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An event of cosmic proportions occurred on November 18 when the US congress passed the Space Act of 2015 into law. The legislation will give US space firms the rights to own and sell natural resources they mine from bodies in space, including asteroids.
Although the act, passed with bipartisan support, still requires President Obama's signature, it is already the most significant salvo that has been fired in the ideological battle over ownership of the cosmos. It goes against a number of treaties and international customary law which already apply to the entire universe.
The new law is nothing but a classic rendition of the "he who dares wins" philosophy of the Wild West. The act will also allow the private sector to make space innovations without regulatory oversight during an eight-year period and protect spaceflight participants from financial ruin. Surely, this will see private firms begin to incorporate the mining of asteroids into their investment plans.
The act represents a full-frontal attack on settled principles of space law which are based on two basic principles: the right of states to scientific exploration of outer space and its celestial bodies and the prevention of unilateral and unbridled commercial exploitation of outer-space resources. These principles are found in agreements including the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the Moon Agreement of 1979.
I learned everything I need to know about asteroid mining from Rip Foster. [Read it at Project Gutenberg. -Ed.]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Justin Case on Friday November 27 2015, @01:59AM
Who owns space?
To answer this you need to do some thinking about the nature of ownership. Who owns Pluto? The first team/country to fly a spaceship past? And that gets you the whole planet?
Or maybe a landing is necessary. So USA owns the whole moon, having landed there first. Although didn't the (now defunct) Soviet Union actually crash a hunk of metal down first?
Who owned what we now call North America 1,000 years ago? The people who lived here? How much good did that ownership do them?
I'm not 100% sure but it seems to really own something you must be prepared to defend it against other claims. Defend, as in, with force, if need be.
Now... who owns you?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mhajicek on Friday November 27 2015, @03:01AM
Ownership is a mental construct, an illusion. He who can defend something owns it.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 27 2015, @03:35AM
He who can defend something owns it.
Oh great, so are we back to having lots of wars? If you think we're having lots of wars now, we aren't compared to the past- we're doing a lot more trade now instead of war: http://www.salon.com/2014/01/15/were_living_through_the_most_peaceful_era_in_human_history_%E2%80%94%C2%A0with_one_big_exception_partner/ [salon.com]
(one of the reasons why there are so many wars in the middle east is because the USA doesn't want the stability. The ISIS rose because the USA and its allies wanted to weaken Iran and Syria).
What seems more likely to happen is the 0.1% owns all the stuff and gives us some bread and circuses.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Friday November 27 2015, @04:38AM
People go to war on Earth because of scarcity. There's so much stuff in space, and so much...space, that scarcity essentially drops to zero. Why bother raiding someone else's asteroid mine (itself a proposition so risky as to verge on suicidal) when there are literally millions of other asteroids that no one is protecting?
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Friday November 27 2015, @06:27AM
To save the time and expense of mining I'm sure. People have always been willing to kill to take the fruits of others labor.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 27 2015, @08:29AM
That's silly. It's like saying there are some many resources on Earth that why bother warring. There will be asteroids that contain more valuable stuff than the next asteroid. There are asteroids that are closer to us in the vastness of space. The will be the same political bickering and shock and awe bullshit in space too, make no mistake.
Also, much of scarcity on Earth is man made, I'm sure that too will follow us to space should we as a species ever make it...
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Friday November 27 2015, @09:56AM
But anyway, that's how things work (and if you disagree then tough luck your stuff is mine, now).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tibman on Friday November 27 2015, @06:30PM
It sounds like your mining operating needs protection from some of these bad guys out here. For a modest fee i'll make sure nothing bad happens to you. Because it would be a shame if something bad happened here.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by dingus on Friday November 27 2015, @05:46AM
Now... who owns you?
currently? The state.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 27 2015, @07:45AM
I think that ultimately, "ownership" will devolve to those people who invest money, AND live there.
Eventually, the problems with microgravities and radiation will be solved, in more or less satisfactory ways. The people who move out there, and live there, will "own" the resources. They will own those resources either before or after they rebel from terrestrial government control. The idiots at the bottom of the gravity well won't be able to impose their will on the people high up in the well for very long.
Didn't Heinlein already write that story? A single shipping container, filled with any heavy mineral, especially a mineral that has been formed into a solid ingot, will be devastating when allowed to fall onto the earth at speed. Depending on the speed, one projectile might take out thousands of people, or it might take out millions. One projectile striking the downtown areas of the world's fifty biggest cities would be more than sufficient to stifle any saber rattling on earth.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday November 27 2015, @08:49AM
Didn't Heinlein already write that story?
Yup. And won a Hugo for it too. [wikipedia.org]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday November 28 2015, @12:46AM
I think the Trans-Orbital and Trans-Biological Partnership treaties fully address these. You should be able to check the Federal Register [federalregister.gov] for the text.
Oh, are those not public knowledge yet? Sorry, my bad.