NASA is only paying for the flight slots. Both Boeing and SpaceX plan on reusing their respective spacecraft, although for this particular CCtCAP contract I'm pretty sure they are supposed to be all brand-new vehicles.
The CST-100 is more like the Space Shuttle so far as it needs some refurbishment that takes a little bit of time, but it is still supposed to be just a couple of months turn around time from a landing to a new launch. SpaceX is aiming for "commercial aircraft" style of reuse where they want to relaunch the vehicle potentially within the same day it lands.
Even the Dragon spacecraft which is going up tomorrow (Sunday, Sept 21st) is merely sold for the mission, and SpaceX gets that vehicle to use for its own purposes. At the moment, SpaceX is using the opportunity to take the Dragon apart to study the engineering issues that have shown up on each mission, but that will soon end.
None the less, they are real spacecraft that have life support systems which have been operating as if they could be occupied. One of them had some biological specimens (I think some insects) and it was definitely pressurized in the interior volume, not to mention that Bigelow has gained the experience of operating these modules over a long period of time.
Bigelow Aerospace is currently slated to send up a vehicle next year on a Falcon 9, and supposedly a Falcon Heavy has also been sold but not on the manifest right now. With the current launch rate that SpaceX has been pounding out lately, this seems pretty likely to happen unless it is Bigelow who isn't ready.
I suppose it is sort of like the never ending battle over what to do with Puerto Rico in the USA. Does it become a state? Become independent? Remain in its current weird "organized unincorporated territory" status?
In that case though, the people of Puerto Rico are simply too laid back to want to bother pushing the issue, and the rest of America doesn't care. Even the fact that most of the seats to Congress from Puerto Rico would likely be Democrat hasn't even remotely influenced its admission status.
I apologize. I've been battling too many people on Reddit lately, and sometimes that carries over to here on Slashdot, even though I've largely faded away from here.
If there is any substance here, this story could could a whole lot more interesting. The Lurio Report, unlike Mr. Pasztor, is usually pretty accurate with these things too. Even more interesting is this tweet:
In the press conference that was held after the announcement, the NASA PR rep actually mentioned "other competitive crewed spaceflight operators" could be considered in the future. In other words, SNC is not completely out of the picture. Indeed they will still be funded for CCiCAP as they complete the final milestones under the current agreements... SNC just missed the big funding and actual spaceflight missions which SpaceX and Boeing are now being funded for with CCtCAP.
It was a prudent business move none the less, but Boeing certainly didn't seem ready to compete in general commercial spaceflight endeavors. Now that they've won the award, I guess all of that paperwork gets burned, which should be a relief to those working on the CST-100.
And the award to the biggest asshole on slashdot goes to businessnerd, who can't tell time to see that I posted before the official announcement. Not only that, but besides the raw "Boeing and SpaceX got the award", Mr. Pasztor got nearly everything else in the article flat out wrong.
It should also be pointed out that NASA has yet to select a "prime contractor", if any is to be selected at all.
Slow down there..... you don't know who has received what, if there is even a "prime contractor", or what is going to happen. Assuming that Mr. Pasztor is 100% accurate (his previous record of accuracy in reporting about the space industry suggests strongly otherwise), it would still be pretty good for SpaceX. Although I would say it is just at the beginning of the fireworks as whatever deal actually comes from this announcement today (4 PM EDT according to NASA) is going to be reviewed by congressional committees in the future and may even change. It will still remain competitive between the companies in the future and I can see the down selected company getting business in the future from NASA if they continue development and independently get passengers into space.
The interesting thing is that Blue Origin is rumored to be potentially purchased or some sort of stock swap with Boeing with a merger. The future of Boeing and whatever they are going to do in the future will be interesting, and I think Boeing is going to feel the pinch to be competitive. Both SpaceX and Sierra Nevada have promised that they will continue with development of their vehicles even if they don't get selected, which I hope is not a criteria being used for selecting Boeing if this proves to be true.
