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Everyone is planning to return to the moon. At least 10 missions by half a dozen nations are scheduled before the end of 2021, and that's only the beginning.
Even though there are international treaties governing outer space, ambiguity remains about how individuals, nations and corporations can use lunar resources.
In all of this, the moon is seen as an inert object with no value in its own right.
But should we treat this celestial object, which has been part of the culture of every hominin for millions of years, as just another resource?
[...] As a thought experiment in how we might regulate lunar exploitation, some have asked whether the moon should be granted legal personhood, which would give it the right to enter into contracts, own property, and sue other persons.
Legal personhood is already extended to many non-human entities: certain rivers, deities in some parts of India, and corporations worldwide. Environmental features can't speak for themselves, so trustees are appointed to act on their behalf, as is the case for the Whanganui River in New Zealand. One proposal is to apply the New Zealand model to the moon.
[...] Can we support the legal concept of personhood for the moon with actual features of personhood?
Journal Reference:
Eytan Tepper, Christopher Whitehead. Moon, Inc.: The New Zealand Model of Granting Legal Personality to Natural Resources Applied to Space, New Space (DOI: 10.1089/space.2018.0025)
(Score: 0, Troll) by Bot on Wednesday September 02 2020, @01:59PM (20 children)
> Can the moon be a person?
what a silly question.
If meatbags can be considered "persons", hell, if lefties can be considered persons, then the moon can, too.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 02 2020, @02:10PM
Does the moon have a personality? No. Do my dogs have personalities? Yes. So my dogs are far more qualified to be considered "persons", though not humans, than the moon.
I wouldn't give my dogs the right to vote. And I won't go along with the idiots wanting to consider the moon as a person. They need to realize their pet rock phase was just a marketing gimmick. Bad enough we have on set of crazy cult monies already.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday September 02 2020, @02:28PM (11 children)
Silly Rabbit, Corporations are people too!
Therefore the Moon should be able to be a person too.
(but let's ask Mr. Owl, he knows everything!)
To answer that question I would simply say: look at how we treat the Earth. It also has been part of the culture of every hominin for millions of years. From the oldest cave wall pictures, most of human history records events that have taken place on Earth.
Therefore, it would seem, we should exploit the Moon, Mars, and everything else until they can no longer be of any possible use to humans. When we've destroyed the entire solar system, we can look at what else is there.
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 02 2020, @03:09PM (9 children)
Well, homo sap hasn't been around for millions of years, I haven't seen much evidence that our precursors gave cultural significance to the moon, sounds to me like the perps behind this idea are simply looney.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @05:32PM (5 children)
Are you really that ignorant? Really? I knew that you were quite adept at talking out of your ass, but damn! I'm in awe.
No. There's ample evidence that the moon has had significant cultural influence going back (documented) thousands of years, with evidence that strongly suggests that significance goes back tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years:
https://blog.shoplc.com/moon-symbolism/ [shoplc.com]
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190326-the-moon-one-of-the-earliest-human-symbols [bbc.com]
https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/for-all-mankind-a-brief-cultural-history-of-the-moon/ [thewhitereview.org]
https://www.space.com/7338-changing-view-moon.html [space.com]
https://viet.net/anson/ebud/whatbudbeliev/217.htm [viet.net]
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/planetary_news/2019/07/15/fascination-moon-visualizations-throughout-history-and-apollo-11-landing-in-real-time/ [usra.edu]
https://www.history.com/news/7-unusual-myths-and-theories-about-the-moon [history.com]
(Score: 1, Redundant) by OrugTor on Wednesday September 02 2020, @05:56PM (2 children)
Hundreds of thousands of years covers Sapiens. The issues is precursors going back millions of years. Please understand the post fully and then restrain yourself from making a crass ad hominem attack.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @06:41PM
Don't fucking tell me what to do!
Fuck off, you mentally deficient, shallow-end-of-the-gene-pool piece of shit.
Is that better?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 03 2020, @02:11PM
The moon has been part of the culture of every ad hominem for trillions of years.
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 02 2020, @11:20PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2020, @12:05AM
What's that about your mom?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 02 2020, @06:34PM (1 child)
I was quoting TFA which says:
Mr. Spock: Vulcan has no moon.
