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Who Owns the Moon? A Space Lawyer Answers (theconversation.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: While the legal status of the Moon as a "global commons" accessible to all countries on peaceful missions did not meet any substantial resistance or challenge, the Outer Space Treaty left further details unsettled. Contrary to the very optimistic assumptions made at the time, so far humankind has not returned to the moon since 1972, making lunar land rights largely theoretical.
That is, until a few years ago when several new plans were hatched to go back to the moon. In addition at least two U.S. companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, which have serious financial backing, have started targeting asteroids for the purpose of mining their mineral resources. Geek note: Under the aforementioned Outer Space Treaty, the moon and other celestial bodies such as asteroids, legally speaking, belong in the same basket. None of them can become the "territory" of one sovereign state or another.
The very fundamental prohibition under the Outer Space Treaty to acquire new state territory, by planting a flag or by any other means, failed to address the commercial exploitation of natural resources on the moon and other celestial bodies. This is a major debate currently raging in the international community, with no unequivocally accepted solution in sight yet. Roughly, there are two general interpretations possible. Countries such as the United States and Luxembourg (as the gateway to the European Union) agree that the moon and asteroids are "global commons," which means that each country allows its private entrepreneurs, as long as duly licensed and in compliance with other relevant rules of space law, to go out there and extract what they can, to try and make money with it. [...] On the other hand, countries such as Russia and somewhat less explicitly Brazil and Belgium hold that the moon and asteroids belong to humanity as a whole.
That is, until a few years ago when several new plans were hatched to go back to the moon. In addition at least two U.S. companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, which have serious financial backing, have started targeting asteroids for the purpose of mining their mineral resources. Geek note: Under the aforementioned Outer Space Treaty, the moon and other celestial bodies such as asteroids, legally speaking, belong in the same basket. None of them can become the "territory" of one sovereign state or another.
The very fundamental prohibition under the Outer Space Treaty to acquire new state territory, by planting a flag or by any other means, failed to address the commercial exploitation of natural resources on the moon and other celestial bodies. This is a major debate currently raging in the international community, with no unequivocally accepted solution in sight yet. Roughly, there are two general interpretations possible. Countries such as the United States and Luxembourg (as the gateway to the European Union) agree that the moon and asteroids are "global commons," which means that each country allows its private entrepreneurs, as long as duly licensed and in compliance with other relevant rules of space law, to go out there and extract what they can, to try and make money with it. [...] On the other hand, countries such as Russia and somewhat less explicitly Brazil and Belgium hold that the moon and asteroids belong to humanity as a whole.
I own it.
rip
The two possible interpretations are that they are global commons and countries can license operators to exploit them, or they belong to humanity as a whole, and we can only exploit them together.
Both have analogies back on earth, and treaties that cover these mechanisms.
Would be nice if /. had editors. They might have been able to add this information so the summary didn't just end on an incomplete thought.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
This illustrates the problem with the very concept of 'ownership'. This is a purely human invented concept and really doesn't have any true, logical definition. It is simply a way that one person gains power over other people. The whole capitalist system, which is based on the concept of ownership of resources, is completely unnatural and in reality the earth and everything on it should belong to all people equally.
If the above statement isn't currently true in the legal sense, then it should be made true. No one individual, legal entity, group of people, company, corporation, conglomerate, or government should ever 'own' Earth's Moon. The reasons for this should not require explanation.
The above, having been said, and for the sake of argument accepted as fact: I'm perfectly okay with structures on the Moon, and the ground underneath them, being owned by whoever is responsible for them. Similar to how the Embassy of any given country, within the borders of another country, is considered to be part of the Embassys' home country. There's one exception I'd like to make to this, however: No military bases, of any country, on the Moon, again for obvious reasons.
Make sense?
No human is going back to the moon or further for at least another century. It is a waste of time to argue this stuff. In the end, the ones who get their first and exploit it will own it. That is human history and future. Capitalism is going nowhere (despite the ravings of a lunatic fringe on the left).
"This is a major debate currently raging in the international community"
I hear one guy even had to re-tape his coke-bottle glasses during one their debate-cum-riots
We the people of Sirius 9 own your pitiful rock satellite. Do not attempt to place a base there. You will be annihilated by a squadron of attack ships if you choose to do so. You have been warned.
