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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday April 14 2020, @08:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-just-loony dept.

Trump signs an executive order allowing mining the moon and asteroids:

In 2015, the Obama administration signed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (CSLCA, or H.R. 2262) into law. This bill was intended to "facilitate a pro-growth environment for the developing commercial space industry" by making it legal for American companies and citizens to own and sell resources that they extract from asteroids and off-world locations (like the moon, Mars or beyond).

On April 6th, the Trump administration took things a step further by signing an executive order that formally recognizes the rights of private interests to claim resources in space. This order, titled "Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources," effectively ends the decades-long debate that began with the signing of the Outer Space Treaty in 1967.

This order builds on both the CSLCA and Space Directive-1 (SD-1), which the Trump administration signed into law on December 11th, 2017. It establishes that "Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law," and that the United States does not view space as a "global commons."


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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday April 14 2020, @09:10PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday April 14 2020, @09:10PM (#982775)

    Absolutely. Now - do you want to have that argument head-on with the same power structure that has kept a lead foot on the accelerator for centuries while they're rapidly destroying our world, quite possibly the only naturally habitable world humanity will ever know? Knowing that we probably have no more than a few centuries to to turn things around?

    Or shall we try redirect that avarice (and bounty - we all benefit immensely) towards the far vaster, richer, and (mostly?) lifeless opportunities in space? Once we have a solid foothold there, Earth will be small potatoes. It'll be a nice place to live, but doesn't really have much else to offer compared to the alternatives. We'll still reach the limits of exponential growth eventually - but it pushes the "drop dead date" back by millenia, and positions our precious green oasis of a world as a resort location with little else of value to attract those who would destroy it for profit.

    Personally, I think the latter option has a much better chance of preserving our world.

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