at all. Greenland would love some extra income, they're big into encouraging mining and have vast glacial landscapes which would be easy to find your impactors on (it'd have no relevant impact on the rate of melt, and meteor-hunting expeditions are often done in Antarctica because they stand out so well against the snow). Shallow seas might be a good option. Salars would be great - generally little to nothing lives there and they're naturally resurfaced annually, so the impactors wouldn't leave a scar. It all depends on how accurate you can be with your impactors.

As for the environment, when you're talking about vaporized rock ablating in the air and plumes of dust being kicked up on impact... it's really not going to be anything compared to what, say, volcanoes do, or wind erosion. Really, I'd expect less environmental impact than a normal terrestrial mine. You could probably even sell your tailings to people who want to build things out of rock from space ;)

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not really sure how much staking-out of high ground is even possible until one gets closer to economic realization. Even if some treaty said that "Any touching of the asteroids is forbidden forever, with utter seriousness", one could safely enough do the R&D necessary to make grabbing them and chopping them up more practical; basically all the capabilities you'd need for asteroid mining can also be used for satellite launch, automation/robotics, improved astronomy and telescopes, and similar warm and fuzzy applications. The astronomy stuff would mostly fall under 'pure science', unless you can convince somebody that it will help detect ICBMs; but launch capabilities and improved robotics and remotely automated process research have a variety of plausible commercial applications even if the asteroids are off the table.

On the other side of the coin, highflown expressions of legal principle are usually given a great deal of latitude until they actually conflict with the interests of the nations that you need to sign and obey them. So long as the prospect is sufficiently science-fiction, anyone willing to spend a lot of time hounding UN delegates is more or less free to write whatever they want. Were somebody to step up to the table with a vaguely plausible plan, however, it's hard to imagine that they'd have much trouble finding a country large enough to be able to ignore the consequences and more than willing to do so in exchange for a cut of the take.

It seems to me that team lawyer wins more or less by default so long as the implementation isn't worked out(both because it won't actually be happening; and because there will be relatively little resistance to opining against it); but team mining will win more or less by default if they can actually make it cost effective; since laws national and international are bent, broken, or rewritten all the time for markedly less profitable(and much more ghastly) ventures.

Until that time, the posturing is symbolic(either banning the practice or laying claim to rocks you aren't already on course to intercept). If the law says nobody can do it; that will change once somebody concludes that they can turn a profit by doing it; and if I get myself crowned God Emperor of the Kupier belt now; I'll still have to get my tech up and running before somebody else does, or the claim will do me little good.

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[khallow]

Alternatively you could just make a bunch of those metal things impact earth and mine it from there (businesses of your proposed magnitude wouldn't care much about environmental or people issues such as wiping a small country off the map).

Maybe, we should refrain from doing stupid stuff, eh?

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue is that companies have no incentive to research or practice going beyond Earth orbit without mining. They have to have the possibility of making money to dump millions into that research.

Space tourism is the only other option, and let's just say there sere that enough millionaires that want to take a trip to the moon or Mars to justify the investment.

Mining gives them a way to make money to recoup the costs of developing spacecraft that can go to the moon or beyond. There really isn't any other incentive for a commercial entity to do that.

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-science? Where did you pull that out of?

Environmentalist might fit as rockets dump a lot of bad stuff into the atmosphere. Financial reasons fit better as there isn't really an ROI for companies, and there is no more Cold War to push the government.

How about an example of whatever massive anti-science movement you are talking about that is preventing space exploration?

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The future belongs to the adventurous. Screw these old world power centers.

Well, I guess America is the old world, sending ships to the new for colonization. Europe is the Old Old World.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[MachineShedFred]

They wouldn't have to claim that it's a US territory - that's what maritime law is for, which extends to space.

Yes, that means that we could see actual space pirates in our lifetime.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[MachineShedFred]

There's a lot more than one. Hint: offshore oil platforms are technically undersea mining operations.

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[MachineShedFred]

You seem to have comprehension issues. What the US Government codified is that they won't confiscate stuff that is returned from space to it's territory.

How is not taking shit that is on Earth, from people also on Earth, laying national claim to a body in space?

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[khallow]

So you'd have to find objects that provide: oil/kerosene (a fuel), liquid oxygen and/or hydrogen (a catalyst) and your precious metal all in close proximity near earth, find multi-billion dollar investors to mine stuff we can easily find on earth.

You can find metal oxides anywhere. With some energy, that becomes LOX and a reactive metal which you can use in either a pressured gas engine or a hybrid (LOX/metal) motor. You wouldn't want to fire it in Earth orbit due to the spew of solids in the propellant exhaust.

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[guruevi]

Spews of solids anywhere near Earth's gravity also has major impact for any further missions you might want to plan. It's already a worry for NASA and we have relatively few things out there that never spewed anything.

Re: The treaty says no such thing.

[khallow]

Hence, why I said "Earth orbit" which is effectively what "near Earth's gravity" means. I bet one could separate the oxygen/metal reaction from the propellant for a modest loss of ISP and mass fraction, eliminating the spew.

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Stuarticus]

Your maths amuses me, how many kg are you throwing into the atmosphere over that 20 year period and is there any risk associated with that at all?

Re:The treaty says no such thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Stop assuming that mined stuff is for sell on Earth. It is to be used in Orbit, you know that thing that you spend $20,000 / kg to send stuff up to?
2. The most precise material is water up there at the moment, because it is water, oxygen and fuel, all in one.
3. It doesn't cost much to move stuff from orbit to orbit as long as you are willing to wait while using ion engines or have cheap fuel (see 2).

The law is ridiculous anyway

[aaaaaaargh!]

The idea that the USA - or any other nation state alone, for what its worth - could have the power to grant anyone property rights of extraterrestrial bodies is ridiculous anyway.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[currently_awake]

You are saying that colonizing Mars isn't legally possible.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Opportunist]

Who should do it? Who does Mars belong to? If we go by the old law of "he who first lands on unclaimed territory is the owner", we might have to ask Putin if we're allowed to settle...

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[aaaaaaargh!]

It is very well legally possible. But the idea that some nation on earth would have to make a law to make it possible in the first place is utterly ridiculous. And only a bunch of complete assholes would get this idea without consulting the rest of the world first.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Dog-Cow]

He didn't say that at all. Who taught you how to read?