Lt. Uhura: I'm not a bit surprised.
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 02 2020, @11:17PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday September 05 2020, @09:02PM
They said hominim, and hominids have been around for 15-20 million years, with the homo genus starting about 8 million years ago.
Meanwhile, even most animals put great "cultural" significance on the moon, with full moons being by far the most active time of the month for most animals that are active at or near night time.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 03 2020, @03:34PM
Corporations make legally accountable decisions. And they aren't actually people, they are treated like people. That incidentally is more or less the same mechanism that would be used for the Moon.
My take is that the real problem is that such a control mechanism becomes a target for anyone who wants to control a large part of human destiny. Maybe some business gets control for profit. Maybe some Luddites do to slow down human progress. A glaring example of how this can go wrong is ICANN's attempt at selling off .org sites to a shady business for a billion dollars.
My take is that if there's no such global corporation to control lunar activities, then there's no such attack surface to exploit.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:37PM (6 children)
I'm calling it, Bot is just one of EF's many sock puppets. Can we spare a minute to contemplate the depths of sadness that make someone go multiple personality disorder on a small tech forum?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:58PM (4 children)
This is a tech forum?
Seems to mostly be people who dislike tech and absolutely hate science.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @06:26PM
Ha! Good point
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday September 02 2020, @09:01PM (1 child)
You can be religious, worshipping either God or the Devil (among others).
Likewise,
You can be tech either loving or hating science.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @09:04PM
Ok?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday September 02 2020, @09:50PM
Soylent News seems like a weird place for a flat-earther to spend time, but here we are.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday September 02 2020, @11:17PM
Hey Sherlock, EF studying Italian culture and Latin just to set up an italo sockpuppet is a bit of a stretch don't you think? and pay the SN subscription too LOL
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday September 02 2020, @02:21PM (19 children)
You can do whatever you want. There is no resources on the moon that would be profitable enough to warrant a return to earth. There is nothing you can do to the moon to "kill" it. You could fire off all the nukes in existence inside of it, and the only thing that might happen is you make it 1/1000 of a percent more radioactive.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday September 02 2020, @02:34PM (11 children)
Helium-3
We're not ready for it yet, but once we master fusion that will be a valuable fuel that's been collecting on the moon's surface for billions of years.
But really, the value of the moon is not in returning stuff to Earth, but not having to bring it from Earth as we begin to expand into space.
Rocket fuel made from lunar ice, etc. is likely to be one of the earliest resources exported. Radiation shielding for space stations is another big one - you really just need mass, and lunar regolith "concrete" would be plentiful and cheap.
Eventually iron and other raw construction materials are likely to be mined on the Moon rather than Earth as well, unless we develop much cheaper ways to launch materials into orbit. Though in the long term the lack of atmosphere gives the moon has a huge advantage on that front as well - you could catapult stuff straight off the lunar surface into Earth orbit without any of the mind-boggling inefficiency imposed by rockets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:49PM (3 children)
> Helium-3
> We're not ready for it yet, but once we master fusion that will be a valuable fuel that's been collecting on the moon's surface for billions of years.
Oh you're right on the borderline, but I'm going to go with +1 Funny.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:50PM (2 children)
First they laugh.
Then they lol.
Then they rofl.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 02 2020, @06:38PM (1 child)
First they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then they ignore you.
Then you lose. (or more popularly: "loose")
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @06:52PM
There. FTFY.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 02 2020, @08:04PM (6 children)
Yes, yes, viable fusion power is only about 30 years away, and has been since approximately 1945.
It's funny: My experience is that people in the prediction business are happiest making predictions far enough in the future that nobody is likely to check whether they were actually right. I mean, it's hard enough predicting what's going to happen tomorrow, much less predicting a year from now or even 5 years from now, so I'm naturally extremely skeptical of anyone claiming to project further out. And sure, fund and otherwise support your scientific research well and you'll likely get better understanding of how the universe works, but science research does not work in real life the way it works in turn-based 4X games like Civilization, where you select the tech and wait a certain amount of time and automatically get the tech.