Boeing paid off Andy Pasztor to write this hit piece. Basically it is being done, I would guess, to push up stock prices so somebody else can make a bunch of money shorting the stock afterward or something silly like that. This "reporter" has rarely been right and deserves to be embarrassed if everything he says fails to happen.
BTW, I agree with you in regards to Dreamchaser. It is a good enough vehicle that the ESA is even looking at using it, and Sierra Nevada is already on record saying they will continue the development of this vehicle even without additional development money from NASA. Indeed the only company that has said they will stop any further development if their vehicle isn't selected is Boeing.
Some of the issue with automobile manufactures is that the vehicles are so complex and need so much capital that almost everybody who tries to build a new manufacturing company in this industry usually goes bankrupt. Tucker and DeLorean are really good examples of this, in spite of conspiracy theories that suggest ulterior motives of existing manufacturers.
The other issue is simply complying with government regulations in the industry. Some of those regulations certainly have been established because of major screw-ups in the past, but many of them (in spite of the manufacturers complaining about them) are enacted explicitly to discourage new entrants into the industry. At the very least the existing manufacturers only offer token resistances to things like seat belt and safety laws that add complexity as long as it hits everybody in the industry equally... and keeps new companies busy trying to catch up if they tried. If somebody built an exact replica of the Ford Model T, it couldn't be driven today except as a historical re-creation for off-road usage and certainly not something for mass production.
The point of the dealership is to have a local representative who can help with compliance with local regulations. A hundred years ago, selling stuff was a whole lot more complicated in terms of trying to keep track of things each state wanted or didn't want, not to mention often even different laws for each city even in the same state. Communication was also a bit slower as well... and more importantly the system simply worked for almost everybody.
The problem is that once you have the franchisee in place, getting rid of them is nearly impossible, even if the situation has changed. This is why several historic systems still stick around years, decades, or even centuries after they are obsolete. Some places in Europe still use Roman aqueducts for their water supply... because they still work. There may be more efficient ways to get the same thing to happen now, but why change if it still sort of works?
If you do that kind of research by looking stuff up on-line, reading Consumer Reports, and digging up information about the automobiles before you show up to the dealer.... what is the point of the dealer in the first place?
I agree with you so far as that is the best way to avoid getting screwed over by incompetent salesmen, but you can intelligently use sales reps to get more information about their products. This is not strictly about the automobile industry either, and I've done that with electronics, software, and even groceries.
Tesla doesn't have dealerships, which is part of the problem though. They have stores... like stores which sell soap or drugs like aspirin. That is also the point of the ruling as they are trying to tell these mega-dealerships who own the rights to every automobile brand that they simply can't add Tesla to their list.
The reason why Tesla doesn't want these dealers to have their cars is primarily because they are afraid that these dealers will throw a couple of Tesla cars in the corner of their showroom and be pushing the other brands instead. Elon Musk has explicitly stated this as his primary objection, and why he felt it was necessary to go outside of the dealership model.
I haven't forgotten the multiplicitive nature of human reproduction or how life will spread. Millions of years from now mankind is likely going to be spreading to other Galaxies and doing things you would not even comprehend at the moment. Human populations also seem to somehow stabilize when constrained with resources (sometimes in ugly ways, but it does happen). Space is huge and there will be many other places to worry about than a mined out Moon.
Who knows, there may even be a lunar restoration group wanting to make it look as pristine as when Neil Armstrong first walked on it.
Everybody thought the era of pirates was over.... until they started to show up again in the 21st Century here on the Earth. If the opportunity presents itself, there will always be people who will take advantage of a power vacuum and try to take that which is undefended.
No, it won't be like Star Trek or Firefly..... those are too slick and clean cut. It will be far more ugly and different still. This isn't chest thumping, it is facing reality instead of burying your head in the sand and thinking none of this is going to happen. I'll also say that a couple hundred years is nothing in terms of human history too. If you don't make longer-term plans, your civilization is simply doomed to extinction.
