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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.
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.
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.
"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.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
They already have a friend building them the Big Red Rocket to take them into space to mine gold in the asteroid belt.
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?
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
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.
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.
Mining Ceres pollutes the oceans there and makes the land bad for the little green Ceres boys and girls.
It is had not to agree with Ricky Lee of Australia, who wrote his thesis on the subject:
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Everything stops growing. You did.
Upwards, at least.
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.
Sig for hire.
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.
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. :-)
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.