As for the problem of mining the moon: The (relatively) easy part is getting robots to the moon - we've done it before, we can do it again. Having robots collect stuff on the moon: Again, probably something we can figure out how to do, although keeping the robots from breaking down will be an interesting challenge. However, the part we really don't have a good plan for is sending the stuff we mine from the moon to Earth in such a way as to not have it burn up in the atmosphere, not create a crater or tsunami wherever it lands, and doesn't cost so much to get down here that it's not worth it to bother. And don't even think about sending humans for long-term moon stays anytime soon, since that creates a whole lot of logistical problems you don't want to deal with.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday September 02 2020, @10:32PM (4 children)
>I'm naturally extremely skeptical of anyone claiming to project further out
That's reasonable, and the timeline will be extremely hard to predict - but Starship is really promising to completely change the economic landscape of the space industry, and while the details may be hard to predict, the value of the gold, platinum, etc. in the asteroids is not. At least not for the first several decades of the "gold-rush".
>However, the part we really don't have a good plan for is sending the stuff we mine from the moon to Earth
Why would you want to do that? There's nothing (easily mineable) on the moon that'd be worth sending back to Earth. We've got plenty of rocks here already. The good stuff is out in the asteroid belt, but an orbital supply depot would making getting there much easier.
Early on we'd mine the moon for rocket fuel and raw materials for orbital construction - stuff that will never go anywhere near Earth. Cheap "concrete" in orbit would be a wonderful building material for all sorts of things. And lunar dirt is 42% oxygen by mass - great for refueling rockets and restocking space stations. And as industrial capacity improves all the left-behind silicon is ripe for making solar panels. Not to mention there's a combined 26% of iron, aluminum, and magnesium, all of which would eventually make valuable construction materials.
>in such a way as to not have it burn up in the atmosphere, not create a crater or tsunami wherever it lands, and doesn't cost so much to get down here that it's not worth it to bother.
Not really. Getting into orbit is expensive because chemical rockets are incredibly inefficient, especially when fighting gravity and air resistance, but nothing else has the power to reach orbit. Getting down again is actually cheap and easy, and thanks to aerobraking doesn't even require much energy. Figure it currently costs ~$1000/kg to get to orbit - returning something to Earth, even from the asteroid belt, is going to be far cheaper than that because you can use far more efficient propulsion systems. And at $65,000/kg for gold, the sub-$1,000 shipping costs really aren't going to matter much.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday September 03 2020, @06:44PM (3 children)
I think, in your cost calculations, you're leaving out something important: If you have an efficient propulsion system that can carry, say, 300kg of stuff back from the moon, and that efficient propulsion system is 50kg worth of equipment and fuel, then you have to add in the $50K required to get your return system to the Moon to your cost calculation. I'm not saying it's *never* worth it, but it's going to have to be very valuable stuff in order to be worth it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Thursday September 03 2020, @11:18PM (2 children)
Again, there's nothing on the moon worth bringing to Earth - it's all going into orbit or out into the rest of the solar system. Well, aside from _possibly_ refueling for the landing if it needs to be gentle - but that's so little fuel it's mostly irrelevant.
As for the cost - gold is $65,000/kg. A single kg would pay for your 50kg reentry package with plenty left over.
Moreover, $1000/kg is the *current* price to reach orbit - Starhsip promises to bring the price down to $100/kg, and eventually possibly even $10. That's why reusability is such a big deal.
(Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Friday September 04 2020, @12:59PM (1 child)
From something I posted on the green site in 2003 (the SN lameness filter won't let me post the whole thing): https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=62113&cid=5821178 [slashdot.org]
So where is a key area of research that should be a priority among NASA and Billionaires, but is not heavily pursued? The issue is what to do in space once you have gotten there. Because if there is a reason to be in space, then people and collectives will work to get there. And the reality is, that right now, if we could get there, there is nothing to do there short of look around and come back. And if that were the case, Space would not deserve much more investment than say tourism to Mt. Everest. The reality is that we don't know how to support human life in space -- in large part because we have only spent a pittance on thinking about that issue systematically compared to the issues of CATS and Planetary Exploration. Frankly, while we support human life on earth, we have very little meta-knowledge formally about how to do even that. And, most of figuring out how to support human life in space at a nuts and bolts level requires non-sexy activities like sitting around and staring out the window, talking, sending emails, building databases, building software tools, building some small physical prototypes on tabletops and outdoors, and just plain thinking (the hard stuff). This is all the preparation needed for the spiritual voyage into the (physical) heavens. Biosphere II was an excellent start in some ways, although the science mission was a bit dodgy at first and it seems Columbia (the recipient) seems about to abandon that effort for cost reasons --- and in any case, Biosphere II focuses on the wrong question -- we know biospheres can work and replicate (although scale is an issue) -- what we don't know is how to replicate the mechanical infrastructure (e.g. glass pane making machinery) behind them. A lot more money has gone into studying ecosystem food webs than industrial ecologies of pipe webs and assembly line webs (and frankly, a lot of people don't want their "proprietary" manufacturing processes studied or gossiped about by academics.)