The reason you can make a claim in North America and have it stick is due to the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Army. They are the guys that make it possible to make a mining claim and not have to worry about having some 2-bit thug come along and take your mine from you. That is what makes civilization possible. As much as Canada wants to assert their independence, they are dependent upon the U.S. military to make sure Russia doesn't go and sack the northern part of their country (or the whole country for that matter). Ditto for Mexico (in spite of the gangs in northern Mexico.... proving my point and the GP poster above).
The problem with the assumptions about those hoping for peace and tranquility in space is that you don't have sovereignty claims, thus no military of any kind except for pirates and thugs who don't give a damn about treaties or the United Nations. This also includes opportunistic nations that may want to take any space-based assets. That is not an environment you want to be investing billions or perhaps even trillions of dollars worth of money to develop space-based mineral assets.
Yes, space is big, far bigger than you can imagine. None the less, once you start sinking resources into developing a location in space, it becomes a target for aggression. That becomes a fixed point that can be occupied and stolen. Thugs will beat you up simply to steal ten bucks out of your wallet.... what will they do for assets worth billions? That is why you need to have available some friends who are far bigger and badder than any potential thug to allow civilized behavior to flourish.
I wonder what the lobbying budget of Planetary Resources is at the moment? There are other space mining enterprises, but they are the ones that are furthest along with actual hardware capable of doing something with the idea. Their short-term goal is to simply map the Solar System, and not even trying to pretend that it is for purely scientific purposes.
Unless the treaty has an "escape clause", which the Outer Space Treaty has. Basically Congress can force a renegotiation of this particular treaty or simply set it aside by legislation. There is a one year notification period where the USA will need to abide by the restrictions of this particular treaty, but once that year is up.... it is as if the treaty never existed in the first place.
Not everybody is happy with that clause, and many people talking about this in the past have argued that this clause will never be invoked without another treaty with all of the current signers agreeing to a new treaty, but it still there.
Also, Congress can pass legislation requiring the President of the USA to engage in various actions. This is even fairly common place where legislation is written like "The Secretary shall..." or "The President shall..." Such legislation could certainly be drafted that in effect makes it an impeachable offense for the President to refuse to denounce a treaty (and very likely the President would simply do what Congress has asked in this case too). While technically it would still have to pass through the hands of the President, the policy decision itself can be decided simply by Congress.... much like how in the UK Parliament passes legislation that gets the Queen's assent but the Queen really didn't get to decide what was in that legislation.
The Outer Space Treaty doesn't even make it illegal. It only prevents sovereign claims upon the territory. It can be debated as to if a U.S. citizen claiming extra-terrestrial real estate might constitute a sovereignty claim as well, and certainly a group of citizens forming a town out of their privately held land and applying for U.S. territorial status will constitute a sovereignty claim, but that is still up in the air.
Besides, the USA can also simply state openly to all of the signatory parties "I don't want to be in this treaty anymore", wait a year, and that treaty will have zero impact of any kind. Basically, all Congress needs to do is take a private territorial claim and wait a year before it can be formally recognized or even granted statehood. It took longer than that for California to become a state.
The problem is that the treaty obligations of the USA are silent on the matter of private ownership of extra-terrestrial real estate and minerals. In other words, there are no obligations to get in the way. On the other hand, the major spacefaring nations of Mexico and Australia do have treaty obligations that prohibit their citizens from engaging in this kind of mining operation.
I wonder how long it will take for Mexico and Australia to back out of those treaties and get into the gold rush in the Solar System?
The Moon has more surface area that North America. Even if all of the nations of the Earth conspired and made a deliberate effort to explode the Moon, it can't be done. Mining operations that would produce minerals in quantities equal to the entire mining production of humanity from before the Sumerian empires until now and doing that on an annual basis would take billions of years to mine out enough of the Moon for you to even notice something was happening.
Relax, the Moon is going to be just fine even with extensive strip mining, and arguably it is better to have it happen up there than down here on the Earth while killing habitat for many animals and destroying whole ecosystems.