Re: The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have no space program capable of the actions people are getting underway you'd be advised to create one so you don't miss the new frontier. Unless you are in space soon you'll have no say over it.

Re: The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, let's blow up the moon or paint a big Coca Cola sign on it. Why not, if you can do it? Why bother about mankind as a whole if you can fuck around as you like because you can? Only the first and strongest win, fuck the rest!!!

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Kohath]

So someone who wants resources from Mars needs to get permission from everyone in the world first?

Presuming someone has the technical means, what's stopping them from just going there and taking what they want? Are the police going to arrest them when they get back? Which country's police?

If you want to stop all progress in space (or any other scientific or technological progress) then go ahead with that idea that nothing is allowed unless governments grant specific permission in advance.

Re: The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

So you've been reading up on the worlds colonial past. Brava.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

The power to grant anybody property rights is easy, it's called a nuclear arsenal. I can't think of anyone with the power to differ on that, can you? :P

At least Slashdot doesn't make me lose as much faith in humanity as the facebook news feed, but really the difference is shrinking daily. And not in the right direction.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[MightyMartian]

Ask the American Indians how ridiculous it was that nations projected their power far outside their original sphere of influence.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

He needs to get NO permissions from anyone first, you dumbass! That's why the law is ridiculous. US congress could have just as well passed a law that grants individual citizens the right to FART.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[MightyMartian]

It takes more than just flag-planting to make a territorial claim. A nation has to be able to demonstrate some sort of permanent control of the territory, usually in the form of colonization or economic exploitation. That's like trying to say that we need to ask the Danish, Norwegians and Swedes if Canadians can live in Newfoundland.

Before any nation can make claim to any extraterrestrial territory, it's going to have to be able to actually hold that territory, and we're still decades away from that.

Re: The law is ridiculous anyway

[MightyMartian]

There's no utopia on Earth, and there won't be in space either. The same economic conditions that have driven human progress since we first walked out Africa 100,000 years ago are still in play today, and will be into the future.

Re: The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but that's just personal ideology based on some folk psychology. Mankind has changed in almost unbelievable ways since 100,000 years ago, whether you like it or not, and mostly into a positive direction. There is no sound reason to believe that Earth could not develop into a place that is prosperous and just for everyone, in fact many indicators suggest that this may happen in the long run. Conditions are improving all over the planet at a tremendous rate, despite the fact that one continent is left behind.

It is also fairly ludicrous, to be honest, to compare "economic conditions" of mankind 100,000 ago with contemporary economic conditions, let alone state that they are the same.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Those nations projected their power by means of gun powder and the spreading of diseases, not by passing laws. As an inhabitant of the American Colonies of the British Empire you should know that.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Rei]

I don't know, do failed landers actually count? I guess the earth equivalent would be someone sailing to a new island to claim it, launching boats to land on it, but getting stuck on a coral reef on the way in. ;)

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to consult the Beothuks, if there were any left, that is.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

The power to grant anybody property rights is easy, it's called a nuclear arsenal. I can't think of anyone with the power to differ on that, can you? :P

Every other country with a nuclear arsenal (actually biological & chemical could do but no one admits to having them).

Re: The law is ridiculous anyway

[MightyMartian]

Need for resources drives expansion. That's been true since the first self replicating molecules evolved.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[HornWumpus]

Your making his point. Even if there first, they couldn't hold it.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

So someone who wants resources from Mars needs to get permission from everyone in the world first?

What should be done is a new treaty not one country deciding it doesn't need to refer to anyone else to decide who owns what is at the moment a communal resource. As there doesn't seem a practical case at the moment it seems a bit preemptive as if there was a real situation to be considered there could be a prototreaty based around and limited to that case.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Well let them contest it then! Everyone else can stfu, right? Or we just enjoy talking out our anus?

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[CrimsonAvenger]

If we go by the old law of "he who first lands on unclaimed territory is the owner", we might have to ask Putin if we're allowed to settle...

Neither Putin nor any other Russian has ever set foot on Mars, so they have no claim whatsoever to it.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Opportunist]

Wait, so... colonialism was ok? I mean, those people couldn't hold their land, so it was a-ok that we took it?

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Opportunist]

Well, apparently severed hands count.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you where the one mentioning nuclear arsenal and I was pointing out that they do have the power to differ. China & Russia may differ and may decide they can exploit to different rules. They don't have to attack the USA to differ and the USA can't afford to attack them unless it wants to start WW3. So I guess you are talking out your anus.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally, those selfsame people have retaken, and now hold their lands. However, I would argue that colonialism in that meaning, is far from colonization in the sense of outer space exploration, as there is no native population (as far as we can tell, and we've looked, damnit).

Now, in an abstract sense, allowing those with the power to hold and defend a parcel of land the right to administer it makes sense. Allowing them to reap the economic benefits does so as well. Where Colonialism fell down really, was in human decency. We did not care for those how lived there, or saw them as less human. That is badness, so you don't interpret my defense of allowing people to explore, expand, and exploit as a defense of countless instances of inhumanity, depravity, and idiocy that occurred in the past.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[khallow]

We can't really discuss the subject with you when you keep asking irrelevant, leading questions. Suppose the previous poster was a hard-core "manifest destiny" type who actually does agree that colonialism is an unalloyed great thing. Or not. It's completely irrelevant to their point about the natives being unable to maintain possession of land they used to occupy.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[myowntrueself]

Those nations projected their power by means of gun powder and the spreading of diseases, not by passing laws. As an inhabitant of the American Colonies of the British Empire you should know that.

Oh come on, the US just celebrated thanksgiving and I doubt 1 in 10 of them even know they are celebrating genocide.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[MachineShedFred]

Except that's not what the US is doing. They are granting property rights to material returned from space to the US. Essentially they are saying "if you go out there and mine a bunch of shit, and then return it to the US, the US Government will not confiscate said shit."

There is no granting of any rights to anything not on Earth, in the territorial borders of the US, at the time of the granting. This is completely consistent with existing international and maritime law.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[MachineShedFred]

The US has said they won't (as a government) lay claim to extraterrestrial material returned to the US from space in this law.

Where the fuck does Russia and China come into this again? They're free to pass their own laws saying that they will confiscate (or not) any material brought back to their territories, and then we'll see just how much shit gets de-orbited into their territory.