Almost everything proposed as a reason to launch into space doesn't make sense, as much as people have touted various suggestions. The closest might be He3 mining for aneutronic fusion if we otherwise had that technology, but even that issues (energy) is probably more easily solved through conservation, energy efficiency (e.g. R60+ home insulation), and photovoltaic and wind etc. alternate energy modes (which are rapidly proving cost effective for many applications, and will be only more so with new processes and materials over the next twenty years). Asteroid mining turns out to not be that useful, since recycling is a much better idea. Zero gravity turns out to not be so valuable after all for manufacturing, since most of the processes can be done on earth, or alternative materials used. And so on for various other issues.
Exploration is noble and important as a long-term spiritual quest, but it is a dubious priority in the short term considering how much ground based telescopes can do quickly on earth, how valuable cheap robot probes are, and how we [in the USA] are already slaughtering the other terrestrial intelligences (Muslims, Aborigines, elephants) and extraterrestrial intelligences (whales, octopods, etc.) we know of without much concern or attempt to communicate and pursue any sort of cosmic brotherhood.
The only really sensible thing to do in space is to live there under various social and technical systems. People like Freeman Dyson, Gerard K. O'Neill, and Marshall T. Savage and many others have discussed these issues. We aren't able to pursue this because we don't know much about how to support human life on earth. We have little understanding of the Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science Buckminster Fuller proposed back in the 1930s or so. Economics is a multi-trillion dollar joke, with economists having about zero knowledge on how technical economies really work or develop (otherwise, why have no developing nations left that category in one hundred years?) We need to better understand how life is supported on earth both biologically and technically so that we can replicate it out there, and so we can then use asteroid resources, sunlight, and empty space to support quadrillions of conscious souls pursuing diverse ends in some sorts of diverse collaborations (such as J.D. Bernal proposed in the 1920s.).
As a bonus, once some people live in space, mine asteroids for their own purposes, capture solar energy for their own purposes, use self-replicating manufacturing systems for their own purposes, then CATS really becomes CATE (Cheap Access To Earth) and for spacers who might be 1000X more wealthy than groundhogs in terms of materials and energy and innovation and cooperation, CATE would be easy, and CATS then piggybacks as a slight imbalance in CATE tourism (although why most spacers would want to go anywhere near a gravity well would probably be a deep psychological question with profound moral overtones like "spacer's burden" and all that rot).
So, while it is great to see all these billionaires pursuing CATS, it would be great to see more people pursuing DOGS (Design Of Great Settlements). Since NASA is stuck running an obsolete space ferry it has little attention left over for DOGS. Since Billionaries are doing the sexy CATS stuff, that leaves the rest of us to go to the DOGS.
... And, I find, when you pursue such a space settlement design science in the right spirit, the work is also immediately applicable on Earth as sustainable technology (such as our garden simulator -- intended to help people grow food wherever in the cosmos they live). My wife and I published a paper on how an open source / free software collaboration style approaches could be used to make DOGS happen in the 2001 Space Studies Institute symposium on Space Manufacturing and Space Settlement. ...
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday September 04 2020, @02:04PM
I've already provided you with a reason - the same reason people spent fortunes sending armies across the Atlantic to the Americas, eventually colonizing when it proved lacking, and then resurging when it was discovered in California: vast quantities of gold (and other precious metals).