Only the smallest of asteroids will ever be completely mined out before mankind will have settled and occupied the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy.
There is current application of space law in terms of being an extension of international law though. Commercial enterprises working in a space environment or having a significant part or feature of their business (speaking about just space-related assets) is now a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Much of that is of course in the telecommunications industry (where it gets tricky to distinguish what is an Earth-based asset and what is space-based), but it also includes some emerging industries including mining operations.
It is a real academic discipline, and surprisingly the University of Mississippi is one of the major centers. Giggle all you want, this guy is cited in professional journals and taken seriously by executives at companies who conduct business activities in space. The guys that have the bucks matter, not some casual poster on Slashdot.
Neville Chamberlain was in a tough position as the United Kingdom had pretty much disposed of their military in the aftermath of World War I. Their navy was certainly world-class, but the army and anything which could be used to stop Germany was basically non-existent. Ditto for the U.S. Army (which even had serious legislation going before Congress to completely disband the U.S. Army altogether and rely strictly on the state militias for national defense). The rest of the world was disarming at the time Germany was moving into the Rhineland and elsewhere.
Military intelligence was also miserable at the time, where Germany purposely inflated the numbers of their soldiers by marching the same units across prominent bridges (easily seen by observers)... only to ship them by train back to Germany to have them march again over the same bridge several times. Basically the UK & France thought Germany had many more soldiers involved in those early occupations than really was the case and something that might have been stopped simply by calling Germany's bluff.
I don't know if it is too late to do that with Putin's Russia or not... which I suppose is the question some are asking right now.
Slashdot Mirror
NASA is only paying for the flight slots. Both Boeing and SpaceX plan on reusing their respective spacecraft, although for this particular CCtCAP contract I'm pretty sure they are supposed to be all brand-new vehicles.
The CST-100 is more like the Space Shuttle so far as it needs some refurbishment that takes a little bit of time, but it is still supposed to be just a couple of months turn around time from a landing to a new launch. SpaceX is aiming for "commercial aircraft" style of reuse where they want to relaunch the vehicle potentially within the same day it lands.
Even the Dragon spacecraft which is going up tomorrow (Sunday, Sept 21st) is merely sold for the mission, and SpaceX gets that vehicle to use for its own purposes. At the moment, SpaceX is using the opportunity to take the Dragon apart to study the engineering issues that have shown up on each mission, but that will soon end.
None the less, they are real spacecraft that have life support systems which have been operating as if they could be occupied. One of them had some biological specimens (I think some insects) and it was definitely pressurized in the interior volume, not to mention that Bigelow has gained the experience of operating these modules over a long period of time.
Bigelow Aerospace is currently slated to send up a vehicle next year on a Falcon 9, and supposedly a Falcon Heavy has also been sold but not on the manifest right now. With the current launch rate that SpaceX has been pounding out lately, this seems pretty likely to happen unless it is Bigelow who isn't ready.
We will find out in America if Puerto Rico becomes a state. Maybe. The last time that happened in America was in 1959.
I suppose it is sort of like the never ending battle over what to do with Puerto Rico in the USA. Does it become a state? Become independent? Remain in its current weird "organized unincorporated territory" status?
In that case though, the people of Puerto Rico are simply too laid back to want to bother pushing the issue, and the rest of America doesn't care. Even the fact that most of the seats to Congress from Puerto Rico would likely be Democrat hasn't even remotely influenced its admission status.
I apologize. I've been battling too many people on Reddit lately, and sometimes that carries over to here on Slashdot, even though I've largely faded away from here.
BTW, this particular tweet is VERY interesting:
https://twitter.com/TheLurioReport/status/512292169840099329
If there is any substance here, this story could could a whole lot more interesting. The Lurio Report, unlike Mr. Pasztor, is usually pretty accurate with these things too. Even more interesting is this tweet:
https://twitter.com/TheLurioReport/status/512293986602848256
I guess that explains the layoff notices that Boeing sent out earlier to comply with the WARN Act.