I know that if I was running some mining operation, and a particular nation was overtly hostile towards my rights as the person who went out there to get this shit and bring it back, I'd make damn sure that I'm landing it far away from them. The world is a big place, and it would be rather easy to compute a landing trajectory that misses Asia completely. NASA has been doing it for 50+ years.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, so... colonialism was ok? I mean, those people couldn't hold their land, so it was a-ok that we took it?

Colonialism is always ok. Might may not make right in philosophy, but, in a historical sense, it does every single time.

Re:The law is ridiculous anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially since they haven't checked the public records database in the Alpha Centauri system.

Nope

[JBMcB]

"Meanwhile, the Moon Agreement (1979) has in effect forbidden states to conduct commercial mining on planets and asteroids until there is an international regime for such exploitation. While the US has refused to sign up to this, it is binding as customary international law"

This guy is a specialist in international law? You didn't sign up for a treaty, but it's still binding? Sure we'll see how that goes.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

It is, if the world has the military power and the will to enforce it on the US. Which is a big if.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Customary international law (CIL) is regularly followed/applied by SCOTUS when international disputes come up. E.g. SCOTUS pretty much always follows the protocols listed under UNCLOS. The US has not signed on, but it has regularly followed UNCLOS as CIL. It's basically seen as "common law".

Re:Nope

[del_diablo]

So does it forbid states, or does it forbid corporations with a HQ in a state? Because there is a big difference

Re:Nope

[mbone]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Customary international law (CIL) is regularly followed/applied by SCOTUS when international disputes come up. E.g. SCOTUS pretty much always follows the protocols listed under UNCLOS. The US has not signed on, but it has regularly followed UNCLOS as CIL. It's basically seen as "common law".

162 States, including many maritime powers, have signed on to UNCLOS III. It is reasonable to view it as CIL. It is not, by the same standard, reasonable to view the Moon Treaty in the same way, as no major space power has ratified it.

Note, also, that nothing prevents the US from adopting laws that go against CIL, as long as it is based on agreements we have not ratified.

Re:Nope

[mbone]

So does it forbid states, or does it forbid corporations with a HQ in a state? Because there is a big difference

By the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, anything launched under the flag of a given state is subject to the laws of that state while in outer space. Under the Space Station MOU, for example, each module on station is governed by the laws of the state that launched it. That gave Cmdr. Hadfield fits when it came time to clear the rights of his ISS version of Space Oddity, as he flew through a bunch of different modules in the video.

Re: Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Both. It forbits nation states and makes nation states liable for the companies in their nation. i.e. its not legal for US to claim mining rights for asteroids and neither is it legal for BobSpaceMiningNotDodgyAtAll Corp., from claiming mining rights.

Really, these are venture capital fraud. They paid a few congressmen to pass this with a view to floating a company and ripping off investors on some fake space mining venture. But if they go to the stock market that is fraud, the legal basis isn't there, its not theres to mine.

Re:Nope

[silas_moeckel]

And when US law conflicts with CIL which one wins, Would hazed to guess US law in a US court.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

International law is not real law. Calling it "law" makes a mockery of the term.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

I definitely didn't look into the statement whether or not the Moon Treaty was CIL or not. I've never heard of it before, so probably it wouldn't be. The point I was trying to make is that CIL is often times enforceable, and not just a bunch of unenforceable ideas.

That said, you are correct. The US can ratify laws that go against CIL. Since CIL is considered "common" law, in the US, any laws that go against CIL would take precedence over CIL. That said, states that DID follow CIL could also have their courts enforce CIL on MNC that have entities located in their territories.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not binding customary international law, because virtually no one ratified it, the most powerful country that did was either Australia or Saudi Arabia depending on which is more powerful. The US, Russia, China, the UK, France, and India all either did not sign or did not ratify.

Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's assume for a moment that someone is hell bent on space mining and that it is an entirely legal free-for-all. When at the absolute earliest would anyone be able to actually do it? When would anyone be able to return a single kilogram of anything form any space body?

I'm going to suggest that it's over ten years away form any hope of "space mining" yet these idiots are getting paid to pass laws and argue over this shit? How about we not worry about the legality of such matters until it is an actual possibility.

I wonder if anyone would pay me to argue the legality of teleporting into hot chicks' bedrooms? There's presently no law against it and it seems like a matter that people would be passionate about. Could I have a six or seven digit salary to contemplate and argue laws regulating teleportation into the bedrooms of hot chicks.

Re: Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Burglary and trespass.

they need not worry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Space mining would not be economically viable if asteroids were made of pure diamond, which you'll note that they are not.

Until there is some radical shift in the cost to get mass into and back from space - and it needs many orders of magnitude - there is no economic case for space mining. It is conceivable that nuclear propulsion or some other semi-exotic launch tech could do it, but those are not on the horizon.

And at that point, why should the resources NOT go to the parties who can obtain them? When some tribe was miffed that NASA landed a probe on "their" asteroid, NASA said, "Welp, you are welcome to go up there and remove it."

Re:they need not worry.

[Anonymous Coward]

And at that point, why should the resources NOT go to the parties who can obtain them?

Maybe another group of people chose not to as they like it where it is? Or perhaps the extraction process damages other precious minerals that others are interested in.

Oh for crying out loud

[Anonymous Coward]

You might as well make a law about what angels dancing on a pin are allowed to wear. "Mining" in space is such an absurd proposition, it will never happen. Look at the price of minerals right here on Earth right now, they're so low they're dragging the economy of places like Alberta down.

Technology always gets better, remember? These kinds of grandiose 1960s space fantasies are obsolete. We don't need to "get" more stuff from space, we'll simply recycle and reuse and reduce what we need here.

In space there is only one law

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mighty Green and Red lasers.

Todd Hoffman and his Gold Rush crew

[BenJeremy]

They already have a friend building them the Big Red Rocket to take them into space to mine gold in the asteroid belt.

umm... what?

[garyoa1]

That would mean that anyone that mines anything anywhere has no right to it? Earth or space. What's the difference? Used to be any country that landed on a newly discovered land claimed it as their own. Why would space be any different?

Re:umm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Outer Space Treaty says that no one can claim celestial bodies. Space is different because everybody agreed that it was different.

Re:umm... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we're not at a stage where we -should- be trying to mine the rest of the solar system when we're still trying to figure out what's out there. Right now they try their best NOT to contaminate the environments they land on since it spoils scientific results. Once you get commercial interests out there all that goes down the toilet.