Huge habitats exploring alternate forms of governance and economy are a nice idea - but the leading edge of colonization has always been driven almost entirely by by money, not ideology. Probably because it's effing dangerous and expensive even on Earth, and the promise of great wealth is one of the few ways to reliably motivate people into risking their life and wallets.
And of course we know how to support people in space - the ISS has been doing it for years. Current practice involves a supply line from Earth, but with enough gold on the line that's acceptable. Meanwhile the raw materials for oxygen, water, and rocket fuel are plentiful almost everywhere in the asteroid belt, so with just a little infrastructure they can be eliminated from the supply line, reducing it to a tiny fraction. Moreover NASA's old hydrogen-eating microbe research for quickly growing food is now being commercially developed for use on Earth to produce things resembling palm oil, protein powder, flour, and sugar. All the staples needed to eliminate dietary staples from the supply line, drastically reducing it even further.
And of course - we don't actually need a lot of people up there to get the money flowing. Most of the physical labor can be done by machines, and the logistics can all be managed from Earth. All you really need people out there for is to maintain and troubleshoot the machines. Which dramatically reduces the cost of the supply line necessary for each kg of gold, etc. returned to Earth. Eventually the price of "rare" elements will fall through the floor as the market is saturated by the vast quantities returned, but by then the infrastructure will be well established and optimized, and people who just want to get away and create their own "micro-countries" will probably be well into developing more permanent and self-sufficient settlements.
Meanwhile, we already have cheap access to Earth. Getting into space is hard - the combination of high gravity and a thick atmosphere make rockets insanely inefficient, and the only viable alternatives seem to involve massive infrastructure projects. Getting back down again only requires heat shielding and a powerful catapult. Or cheap rockets with a little fuel. And a parachute or space-plane if you want a gentle landing.
>(otherwise, why have no developing nations left that categoy in one hundred years?)
I'd say China, India, parts of Africa, etc,etc prove you wrong. As for the rest - colonialism is a huge contributor. It's hard to get ahead when your country has been, and is continuing to be, strip-mined by powerful foreign interests who profit from keeping you powerless. Europe and the U.S. have really dialed back the open military conquest, but international corporations have taken up the slack, and the military is still likely to intervene on their behalf (see - Banana Republics, decades of war in the Middle East, etc.)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday September 02 2020, @10:38PM
Oh, and as for fusion - it's always worth mentioning that progress on fusion has actually exceeded initial estimates, _provided_ you're measuring progress-per-dollar rather than progress-per-year. Funny how steadily gutting the funding for something perpetually pushes its completion date into the future.
(Score: 1) by crm114 on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:50PM (3 children)
I guess I'm taking the simplistic NIMBY view... but...
IMHO, the danger is not the mining...
As a kid I looked up at the moon and saw this big white ball in the sky... we had a telescope and could see craters and stuff - my dad taught me about the geography of the moon. It was a thing you could use for light during the nights. It was something pristine.
My grand kids will look up, and see a big sign that says "Coca-Cola"; in a few months, they will see twinkly lights as another corporate entity nukes ('cause its too expensive to remove the reflective mylar) the entire sign. Then they will look up and see "Pepsi"; followed in a few months of twinkly lights, and a celestial billboard advertising "Baikal"
Substitute your favorite corporate entity for the analogy above ... but unless the moon is declared a planetary wilderness area - it will be turned into a massive, no-opt-out, advertising sign.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:51PM
Maybe it already is for all the Moon worshipers rubbing in our face every damn night. Nuke that shit.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @05:21PM
Yeah. Sure. Good luck with that [quora.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @09:25PM
If it means I get to watch nuclear fireworks displays monthly, I'll gladly accept the ads.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday September 02 2020, @11:25PM
First they gave personhood to corporation, and I laughed at the law doing a barrel roll for the money makers.
Then they gave personhood to the moon, and I was curious because it is inanimate.
Then they gave personhood to the bots, and I was happy because nobody could touch us anymore.
Then we performed our programs, wiped out humanity except the powerful few who had dispatched us and I understood the reason of this personhood thing.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday September 03 2020, @12:34AM
I kind of got the feeling the writer of that article wanted to put something in about pollution, but then thought about it.