In the press conference that was held after the announcement, the NASA PR rep actually mentioned "other competitive crewed spaceflight operators" could be considered in the future. In other words, SNC is not completely out of the picture. Indeed they will still be funded for CCiCAP as they complete the final milestones under the current agreements... SNC just missed the big funding and actual spaceflight missions which SpaceX and Boeing are now being funded for with CCtCAP.
Except for the nit-picky fact that they've said nothing of the sort.
On the contrary, they even prepared the lay-off notices to most of the staff working on the CST-100:
http://www.spacenews.com/article/civil-space/40931boeing-preparing-layoff-notices-in-case-of-commercial-crew-loss
It was a prudent business move none the less, but Boeing certainly didn't seem ready to compete in general commercial spaceflight endeavors. Now that they've won the award, I guess all of that paperwork gets burned, which should be a relief to those working on the CST-100.
And the award to the biggest asshole on slashdot goes to businessnerd, who can't tell time to see that I posted before the official announcement. Not only that, but besides the raw "Boeing and SpaceX got the award", Mr. Pasztor got nearly everything else in the article flat out wrong.
It should also be pointed out that NASA has yet to select a "prime contractor", if any is to be selected at all.
Slow down there..... you don't know who has received what, if there is even a "prime contractor", or what is going to happen. Assuming that Mr. Pasztor is 100% accurate (his previous record of accuracy in reporting about the space industry suggests strongly otherwise), it would still be pretty good for SpaceX. Although I would say it is just at the beginning of the fireworks as whatever deal actually comes from this announcement today (4 PM EDT according to NASA) is going to be reviewed by congressional committees in the future and may even change. It will still remain competitive between the companies in the future and I can see the down selected company getting business in the future from NASA if they continue development and independently get passengers into space.
The interesting thing is that Blue Origin is rumored to be potentially purchased or some sort of stock swap with Boeing with a merger. The future of Boeing and whatever they are going to do in the future will be interesting, and I think Boeing is going to feel the pinch to be competitive. Both SpaceX and Sierra Nevada have promised that they will continue with development of their vehicles even if they don't get selected, which I hope is not a criteria being used for selecting Boeing if this proves to be true.
Boeing paid off Andy Pasztor to write this hit piece. Basically it is being done, I would guess, to push up stock prices so somebody else can make a bunch of money shorting the stock afterward or something silly like that. This "reporter" has rarely been right and deserves to be embarrassed if everything he says fails to happen.
BTW, I agree with you in regards to Dreamchaser. It is a good enough vehicle that the ESA is even looking at using it, and Sierra Nevada is already on record saying they will continue the development of this vehicle even without additional development money from NASA. Indeed the only company that has said they will stop any further development if their vehicle isn't selected is Boeing.
Some of the issue with automobile manufactures is that the vehicles are so complex and need so much capital that almost everybody who tries to build a new manufacturing company in this industry usually goes bankrupt. Tucker and DeLorean are really good examples of this, in spite of conspiracy theories that suggest ulterior motives of existing manufacturers.
The other issue is simply complying with government regulations in the industry. Some of those regulations certainly have been established because of major screw-ups in the past, but many of them (in spite of the manufacturers complaining about them) are enacted explicitly to discourage new entrants into the industry. At the very least the existing manufacturers only offer token resistances to things like seat belt and safety laws that add complexity as long as it hits everybody in the industry equally... and keeps new companies busy trying to catch up if they tried. If somebody built an exact replica of the Ford Model T, it couldn't be driven today except as a historical re-creation for off-road usage and certainly not something for mass production.
The point of the dealership is to have a local representative who can help with compliance with local regulations. A hundred years ago, selling stuff was a whole lot more complicated in terms of trying to keep track of things each state wanted or didn't want, not to mention often even different laws for each city even in the same state. Communication was also a bit slower as well... and more importantly the system simply worked for almost everybody.