Why? Because it costs money to watch what you're doing, and shareholders will have none of that, especially if the fine for contaminating the solar system is a slap on the wrist compared to the shit they haul back - assuming their waste is even discovered.

What you're doing right now by rushing out into space to get resources is nothing but trouble.

Pirated in the name of the Oligarchy

[sdinfoserv]

The US is an Oligarchy who's 'elected' representatives only serve their corporate masters. Any code, law or treaty contrary to a large corporations desires will be dispatched and buried with litigation in the name of profit.

As far as other celestial body travel, the only way got a chance is to make it commercially viable. Take the moon for example; OK we went there 40 years ago, so what? there it sits - no further exportation or examination. On the other hand if there were valuable minerals for harvest, a corporation would be there as soon as ROI provided.

Re:Pirated in the name of the Oligarchy

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, so Elon is evil?

Re: Pirated in the name of the Oligarchy

[TheReaperD]

He an evil mastermind set on world (Mars) domination. Didn't you see the Colbert interview?

Re: Pirated in the name of the Oligarchy

[myowntrueself]

He an evil mastermind set on world (Mars) domination. Didn't you see the Colbert interview?

And he's obviously played waaaay too much Kerbal Space Program.

Envrionmentally risky?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a bunch of Liberal, know nothing ninnies. Environmentally risky? What environment? Space? You mean the vacuum filled with deadly radiation? How exactly do you hurt that?

MORONS!!! Who let these guys have a doctorate?

Re:Envrionmentally risky?

[Anonymous Coward]

The same people who don't let you have a doctorate. Reasonable, well-educated intellectuals.

Re:Envrionmentally risky?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Guess you never heard of The Andromeda Strain, then.

Boo Hoo say unelected bureaucritters

[areusche]

This "Space Treaty" restricting mining is a complete joke and an attempt by the world's bureaucrats to hamstring civilization into a highly pointless "approval" process fraught with do nothing committees making the entire process needlessly expensive. The first country that figures out how to cheaply get a payload in and out of the atmosphere will become the next thousand year empire with all others bowing to its feet. Dare I say it a galactic empire beyond our wildest imaginations.

Whether it's Russia, China, USA, or Sealand is a moot point. The potential riches are unfathomable out in space once the small problem of propulsion is well figured out!

Re:Boo Hoo say unelected bureaucritters

[Anonymous Coward]

There might be riches out there, but there's only so much need for them back here. There's a limit to how much gold and platinum everyone can't do without, so the only leverage this empire would have is in proportion to the resource monopoly it holds. You might as well call OPEC an empire.

They're just jealous

[AndyKron]

They're just jealous that they can't exploit space for the enrichment of a few funded by taxpayers.

So a couple of curry-gobbling idiots give opinions

[Anonymous Coward]

And their opinions are worthless.

End of story.

ownership of an object, sovereignty over territor

[raymorris]

There are two distinct issues here. First, the common law says that if a person harvests a wild animal, plant, or other thing, it is his to eat or otherwise use. That's about ownership of an object.

A different, though related concept, is that the first -country- to start using some territory has a claim of sovereignty over that territory. Meaning essentially that the area becomes part of that country.

The treaty says that -sovereignty- rules are different in space, no country can claim the moon or another planet as part of their country, by colonizing it. The treaty's Article 2 reads, "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."

The treaty says that Mars wouldn't become part of the the USA if the US colonized it. It does NOT say that you can't go to Mars, pick up a rock, bring it home, and then own that rock. That's ownership of an object, not sovereignty over territory, and the treaty doesn't prohibit ownership of an object.

Re:Restaining growth

[sycodon]

Let me guess...the Asteroids belong to Everyone!

Environmentally Risky?

[seven of five]

Mining Ceres pollutes the oceans there and makes the land bad for the little green Ceres boys and girls.

What is with these space law professors?

[mbone]

It is had not to agree with Ricky Lee of Australia, who wrote his thesis on the subject:

"So the idea that commercial use of space resources is prohibited by the Outer Space Treaty... is quite simply absurd,"

Quite.

I went to the House hearing for this Bill, and also talked to various staffers and actual space lawyers (as opposed to professors) about it. I feel, and they seem to feel, that the 2015 Space Act is entirely consistent both with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which says

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.

and also with the precedent set by the US, Russia and Japan, all of which have material returned from celestial bodies. The reality is that these three countries have all treated those materials as property, which can be and has been traded. That is the actual customary international law here, not the Moon Treaty, which has been ratified by no major space-faring nation, and which is a dead letter. In addition, each state gets to set the laws on actions by their citizens in space, and are responsible for those actions (say, if they cause damage to another country's spacecraft).

Finally, the 2015 Space Act itself says

SEC. 403. DISCLAIMER OF EXTRATERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY.

It is the sense of Congress that by the enactment of this Act, the
United States does not thereby assert sovereignty or sovereign or
exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any
celestial body.

So, despite most of the headlines announcing this law, it doesn't (and couldn't) allow for the ownership of asteroids, just of material extracted from asteroids, exactly as is allowed for in the Outer Space Treaty.

I have to say that the space lawyers I have talked to share my puzzlement as to what the professors say things that seem so ungrounded. (They are of course welcome to disagree or oppose, but you would expect that they would have arguments grounded in facts.)

Note, also, that none of the other space powers has complained about this act, which they were and are certainly able to do it they feel it violates the '67 Outer Space Treaty.

Re:What is with these space law professors?

[mbone]

Ricky Lee's (large) thesis Creating a Practical Legal Framework for the Commercial Exploitation of Mineral Resources in Outer Space

Re:What is with these space law professors?

[Areyoukiddingme]

I have to say that the space lawyers I have talked to share my puzzlement as to what the professors say things that seem so ungrounded.

It's the technique of the Big Lie. If you repeat a blatant lie often enough, there are a billion low information voters around the world who will quite quickly start telling each other that it "sounds reasonable", because everything familiar sounds reasonable.

When you get right down to it, the only people with the funding, the attention span, and access to the required technical skill to pull off mining an asteroid in our lifetimes are US billionaires. This is the beginning of every other country acknowledging that, not finding the idea palatable, and trying to get out in front of it, by the only means at their disposal. Lawyers and lies. (But I repeat myself.)

Re:What is with these space law professors?