If one of these have diamonds, will it be there a war in space?
IANASL, but this sounds silly.
about human civilization. The land and resources were here before us. We give it and everything it has to either whoever gets there first or whoever can con the most rubes out of it. I mean, when we used to give it to whoever had the biggest army I got that. But the current system is just nuts.
What I'm saying is that everywhere should be like Alaska. As human beings we've all got a legitimate claim to the earth's resources. Aside from humanism (the idea that human beings have intrinsic worth) this is the other major moral justification for socialism.
TL;DR, pay your taxes, Mr Mega-corporations.
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And I demand that Trump deport me there.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
And I have more, and bigger, guns than you do; thus it's mine.
Until the next guy with even more and even bigger guns than me comes along.
(pssttt, that's what Twitler and Putin have in mind for the U.S. Game of Thrones style. Pass it along.)
I thought everybody knew this.
There is an American flag on the Moon, so I assume Vladimir Putin believes it now belongs to him.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The moon belongs to America, and eagerly awaits our Astromen.
By 1964, experts say man will have established twelve colonies on the moon.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The outer space treaty isn't going to mean squat when companies/countries start claiming chunks of space real-estate. Sure everyone who isn't trying to claim their own piece of planet/asteroid is going to throw a fit but it's not likely to amount to much. Just look at the claiming of the ocean floor, Pre WWII I think it was "internationally agreed" that countries only owned a dozen or so miles off of their coasts. Today most countries claim hundreds of miles and as ocean floor mining becomes more common that is likely to increase.
If you are interpreting laws and treaties to figure this out, then you have already lost. You don't own the moon.
If you are interpreting other powerful parties' intents and capabilities, and also trying to figure out how much it's worth to you, then you're at least on track to possibly own the moon.
Ownership of the moon isn't something to be discovered; it's something to be decided. It's there for the taking, and treaties are just ink on a page.
Might makes right, no matter what starry-eyed people say.
Who owns any planet/moon/asteroid or whatever should be answered by, "no one", but at the same time, any probe, colonization platform, or spacecraft should be owned by whoever put it there. If a miner is on an asteroid and is working to mine resources, that miner is what should be protected, and certain rights about space around said miner should be "claimed". Any claim should have an expiration period to make sure things are not claimed and then abandoned, with an extension based on "good faith" claims that may be needed if replacement equipment is needed(a defunct piece of equipment might shut down operations, and it might take years to get a replacement piece of equipment into place, even if launched immediately).
Common sense stuff in my opinion, but common sense is not terribly common these days.
Whoever has the ability to defend their presence on the Moon from any military intervention, is the one who owns it.
That's pretty much it. Opinions are something i can wipe my ass with, so are beliefs, so are convictions, because none of this feeble abstract thought shit can change the fact that if you can't get past my military might then you can't do shit and don't own shit.
Ergo this whole question is pointless and worthless philosophizing which doesn't affect reality, what affects reality is physical manifestation and presence.
Kim Jong-un will need a new experiment: to test his capability to superdetonate nukes on Moon.
What is his objective?
To detonate his nuclear warheads on the Moon under the NorKor flag.
He wanted numbers as many gigatons and becoming red the Moon for the fulfillment of his prophecies.
PLACE A SPACE-MISSILE BATTERY ON THE MOON. Stick some nukes in it for fun... cuz America.
Now you can deny anybody access to space until you run outta missiles. I guarantee this is going to happen eventually. Might as well get started today.
Or I guess we can wait for China to show us how it's done. Then once it's been used a few times, the huge amounts of way-to-small-to-track (WTSTT) space garbage will deny everybody access, and we can all just fester and die on our doomed planet.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
If im living on the moon and some entity has a problem with it fine. Come serve me papers telling me when I have to show up for court. Otherwise STFU
How very human to think we "own" anything in space......what a bunch of idiots......
Of course!
I own it. Commons is just another way of saying communism.
If anyone says I don't own it, I'll start ranting about guns until they get bored.
--
c6gunner
And the Earth is for Jesuchrist.
Looks like the kind of comment a big oil company's legal team would make when questioned about corrupt or otherwise shady business dealings.
we have a legitimate claim to resources we are able to take and do take from the earth and hold without interfering with what anybody else is already doing.