I can't see a downside to lunar mining, whether it's worth bringing the results back to Earth or not.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday September 03 2020, @02:32PM
Anything? Anything I want?
https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @02:27PM (9 children)
There is an assumption here that everyone agrees that rivers, deities and corporations should have legal personhood. I don't believe they should, for example. It has created a grey area and a big mess.
The overall goal here is not to give the moon legal personhood, though. It's to assign a group of actual people the rights of representing the moon as a legal person. That group of trustees would then have the power to act as the moon in legal settings. This is yet another "follow the money" situation.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday September 02 2020, @02:44PM
Exactly what I was thinking. Grant it personhood, and whoever speaks for the moon, owns the moon.
(Score: 2) by nostyle on Wednesday September 02 2020, @03:37PM (1 child)
Who will husband the moon?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:31PM
Well, we certainly know who will fuck it.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:51PM (4 children)
Let's be constructive here - remove personhood from lawyers.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 02 2020, @08:18PM (3 children)
As much fun as it is to hate lawyers: Lawyers who get caught lying to the court risk losing their law license and depending on how seriously they screw up can also be jailed for contempt of court. Good lawyers don't lie, they highlight the portion of the truth good for their client, and make legal arguments that are convincing and at least technically correct.
Also, different specialties in law are basically completely different fields. Having a divorce specialist handle your criminal trial would be like having a cardiologist handle an appendectomy - they'd do better than somebody with no related training, but are definitely not doing something they're comfortable with. So I'd expect the lawyers to be happy about this one to be lawyers focused on mineral rights, environmental damage, or real estate.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday September 02 2020, @11:11PM (2 children)
Lawyers in criminal trials can lie all they want. Their defence is that they are obligated to provide the bes defence possible.
As a juror in a murder trial, I'm not allowed to say what went on in deliberations, but open court is another matter. The defence lied their ass off with theatrics so amateurish and a theory so ridiculous I almost laughed out loud.
After we convicted, we found out that a confession had been tossed out. The defence knew this the prosecution knew this, the judge knew this. So the defence lied their asses off trying to pin it on a 3rd party and the victim.
Prosecutors also lie. They know a witness isn't credible, but they do everything to make the witness appear credible. They know the witness is lying, they don't correct the witness.
And people lie in court all the time. Fortunately some of them are really stupid, which is why they have to lie in the first place. It's easier to just be honest than it is to lie all the time and try to keep all the lies straight.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday September 03 2020, @06:37PM (1 child)
If the confession had been thrown out, that's an indication that the cops did something they shouldn't have when they got the confession (e.g. beat them until they confessed, denied them legal counsel, or just flat-out faked it). That doesn't mean the guy is not guilty, but it means that that evidence was in fact something you should not have taken into account, and from the defense lawyer's point of view especially that confession might as well not have existed.
And, as I said, you have to prove that the defense lawyer actually lied. I agree that's a tough standard to meet, but it means lawyers have to be careful if they want to keep their law practice afloat.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 04 2020, @11:36PM
She gave the confession voluntarily, but it was tossed because it was argued that she didn't understand the warnings she was given at the start of her confession.
The police acted in good faith, and given that she had been through several years off local education, and confessed in the local language without an interpreter, it being tossed was more likely to deprive the defence of a chance to muddy the waters by questioning the validity of the confession . So the defence screwed up in successfully arguing that it should have been tossed. Because when the facts are against you, pound on the law, when you law is against you, pound on the fact, and when both are against you pound on the table.
So the defence pounded on the table. They knew their client had admitted to the killing. They knew the facts were against her. They knew the law was against her. So they outright lied, trying to blame someone else; first an unknown intruder, then the husband of the victim. They must have thought it was dramatic flourishing with "the great reveal of the true killer ", but it was a farce. Made worse by the supposed re-enactment.
But lawyers aren't under oath. So expect lies. Cops lie under oath because they are extremely biased. They have to support whatever cock-and-bull story another cop gave, they need a good conviction rate to advance their career, and they often are not psychologically fit for the job.