The problem is that once you have the franchisee in place, getting rid of them is nearly impossible, even if the situation has changed. This is why several historic systems still stick around years, decades, or even centuries after they are obsolete. Some places in Europe still use Roman aqueducts for their water supply... because they still work. There may be more efficient ways to get the same thing to happen now, but why change if it still sort of works?
You are the one who made the first mistake.
If you do that kind of research by looking stuff up on-line, reading Consumer Reports, and digging up information about the automobiles before you show up to the dealer.... what is the point of the dealer in the first place?
I agree with you so far as that is the best way to avoid getting screwed over by incompetent salesmen, but you can intelligently use sales reps to get more information about their products. This is not strictly about the automobile industry either, and I've done that with electronics, software, and even groceries.
Tesla doesn't have dealerships, which is part of the problem though. They have stores... like stores which sell soap or drugs like aspirin. That is also the point of the ruling as they are trying to tell these mega-dealerships who own the rights to every automobile brand that they simply can't add Tesla to their list.
The reason why Tesla doesn't want these dealers to have their cars is primarily because they are afraid that these dealers will throw a couple of Tesla cars in the corner of their showroom and be pushing the other brands instead. Elon Musk has explicitly stated this as his primary objection, and why he felt it was necessary to go outside of the dealership model.
Yes, Douglas Adams had a really good way to describe such things. I miss the guy.
I haven't forgotten the multiplicitive nature of human reproduction or how life will spread. Millions of years from now mankind is likely going to be spreading to other Galaxies and doing things you would not even comprehend at the moment. Human populations also seem to somehow stabilize when constrained with resources (sometimes in ugly ways, but it does happen). Space is huge and there will be many other places to worry about than a mined out Moon.
Who knows, there may even be a lunar restoration group wanting to make it look as pristine as when Neil Armstrong first walked on it.
Everybody thought the era of pirates was over.... until they started to show up again in the 21st Century here on the Earth. If the opportunity presents itself, there will always be people who will take advantage of a power vacuum and try to take that which is undefended.
No, it won't be like Star Trek or Firefly..... those are too slick and clean cut. It will be far more ugly and different still. This isn't chest thumping, it is facing reality instead of burying your head in the sand and thinking none of this is going to happen. I'll also say that a couple hundred years is nothing in terms of human history too. If you don't make longer-term plans, your civilization is simply doomed to extinction.
The reason you can make a claim in North America and have it stick is due to the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Army. They are the guys that make it possible to make a mining claim and not have to worry about having some 2-bit thug come along and take your mine from you. That is what makes civilization possible. As much as Canada wants to assert their independence, they are dependent upon the U.S. military to make sure Russia doesn't go and sack the northern part of their country (or the whole country for that matter). Ditto for Mexico (in spite of the gangs in northern Mexico.... proving my point and the GP poster above).
The problem with the assumptions about those hoping for peace and tranquility in space is that you don't have sovereignty claims, thus no military of any kind except for pirates and thugs who don't give a damn about treaties or the United Nations. This also includes opportunistic nations that may want to take any space-based assets. That is not an environment you want to be investing billions or perhaps even trillions of dollars worth of money to develop space-based mineral assets.
Yes, space is big, far bigger than you can imagine. None the less, once you start sinking resources into developing a location in space, it becomes a target for aggression. That becomes a fixed point that can be occupied and stolen. Thugs will beat you up simply to steal ten bucks out of your wallet.... what will they do for assets worth billions? That is why you need to have available some friends who are far bigger and badder than any potential thug to allow civilized behavior to flourish.
I wonder what the lobbying budget of Planetary Resources is at the moment? There are other space mining enterprises, but they are the ones that are furthest along with actual hardware capable of doing something with the idea. Their short-term goal is to simply map the Solar System, and not even trying to pretend that it is for purely scientific purposes.