"Legitimate" my ass: suppose there would exist some material called unobtainium, that's both so rare & essential to (human) life, that it would be unethical if any stash found wasn't -somewhat- evenly distributed over a large # of people. And suppose you happened to stumble upon a heap of this unobtainium. You think it should be yours (including the option to deny others having some of this life-essential material), for the simple reason you happened to dig it up first?
Country has oil field -> corrupt government sells contents to big oil company -> oil company sucks the field dry & and is now legitimate owner of that extracted oil? (according to your logic). Same thing.
If early in life, I had been offered an equal share of this planet's fertile land, mineral resources, unpolluted waters & air, no more, no less, I'd have taken that offer and my life would have been very different today. Specifically: with a more direct relation between [work put in] and [fruits of labour enjoyed].
The "boots on the ground, and my guns are bigger than yours" comment made elsewhere in this thread is very much accurate. That's how it's been historically. Later a whole legal framework was crafted to help protect such interests. And history + practicalities tend to form a massive whole that's damn near impossible to fight. So most people (as they grow up) accept that status quo and get on with their life. But FAIR? Hell no!
We are all just temporary stewards of pieces from this blue marble in space. Anything beyond that is history & legal constructs foisted upon us by our ancestors.
They're just too polite to admit it in public
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
US owns it since they have had a base up there for years. Why do you think they are bypassing the moon and plan on going to mars now? Remember a few years ago when an explosion was reported on the the moon and they try to claim it was a meteor. Well, it was really one of the many large oxygen containers they were using to support the base.
I think the real question is "Is owning the moon worth fighting a war over". Doubtless this is where any such claim would immediately lead.
Laws and treaties don't mean shit unless you have the power and will to enforce them.
Say the USA breaks the space treaty... then what? Other countries will have to decide how they're going to retaliate. Will it be economic sanctions/embargoes/tariffs/travel bans or war? Or maybe just an angry letter? What are the potential ramifications of taking action and are they prepared to suffer the consequences?
Might makes right. War crimes are for the losers. History is written by the victors.
The Moon owns the Earth.
The laws that matter are the laws of physics.
as Mike said, "Luna has many rocks"
and the high ground
reeeeeeeeeeeeee! drumpf
All the legal wrangling is meaningless. What this will actually come down to is who can get to the resource and defend their claim from anyone who challenges it. This is no different from the land rushes of past centuries. If you stake a claim and no one cares to or is able to dislodge you from it, it's yours, pure and simple.
Let us suppose some enterprising soul manages to fly a vehicle to and establish a permanent habitation on an asteroid. That asteroid is effectively theirs at that point regardless of what any piece of paper may say. If someone or group of someones (say, a nation) disagrees with that person's habitation, they can wage war to evict them. That's how such matters have always been settled when competing claims can't be negotiated.
Which brings up the interesting question of whether it's worthwhile for any nation, state, or even a private company would find it worthwhile to even try dislodging such a thing. It would be impractical for anyone to lay claim to even a small asteroid much less a large swath of the moon since it would be impossible to defend. At the same time, there's so much out there it's somewhat ridiculous to fight over it at this point.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Would the earth countries gang up and take the moon back? It might be a losing proposition for earthlings and the whole earth becomes a planet of slaves, if there are any humans left alive.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Everyone knows Taylor Swift owns Pluto, because of the gigantic heart of the face of it.
Of *course* the Moon and everyplace will developed individually...some by corporations, some by alliances, some by new nation states as we expand out into the solar system. I expect a wild and wooly mix, and that's okay.
This silliness that "everything is owned by the common group called Mankind" will last until about 10 minutes after the first mining ship arrives to bring back a load of gold or something.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
The moon belongs to America, and anxiously awaits the arrival of our astro-men. Will YOU be among them?
and the Germans. And the French. And the British. And the Scandinavians.
And when you get done arguing (and losing the argument to) all those people then by all means, argue with a rock. I mean, we've got just as much evidence that you can argue with a rock as we do that socialism, when actually tried, doesn't work.
Or did you mean fascists dictatorships who happen to borrow socialism for their rhetoric? I mean, if people actually acted on professed beliefs then the parts of the Bible and Koran that require charity would have wiped out poverty centuries ago and the whole "Thou Shall not Kill" would sorta put a damper on wars. I mean, Hitler was a Christian after all. Stalin made peace with the Church. I guess you've still got Mao, but then again China is anything but socialist. They can't even claim to be communist anymore....