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to the House hearing for this Bill, and also talked to various staffers and actual space lawyers

Presumambly you mean American lawyers. And if they where at the house for the reading of this bill they may well represent corporate interests in this so hardley be impartial.

shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind

When one claims ownership over something only they can use it and others are restricted.

and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.

those parts that have been extracted wouldn't be free to access. This would for instance preclude study.

SEC. 403. DISCLAIMER OF EXTRATERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY.

        It is the sense of Congress that by the enactment of this Act, the
        United States does not thereby assert sovereignty or sovereign or
        exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any
        celestial body.

They are saying who would own something so this section is a lie as they are asserting a sovereign right in doing so.

Re:What is with these space law professors?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the technique of the Big Lie.

You didn't specify but it appears to be DC who's the liar in this case.

Re:What is with these space law professors?

[roca]

Ram Jakhu says that the purpose of the Outer Space Treaty is that "there shouldn't be private property in space". So he's claiming a treaty signed at the height of the Cold War established communism in outer space in perpetuity. Hmm.

Even if he's right, which I very strongly doubt, it's a terrible idea. Communism hasn't worked on Earth and is no more likely to work off-Earth.

The environmental arguments are even worse: they assume all human modification of the environment is inherently wrong. That makes sense to the anti-human wing of environmentalism, which is strong in academia, but not to people who value human flourishing more than hypothetical exo-bacteria (i.e. almost everyone).

Re:What is with these space law professors?

[mbone]

I went to the House hearing for this Bill, and also talked to various staffers and actual space lawyers

Presumambly you mean American lawyers. And if they where at the house for the reading of this bill they may well represent corporate interests in this so hardley be impartial.

I am sure that they do, but it's a matter of what kind of arguments they use. There are good reasons to argue that the 2015 SPACE Act is consistent with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. I would be glad to hear arguments that it isn't, but they need to have some weight behind them.

After the Subcommittee hearing, I had a long chat with Prof. Joanne Gabrynowicz, Director Emerita, Journal of Space Law, who testified at the hearing. Her viewpoint was to be that nothing should be done until there is an international consensus to clarify the Outer Space Treaty. I thought that was an incredibly weak argument for doing nothing for what would probably be decades.

This Act is actually a means of trying to set Customary international law (CIL) in this area, and thus clearing up the uncertainties in the 67 OST. I think it is likely to succeed in that.

Re:What is with these space law professors?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are good reasons to argue that the 2015 SPACE Act is consistent with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

Assigning ownership certainly looks like an act of sovereignty to me. After all presumably the USA would try and enforce the property rights that it had given. If there are laws that allow the USA to requisition private property this would seem to further exacerbate the issue.

    While this might be an attempt to set CIL it fails in and of itself as it is one nations law. If they actually where interested in that they should have got an agreement with other nations. A treaty between other nations might come from this, and therefore from one point of view being successful, but it might be quite different if just to show not being under the USAs thumb.
    Of course another option is that other nations just pass there own laws with the result of different people claim different rights on the same thing. After all it would be just as valid for another nation to make its own incompatible law. An extreme example is that it could just assign random mineral rights to individuals and as far as I can see that would be just as valid as the USA's law.

Re:What is with these space law professors?

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, "framwork"... fucking space hippies. Don't kid yourself, those with the most strength and biggest weapons will get the resources. As has been truth since the beginning of time.

Re:What is with these space law professors?

[mbone]

There are good reasons to argue that the 2015 SPACE Act is consistent with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

Assigning ownership certainly looks like an act of sovereignty to me. After all presumably the USA would try and enforce the property rights that it had given. If there are laws that allow the USA to requisition private property this would seem to further exacerbate the issue.

    While this might be an attempt to set CIL it fails in and of itself as it is one nations law. If they actually where interested in that they should have got an agreement with other nations. A treaty between other nations might come from this, and therefore from one point of view being successful, but it might be quite different if just to show not being under the USAs thumb.

    Of course another option is that other nations just pass there own laws with the result of different people claim different rights on the same thing. After all it would be just as valid for another nation to make its own incompatible law. An extreme example is that it could just assign random mineral rights to individuals and as far as I can see that would be just as valid as the USA's law.

In other cases, other nations have adopted US law as a template for their laws. If enough countries do this, you have CIL. This is part of the intention here.

Think a little about how this might play out. I, a citizen of one country, send a spaceship to asteroid X and start doing stuff. As long as I am there, you (a citizen of another country) are not allowed to interfere with my operations. Now, interfere can mean a lot of things (is it interfering to land 100 m away? How about 100 km away?), and that will have to be worked out, but the principle seems pretty clear - and that is true whether I am doing geology or astronomy or mining unobtanium. You don't have the right to interfere with my spacecraft going on to Mars, or back to Earth, or wherever, either, whether it is carrying unobtanium or not. All of this seems quite settled under the 67 OST. Also quite clear is that, once I leave, you are free to step in and do your own thing too. (Now, I may leave behind monitors or something, and again, what it means to interfere with them will have to be worked out, but, again, all of this seems quite settled in principle under the OST.) So, I do not have "mineral rights," just a right to operate.

All of that seems to be clear whether I am doing commercial work, or science, or something else. And, if I bring stuff back, it is also quite clear (I would argue clearly CIL) that the country whose flag I am under gets to decide what's done with that stuff. They can say I own it, it belongs to "the Crown" or the people, I have to pay tax, or whatever - that's up to to the national government. That's also quite settled under the OST.

One thing national governments can't do is say "You now own the Moon" (or Ceres or wherever). I.e., they cannot "assign random mineral rights" (or, at least, expect to have other countries abide by that). Note that this is one thing that the 2015 SPACE Act does not do.

Re:What is with these space law professors?

[myowntrueself]

Ricky Lee's (large) thesis Creating a Practical Legal Framework for the Commercial Exploitation of Mineral Resources in Outer Space

Oh great, just what we need to help open a new frontier; massive piles of regulation.

Re:Restaining growth

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, pretty much.

Re:Restaining growth

[SuricouRaven]

The law is based on the same idea as old-fashioned mining claims: Whoever discovers and get their first gets to claim it as their own. It doesn't claim anything in space for the US - it says that under US law objects in space may be claimed as private property. It's an approach that worked in the past, as it creates a profit motive for exploration and expansion - advocates point to the manner in which private ownership of claims lead to investment in the expansion westwards during European colonisation of the new world and exploitation of the resources found there. The gold rush may have lead to some lawlessness, but it certainly found the gold.