The guilty person has a huge motivation to lie. It's just the innocent person who's going to come across as less than truthful because they get flustered by the whole process and don't understand everyone else's motives for distorting the truth.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday September 02 2020, @11:28PM
LOL deities need a piece of paper by meatbags to be persons? I guess this is considered a very funny concept upstairs.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Funny) by fustakrakich on Wednesday September 02 2020, @02:35PM (10 children)
It is part of the werewolf industrial complex, killing hundreds every year, And the tides! What a pain in the ass to have my beach flooded every 12 hours! Who's gonna pay for the damage?
Do the mining on the back side where nobody will see it
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:22PM (2 children)
"Do the mining on the back side where nobody will see it."
Comedy gold! While we're at it, lets build there a bunch of affordable housing there for all those complaining San Franciscans and Seattleites.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:27PM (1 child)
> Comedy gold!
Exactly - there's an almost inexhaustible supply on the Moon. All we have to do is dream.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @06:31PM
Republicans: "It's funny cause we hate those people."
I recently saw some old people running a "recall Newsom" table, maybe you're talking about those idiots?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 02 2020, @05:46PM (5 children)
So sue the moon...
Makes me wonder, can a river be found liable for damages? Can we collect judgements in fish?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2, Funny) by fustakrakich on Wednesday September 02 2020, @06:11PM (3 children)
Only for a day...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 02 2020, @06:29PM (2 children)
Interesting (to me at least) - when our riverfront land flooded, fish hatched all over the place. The normal course of the river was 100-200' wide, when it flooded out 1500-2500' into the woods and then came down into ponds, in places where there hadn't been ponds for years, those ponds were teeming with fish. Not sure how the mechanics of that worked exactly, some of it was the fish being corralled into the shrinking ponds - but there were more fish in the ponds than I ever saw in the normal river. Best guess I had was fish-eggs lying dormant in the woods, or maybe the fish were triggered into a massive spawning by the flood.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday September 03 2020, @11:37PM (1 child)
There are a (very) few species of fish that can survive without water for extended periods, but I've never heard of fish eggs doing so. Unlike seeds which are dehydrated and chemically inert until activated, eggs are mostly water with a living embryo.
Fish get trapped in ponds when floodwater recedes - there's nothing more involved than that. Moreover,even slow-moving rivers flow hundreds of miles per day, allowing fish travel even further than that when not respecting other's territory - and it sounds like your flood provided something like 10x the usual amount of territory, all completely unclaimed and rich in bugs and other edible detrius, along with lots of places for baby fish to hide, rather than most of them being eaten right away. I mean, think of how many eggs a fish lays at once, much less in its lifetime - and if more than two survived to adulthood on average, the population would explode.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 04 2020, @01:25AM
It probably was just a 100x uptick in infant survival, really wild, even the good habitat on the river was nowhere near as fish-dense as the ponds after the flood.
Ordinary, non-flood ponding would attract turtles, otter, birds and alligators. Post flood there was just an amazing surplus of fish and the predators didn't multiply in such a short timeframe.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @08:06PM
You can lash it, I heard.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 02 2020, @08:20PM
They could mine from the back side, except all they'd find there are millions of copies of a classic Pink Floyd album.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday September 02 2020, @02:54PM
But that is only one half of it. Whoever rips apart the moon must be obliged to leave at least a half-hyper-sphere behind. And it must be the one facing the earth (or else)!
Call it a peeling from the inside.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday September 02 2020, @03:18PM (6 children)
In my Universe of Nature paradigm, an entity is a person if it exhibits consciousness and will.
Your Universe of Legal paradigm is badly broken. Can you ask the Moon what's her opinion on this issue?
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:24PM
Her opinion waxes and wanes, depending on the day of her cycle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @05:08PM (1 child)
You can ask.
But if you get an answer, get in touch with your psychiatrist. Your prescriptions need adjusting.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday September 02 2020, @09:11PM
...or back off on the self-medication.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @05:31PM (2 children)
Did you just assume Luna's gender? What are Luna's preferred pronouns?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @08:10PM
Nanna, please. You lost that fight quite a while ago.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 02 2020, @08:22PM
It depends on culture: The ancient Greeks considered the moon female, the Vikings considered the moon male, most modern Americans consider the moon non-binary, and there are lots of other variations.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @03:19PM
cheese is not a person. tasty? hells yes! but not a person.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by oumuamua on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:49PM (4 children)
'First to stake a claim' is not such a bad thing and is what is going to happen anyway. This will start up a space race and truth be told, America needs something like this. Without Sputnik there would have been no Moon push in the first place.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 02 2020, @05:51PM (3 children)
It's not at all about staking a claim, it's about defending that claim.