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with ownership. The land was here before us. So where the resources. Why is it that whoever has the muscle and the bombs to claim it gets it? Are we really just a bunch of growing dogs ready to savage each other for a steak?
I'd argue that all of humanity has a birthright to the planet's resources. This doesn't mean I'm a communist (I'm not, I'm a democratic socialist) but it means that when we allow somebody to lay claim to those resources and profit from them we also make them pay back (usually in the form of taxes). When it comes to things like oil, water, fertile land, etc then as a rule you really didn't build it (I'd be willing to argue on the soil if every anyone actually did large scale terraforming, but so far all I've seen are irrigation projects supported by oil byproducts).
Basically, think Alaska. Everybody gets a cut because we're all born of the same land.
Now, if somebody wants to say "I own this" go right ahead. So long as they pay their taxes I'm pretty indifferent. What I'm not so happy about is we've got the 1% laying claim to the entire world and demanding they be given everything while also shirking their responsibility to the society and civilization that made it possible. That's nothing new, mind you, but I've got the Internet, so I can see them doing it now.
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We don't want robots destroying these planets, we want humans establishing permanent colonies. Make human habitation a requirement.
As with all things, sadly.
The greys own the moon. They've been there maybe longer than homo sapiens has existed. The told those animals that visited to get down from there and don't come back. These animals kept coming back where they were clearly not welcome and were so dumb that it took 5 more visits for them to get the message. Maybe they were getting ready to spritz them with the spray bottle (or the equivalent deterrent for the human animals). Even cats get the message quicker.
of the law?
If you can keep the land and defend it, it's yours.
So, anyone that can reach the moon with a nuke can wipe out any colonies, unless said colonies have anti-ballistic defenses.
The moon belongs to whomever has the will and military power to defend it.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I own that piece a dark matter way over yonder.
they were fascists who borrowed Marx's books for rhetoric. At no time did they implement any of Marx's ideas. A man can claim to be something he's not, ya know. People can lie. Propaganda is a thing. Actions are what matter, and no part of the USSR or China are or ever were communist.
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This is just as stupid as it sounds, private property rights have to be tackled soon or later, is really getting out of control... The next thing it will be who owns the clean water of the world, who owns the clean air of the earth or whatever, is just madness of dumb people whose small minds can't understand reality, they only keep thinking in ways to make some fraud or scam.
And by the way, I know of some people that bought plots of land in the moon and others complete stars, so sadly it might have already owners.
Whoever has the biggest space army, owns it. Duh.
Only the Chinks would think anyone could own the moon. Time to nuke their queer army back to the stone age.
Perhaps the Moon is owned by those who installed it up there. The planets and moons engineers.
Whoever has the most firepower. As usual. If I find means to get a sustainable society up there and we have enough military force to defend our moon I can officially call myself King of the Moon. If my peasants let me that is. If not, it's probably "Republic of Moon" or something.
Same thing with Mars. If you can go and seize it and are strong enough to sustain your living there and defend the planet it's yours.
This is how it will be one we're powerful enough to build societies in space.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Well established law. The US landed on the land (moon in this case) and a man planted their flag first and claimed it. It's theirs. Anyone else complaining - it's age old BS. They don't like it. Tough. It belongs to the USA "throughout the known universe and until the end of time."
Same with all the other BS in the world. California belongs to the USA as well. In fact the US took land clear down past Mexico city and they gave a lot of it back.
The real answer is the owner will be the nation, company, etc., standing on it with enough fire power to enforce their claim. Just like everything else in human history.
Which is why China was sued in International court for invading areas that belong to the Philippines, was found guilty of violating international treaties they signed, and yet ignore the finding and still are in Philippine territory.
Treaties only matter to countries when they are convenient, or when military might protects said treaty. The Philippines canâ(TM)t protect their territory, so China takes it, and lies about it âreally always was Chinaâ(TM)sâ(TM)
"Can I claim thee? I would as much own the moon..."
Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty kind of covers any attempt by a private firm to make a claim of ownership:
/
States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty...
Where's the debate?