Re: Restaining growth

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus once someone is there, I would like to see Canada or any other country try to kick them out.

I wouldn't worry

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the world has anything to worry about. The US has become a third world country space wise, we are barely able to get a resupply capsule to the ISS. Space is expensive and most US corporations are too short sighted to spend the money necessary for R&D, they are looking to NASA (which is being strangled by government budget cuts and incompetent management) to develop the tech for them. By the time US corporations get around to figuring out this whole space mining thing the Russians and Chinese will already be there.

Re: Restaining growth

[Anonymous Coward]

Theyre mad because the US will be mining and gaining recources while they are still cobbling a spaceship together.

Imperial Stormtroopers Assemble!

[PopeRatzo]

All your space rocks are belong to us.

Fantasy

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get what all of the fuss is about...

It'll probably take a million years for us to suck our solar system dry if not longer and by then we'll have colonized many other solar systems.

Re:Fantasy

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get what all of the fuss is about...

It'll probably take a million years for us to suck our solar system dry if not longer and by then we'll have colonized many other solar systems.

Its the thin edge of the wedge with the USA claiming the right to set law in space.

Re:Fantasy

[BlueStrat]

I don't get what all of the fuss is about...

It'll probably take a million years for us to suck our solar system dry if not longer and by then we'll have colonized many other solar systems.

The fuss is because there are those who view humanity's very existence as a bad thing. Exploitation of resources in space extends humanity's time and allows for expansion and growth which they see as a bad thing.

The fuss is also about political power. Environmental groups who have used their political power to control if, how, how much, and by whom the Earth's limited natural resources are exploited as a political/economic weapon and means of control over populations see the exploitation of unlimited natural resources in space as eventually making their weapon powerless and destroying their ability to control populations.

Strat

Re:Fantasy

[Anonymous Coward]

The only human whose existence is a bad thing is you, another nut job paranoid right wing cunt.

Re:Fantasy

[Anonymous Coward]

The only human whose existence is a bad thing is you, another nut job paranoid right wing cunt.

So, he's spot-on then? Thanks for the confirmation!

Re:Fantasy

[Anonymous Coward]

The fuss is because there are those who view humanity's very existence as a bad thing.

No the fuss is there because the USA is trying to claim sovereignty of stuff in space by assigning ownership rules.

The fuss is also about political power. Environmental groups who have used their political power to control if, how, how much, and by whom the Earth's limited natural resources are exploited

You are right about it being about power, just not (in my case at least) anything to do with environmental groups. I object on the grounds of the USA unilaterally extending its powers into space without reference to the rest of the world.

Re:Fantasy

[BlueStrat]

No the fuss is there because the USA is trying to claim sovereignty of stuff in space by assigning ownership rules.

Sounds more like you want to benefit from other people's investment, risk, and labor for free (invest in your own damned space mining!). Or that you want to make all resources off the Earth forbidden for anyone to use which is Luddite in nature to the extreme.

I object on the grounds of the USA unilaterally extending its powers into space without reference to the rest of the world.

Nobody is going to declare the Moon or some other celestial body a US Territory or Possession. It specifically says that in the bill that was passed. All the bill that was passed says is that if you extract resources from some celestial body you keep what you've taken risk, invested large sums, and worked hard to obtain. It doesn't stop anyone else from setting up their own operation right 'next door', as it were.

You are objecting to fantasies that reside only in your mind.

Strat

Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.state.gov/t/isn/5181.htm

"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."

You agreed not to appropriate it, it's not yours to give away.
As to whether its a treaty that can be enforced, of course it can, even in US courts it can be enforced.

As to whethe these 'mine and asteroid' space company scams are legal, no, they're stock market frauds, there is no intention to mine asteroids by these companies, they want a veneer of plausibility for their stock scam.

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

You can ask Samuel Worcester and the Cherokee tribe about the ability of the US courts to enforce anything.

Re: Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Living in the past does not make space the new lawless wild west.

Supply and Demand

[man_ls]

It is to the benefit of all mankind for the supply of these rare resources to become less constrained on the supply side, thus driving the prices down. Imagine rare-"earth" minerals mined by the cubic meter from off-world bodies, vastly increasing the supply for land-side electronics while simultaneously driving their prices down and moving the environmental impact somewhere with essentially no environment, and thus no impact.

Re: Restaining growth

[Anonymous Coward]

ha ha more likey you will be paying the chinese for a space ship. Your the roman empire in Decline.

Re:ownership of an object, sovereignty over territ

[Anonymous Coward]

Sovereignty in the real world is based upon a nations ability to defend its territory. Any treaty is only as binding as it's acceptance by sovereign nations. No one has broken the Outer Space Treaty because up until now no one has had the technological ability to break the Outer Space Treaty, nor any overriding economic incentive to do so. Once it becomes technologically possible to make money by claiming sovereignty over part of another planet, and someone has the ability to enforce that sovereignty then they will break the Outer Space Treaty.

Re: Restaining growth

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know the Roman empire still lasted in decline for hundreds of years right?

Re:ownership of an object, sovereignty over territ

[Anonymous Coward]

If the USA is deciding who has access to it (eg USA courts deciding it) that is a defacto sovereignty claim.

Alternate ownership claims

[Anonymous Coward]

If one country is free to pass a law assigning ownership of things in space then every other country is also free to do so. These would probably conflict.

Capitalist versus Communist Interpretation

[lagunastarman]

Space Treaty says in part: ... "Such exploration and use shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries ..." Communist: Individuals mean nothing and only governments decide allocation of resources. Space has limitless resources, hence it must not be touched - it would erode the power of governments. Capitalist: exploration and use will create limitless resources, benefiting all mankind in a free market economy by reducing costs, pollution and poverty. Personal Opinion: Making the whole universe off-limits to individual use is a long term impossibility unless every individual is enslaved.

Re:Capitalist versus Communist Interpretation

[Anonymous Coward]

Personal Opinion: Making the whole universe off-limits to individual use is a long term impossibility unless every individual is enslaved.

We could nuke ourselves instead.

The better way to do this would have been to talk to other nations and try to form a consensus amongst countries. This might not include every country but if it had the majority it might be looked on by most as having moral authority rather than a sovereignty grab by the USA.

anti-Progress

[zapadnik]

Are these people anti-progress or what ?! don't they want more resources to help the poor and lift the Third World out of poverty? doesn't sound like it - all because they don't want to "pollute" space. Ijits !