Unless the treaty has an "escape clause", which the Outer Space Treaty has. Basically Congress can force a renegotiation of this particular treaty or simply set it aside by legislation. There is a one year notification period where the USA will need to abide by the restrictions of this particular treaty, but once that year is up.... it is as if the treaty never existed in the first place.
Not everybody is happy with that clause, and many people talking about this in the past have argued that this clause will never be invoked without another treaty with all of the current signers agreeing to a new treaty, but it still there.
Also, Congress can pass legislation requiring the President of the USA to engage in various actions. This is even fairly common place where legislation is written like "The Secretary shall..." or "The President shall..." Such legislation could certainly be drafted that in effect makes it an impeachable offense for the President to refuse to denounce a treaty (and very likely the President would simply do what Congress has asked in this case too). While technically it would still have to pass through the hands of the President, the policy decision itself can be decided simply by Congress.... much like how in the UK Parliament passes legislation that gets the Queen's assent but the Queen really didn't get to decide what was in that legislation.
The Outer Space Treaty doesn't even make it illegal. It only prevents sovereign claims upon the territory. It can be debated as to if a U.S. citizen claiming extra-terrestrial real estate might constitute a sovereignty claim as well, and certainly a group of citizens forming a town out of their privately held land and applying for U.S. territorial status will constitute a sovereignty claim, but that is still up in the air.
Besides, the USA can also simply state openly to all of the signatory parties "I don't want to be in this treaty anymore", wait a year, and that treaty will have zero impact of any kind. Basically, all Congress needs to do is take a private territorial claim and wait a year before it can be formally recognized or even granted statehood. It took longer than that for California to become a state.
The problem is that the treaty obligations of the USA are silent on the matter of private ownership of extra-terrestrial real estate and minerals. In other words, there are no obligations to get in the way. On the other hand, the major spacefaring nations of Mexico and Australia do have treaty obligations that prohibit their citizens from engaging in this kind of mining operation.
I wonder how long it will take for Mexico and Australia to back out of those treaties and get into the gold rush in the Solar System?
The Moon has more surface area that North America. Even if all of the nations of the Earth conspired and made a deliberate effort to explode the Moon, it can't be done. Mining operations that would produce minerals in quantities equal to the entire mining production of humanity from before the Sumerian empires until now and doing that on an annual basis would take billions of years to mine out enough of the Moon for you to even notice something was happening.
Relax, the Moon is going to be just fine even with extensive strip mining, and arguably it is better to have it happen up there than down here on the Earth while killing habitat for many animals and destroying whole ecosystems.
Only the smallest of asteroids will ever be completely mined out before mankind will have settled and occupied the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy.
There is current application of space law in terms of being an extension of international law though. Commercial enterprises working in a space environment or having a significant part or feature of their business (speaking about just space-related assets) is now a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Much of that is of course in the telecommunications industry (where it gets tricky to distinguish what is an Earth-based asset and what is space-based), but it also includes some emerging industries including mining operations.
It is a real academic discipline, and surprisingly the University of Mississippi is one of the major centers. Giggle all you want, this guy is cited in professional journals and taken seriously by executives at companies who conduct business activities in space. The guys that have the bucks matter, not some casual poster on Slashdot.
Neville Chamberlain was in a tough position as the United Kingdom had pretty much disposed of their military in the aftermath of World War I. Their navy was certainly world-class, but the army and anything which could be used to stop Germany was basically non-existent. Ditto for the U.S. Army (which even had serious legislation going before Congress to completely disband the U.S. Army altogether and rely strictly on the state militias for national defense). The rest of the world was disarming at the time Germany was moving into the Rhineland and elsewhere.
Military intelligence was also miserable at the time, where Germany purposely inflated the numbers of their soldiers by marching the same units across prominent bridges (easily seen by observers)... only to ship them by train back to Germany to have them march again over the same bridge several times. Basically the UK & France thought Germany had many more soldiers involved in those early occupations than really was the case and something that might have been stopped simply by calling Germany's bluff.
I don't know if it is too late to do that with Putin's Russia or not... which I suppose is the question some are asking right now.