Posting to kill an accidental moderation

[RoverDaddy]

Really, Slashdot, isn't there a better way to do this?

Re:Restaining growth

[Anonymous Coward]

"Economic growth" can't be sustained forever. A new social model will have to replace that idea. So sorry.

Everything stops growing. You did. I did. The trees did. So will our civilization. Change is the only constant, and your obsolete ideas will be in the dustbin of history.

Re:ownership of an object, sovereignty over territ

[Anonymous Coward]

No one has broken the Outer Space Treaty because up until now no one has had the technological ability to break the Outer Space Treaty

Yes they have. It would be feasible to have nuclear armed satellites.

and someone has the ability to enforce that sovereignty then they will break the Outer Space Treaty.

Only if they are immoral.
Also there is the issue of MAD.

Spice mining

[Legal.Troll]

The criticism is justified. We can't let a few powerful entities control the spice.

Re:Restaining growth

[Applehu Akbar]

Green wackos believe that the whole idea of exploiting space resources is a space nutter fantasy that will never happen, so what are they worrying about? This "angry reaction from overseas" is the voice of one law professor who is incensed at the idea that some place exists, however potential and distant, that Greenpeace cannot control.

He is in any case wrong on the law. The Space Treaty forbids Earthy governments from extending their sovereignty into space. It does not prevent private organizations from settling, establishing local law, and exploiting resources.

Re:Restaining growth

[Muros]

Everything stops growing. You did.

Upwards, at least.

Space junk?

[Anonymous Coward]

scrap metal from outer space :-)

Re: Restaining growth

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes by paying everyone else to defend its borders until it ran out of cash, Cant do R&D feed your poplualtion etc when you have to pay the troops or they all leave.

Re:Restaining growth

[Anonymous Coward]

But this law is an earth government saying when stuff is owned which certainly looks like them extending sovereignty into space. If it wasn't this law would have no meaning.

Re:ownership of an object, sovereignty over territ

[Anonymous Coward]

It does NOT say that you can't go to Mars, pick up a rock, bring it home, and then own that rock.

Before this law I don't know of any law that would grant you ownership of that rock.

Re:Restaining growth

[budgenator]

The law is based on the same idea as old-fashioned mining claims: Whoever discovers and get their first gets to claim it as their own. It doesn't claim anything in space for the US - it says that under US law objects in space may be claimed as private property.

No I didn't see anything like that,

The Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act gives any American who successfully extracts natural resources from outer space the property rights over the haul.

even one of the critical articles doesn't imply any kind of claim, it's go out there collect some booty and haul ass home; wash, rinse repeat.

They need space Viagra from Canadian space pharmac

[RubberDogBone]

These countries are just upset because they don't have a space program that their own mining interests could use or build on their own to go do mining.

They are going to be locked out of this market. They have rocket envy. Maybe Canada Pharma can work on making space Viagra for when you don't have a rocket.

Anyway the OTHER reason these countries don't like this is that they all have big mining interests. Finding a cheap way to mine in space and get those resources back to the Earth would devastate the value of minerals mined on the Earth. Who the hell will need De Boers if space diamonds are found in abundance? A diamond FROM SPACE might even be worth a lot, but not to De Boers.

This brings to mind that a LOT of Earth companies would be happy in these space mining efforts blew up on the launch pad or failed in space. Those who go to do this space mining are going to have to watch their backs all the time. There is far too much money in the hands of companies on the ground who would be happy if a loose bolt or something caused a failure. Probably no proof, no way to trace it.

Re:Restaining growth

[Anonymous Coward]

No, anyone with an acquaintance of reality, in the form of physics and engineering, believes that "exploiting space resources" is a space nutter fantasy, old man. Those "green whackos" are the only reason you can drink the water from your tap without needing your own private water filtration plant, and breathe the air outside, or have non-flammable rivers.

You are an old man who fell in love with space nutter propaganda and mindless Cosmist doctrine. You are disconnected from the species you purport to represent and navel-gaze your decades-old obsolete daydreams.

Gov't owns you, and what you could own but don't

[MSTCrow5429]

There was a time when conquests could only be made if you landed on at least a tiny beach, regardless of the size of the landmass, and if anyone's already living there. Now, those grasping for ultimate control, especially so no one can be free if they escape their regimes on earth, claim what they've never touched, might not even have ever seen, and have no plans to ever visit and plant the flag on. A transparent attempt to ensure that only government can own anything at the end of the day, not individuals.

Re: Restaining growth

[Anonymous Coward]

You might as well shoot yourself now. Any organization must grow or die, stagnation is slow death. Barring anything else, robots with ion drives can bring back stuff economically now. For the record, I still have private air and water filtration for my household, and not for anything man made (water born biological infiltrates and pollen).

see Rule of Capture

[raymorris]

It is called the Rule of Capture in English, and has been recognized common law in British empire for hundreds of years. The first known written statute stating the principle was from Sparta, over a thousand years ago.

An interesting and well-known case on the application of Rule of Capture in America is Pierson v. Post.

Precedents Ignored

[Anonymous Coward]

An artifact or structure is buried in an asteroid. Keep it secret, mine it, melt it down, ship it back in crates labelled 'inertial ballast'?

Ditto for the Gribbles found crawling, oozing, or whooshing around - since they are "obviously not sentient"?

And the care taken to avoid any dangerous orbital 'pinball' scatter or changes due to mass loss is certain to be just as great as that taken historically to avoid any harm to the nealth and well-being of local communities surrounding their activities here on Earth.

The power to say "sure, go out there, grab anything you want, it's yours" unilaterally, regarding a common resource is really very curious, questionable, arrogant.

Who,s their Mo Ma?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the Chinese set up a US front corporation (a "person") to go out and mine and deliver it ... anywhere, including there. Space Enron?

Re:Restaining growth

[khallow]

"Economic growth" can't be sustained forever. A new social model will have to replace that idea. So sorry.

So what when there are at the least, centuries of growth left? After all, not everyone currently enjoys a developed world lifestyle. That's one avenue for growth. Not every society is fully industrialized. That's another avenue. We don't live indefinitely; we don't have massive space civilizations; we don't have post-scarcity conditions; we don't fully understand the universe; we don't have a host of things which we can put into our grasp eventually.

There's plenty of room for growth and it makes no sense to talk about imaginary "new social models" which are irrelevant to a world in growth for the practical future.

The University of Kent

[Richy_T]

It doesn't even have a physics department anymore. Sad to go back to where I spent so many years of my life and find it replaced by an architecture department. I think they abdicated their claim to have a say.

Re:The University of Kent

[Richy_T]

Hmm. I may be mistaken. It may just have moved. I didn't see any signs for it though. Oh well...

Re:The University of Kent

[Richy_T]

Yep, moved to the Ingram building. Wish I'd have known. I went quite far out of my way to visit last time I was in the area.

US law is irrelevant to the rest of the world

[Anonymous Coward]

It always amazes me that ruling junta in Washington seems to think it has some special place in the world. Most Europeans are quite repulsed by the militaristic corporate totalitarianism that is practiced by the American regime, and the endemic corruption of those who run and serve the regime. America is now a shining example to the rest of the world of what not to become.

Re:Restaining growth

[donaldm]

While I don't have any issue with "Whoever discovers and get their first gets to claim it as their own". The problem you are going to have is do you mine and keep the resultant products in space for future use or send them back to our planet? Sending the results of mining back to our plant is very problematic, send too little and the cost is prohibitive, send too much and you may have a huge glowing hole with quite a few ICBMS being sent back at as payment. :-)

Missing the point

[Big Hairy Ian]

Surely as the only international space treaties the US has signed largely prohibit creating territories in space or weaponising the same the recent "Space Mining Provisions of Commercial Space Act" is bunkum as you can't have jurisdiction without territorial rights and it is therefore in contravention of pre-signed treaties.

Re:Missing the point

[Keith Henson]

Due to the efforts of the (long gone) L5 Society, the US never ratified the Moon Treaty . . . which is somewhat worse than the Outer Space Treaty.

I was personally involved.

Lets open asteroid mining to private investment

[Eravnrekaree]

The concern over this is bizzare. The way these people talk as if you can only use an asteroid for scientific means is insane. These people are worried about mining some lifeless rock when we are turning areas of the earths surface into moonscapes for mining? If we have a way that we can alleviate the strain on limited terrestrial resources, and reduce the impacts of mining on terrestrial ecosystems on earth, I think we should go for it. The idea that private companies should not be allowed to invest and be able to recoup their investment and make a profit by making their product available on the open market to benefit consumers is nuts. Here we have a way to mine a lifeless body in space instead of mine some rainforest on earth, if someone can figure out how to do this, kudos, if its a private company, thats great, everyone will benefit. Private investment helps fund these kinds of things without need for as much taxpayer confiscation.

Re:Restaining growth

[Immerman]

No, as I recall all it says that the US will recognize property rights of space resources brought back to the US. Very different thing. It does open the legal possibility of economic space mining since miners don't have to worry about doing all the work and hauling their Earth-valuable minerals back to the surface and having the government or someone else immediately claim them as their own. It doesn't say anything about the asteroid itself, or any mining equipment, habitats, etc. built in space from "native" resources.

Re:Restaining growth

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Forever? Well, you're right there, nothing lasts forever. Heat death, random chance, or the Big Crush will stop anything eventually.

On a practical timescale, however, the economy can keep growing pretty much indefinitely. Advances in technology allow us to become more and more productive and raise the standard of living for everyone, including pre-industrial societies. Medical technology could definitely still be improved, that's economic growth too. FYI, most trees keep growing pretty much as long as they're alive. It's less dramatic growth, certainly, which might be what we see in our society in the future, but they still grow.

Re:Restaining growth

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

No, it says that if someone goes to space and brings something back to America, the American government will recognize those property rights. It doesn't say anything about assigning property rights when the material is still in space.

Re: Restaining growth

[Immerman]

Not really - its only in the last couple centuries that "perpetual" growth was even possible. For the entire history of humanity up until then, stable business models were the only real option, and quite often jobs were passed down through multiple generations.

Forget a land-grab

[Dareth]

Forget grabbing land. What you need in space is a way to provide oxygen and water to support human life. Can you "claim" anything in space with a probe/drone?

Re:Restaining growth

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, but it's all well and good until we start moving the extraterrestrial life forms into reservations on the crappiest asteroids and moons so that we can take the resources underneath their sacred burial grounds...

Re:Restaining growth

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, except that economic growth is fueled by gains in efficiency.

Are you saying that our technological level is at it's peak, and we'll never see any more gains in efficiency? If you are, then you're an idiot.

Re:Restaining growth

[MachineShedFred]

Nope.

The US law says that whatever someone brings from space back into US territory is their private property. They are reinforcing the already-ratified Outer Space Treaty in that they (the government) have no claim to it.

Mining asteroids in space is well, kinda dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not at that level of tech yet, and frankly, the ONLY reason I would mine an asteroid in space would be to use the minerals in space. Shipping them down the gravity well to earth would be absolutely insane. Frankly the best way to do that is just launch the entire asteroid at earth, maybe by say creating a nice asteroid landing zone out of a very large piece of land. You could easily section off vast areas of Canada, Russia, China, or even Africa which are nearly desolate, and use those areas to 'land' your asteroid and then mine it.

But if the asteroid is in space, then processing and using the minerals in space is by FAR the better approach.

Now, when we get to the point of playing Space Engineers IRL, let me know.

Rocket Viagra

[Anonymous Coward]

These rocket phallic symbols interest me. Since boner pills are a sure-fire way to make money, I suspect they will make one much richer than space mining ever will.

Please go on...

Re: Restaining growth

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll rating or not, I agree with this person 100%.

American exceptionalism gone rampant

[Occams]

Hate to remind you guys, but space is outside of the Jurisdiction of the US Government. It can only make laws that apply to US Citizens up there. A treaty is a solemn and formal agreement between countries. It does not have to be enforced by military power. It can be broken, but a signatory country that does that becomes a rogue and a pariah that cannot be trusted in any contract or agreement. The USA is not quite that bad: yet.

Re:Restaining growth

[easyTree]

If you guys find any natives in space, feel free to attempt to bring democracy to them :D

Re: Restaining growth

[easyTree]

If the Romans had had a way to listen to every conversation on the planet and steal all those ideas, there's no telling the depths of depravity they could have descended to nor to how long they could have resisted decline.

Larkin

[eric_harris_76]

What about the Larkin Decision?

Re:Restaining growth

[pupsocket]

They will bring entanglement to us.

These laws are very important!

[DarthVain]

Just look what happened to the Klingon Empire!