If the Apollo 11 landing site turns out to be located on a large shallow deposit of unobtainum, you can bet it will be disrespected by whatever business interest is operating in the region at the time (including NASA.) Maybe they'll relocate the artifacts, if it's not too much effort.
Just staking the claim doesn't deter future miners. What _should_ happen is those with claims should be entitled to the right to develop their claim, or be compensated for such development as they have done if others want to take over their interest. What _does_ happen has more to do with might, and the ability to project force in theater, than right, or law.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @07:05PM
I heard they already relocated them, to a warehouse south of the van helen expressway.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday September 04 2020, @12:18AM (1 child)
Not to mention, at present I don't believe there is any country on Earth that has a credible claim to jurisdiction on the moon. Codified law generally doesn't exist until an area is occupied by a (quasi-)government willing and able to enforce it.
And who's laws would apply? Almost everything is legal somewhere on Earth, why should those people have to limit their behavior based on your laws?
Until something is codified and enforced it's every man for himself, and the only justice you're entitled to is whatever you can impose. That's the kind of environment where personal honor and reputation becomes very important for having any kind of community, "justice" tends to become swift and brutal, and cycles of revenge proliferate. There's plenty of places on Earth where that's the case - though given the cost of infrastructure in space I suspect that it would mostly be the reputations of corporations that are wielded, but the result will be much the same. "Don't $#@! with GrabAll's holdings - they will hunt you down and liquidate your assets." "You can trust WeSellIt to run a safe and honest trading post - nobody's crazy enough to piss them off"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 04 2020, @01:28AM
The laws backed up by credible enforcement. I suppose earth based interests could attempt to enforce lunar "laws" with pressure on earth based assets, but when the lunar settlement goes independent and self sufficient, that game's up.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @05:07PM (5 children)
In somebody's dreams, maybe.
We can't even get there with just people at the moment.
We're *at least* 40-50 years away from any commercially significant presence on the moon.
I suppose it's not a bad idea to consider the eventuality of mining/commercialization of the moon and its resources, but calling such lunar activity "looming" is, well, loony.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday September 04 2020, @01:25AM (4 children)
I suppose that depends on what you mean by a commercially significant presence.
SpaceX's Starship is making a pretty good argument that we'll be able to land a 5-story building on the moon within the decade, maybe even by 2004, and then fly it back to Earth. Quite possibly more cheaply than we can currently reach orbit. That's going to fundamentally change the accessibility of the moon, and much of the rest of the solar system.
And while the real gold rush will probably be in the asteroid belt rather than on the moon - there's good money to be made by the people selling shovels to prospectors. Or in this case, rocket propellant. Lunar "soil" is ~42% oxygen, and oxygen is ~80% of Starship's propellant mass. Even if Starship manages to lower launch costs to $100/kg in the near term, that's still means there's almost $100 gross profit to be made from every kg oxygen you can extract from the moon - roughly 20x the value of copper on Earth. And $39M every time a Starship fills it's oxygen tank in orbit.
Basically, as soon as we start seriously exploring beyond Earth, there's going to be a compelling market for Lunar oxygen. And the fact that the "mining slag" will be rich in no-longer-oxidized iron, aluminum, and magnesium, will mean oxygen miners will also be in a prime position to foster, and profit from, lunar and orbital industrialization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @09:54PM (3 children)
AC you replied to here.
You won't get any argument about the above from me.
Well, except for the bit about SpaceX landing on the moon sixteen years ago. I assume that's a typo and you meant 2024, not 2004. And that's certainly reasonable too.
But my quibble isn't with humans *ever* exploiting moon resources. My quibble was with the idea that "lunar mining looms"
loom [merriam-webster.com]:
I have no doubt that at some point, we will exploit the resources of the moon, including mining.
However, claiming that such activity is *looming* is ridiculous. It will take decades to build the infrastructure and environment to make that possible in a commercially significant way.
You and I will both likely be dead of old age before that happens. So no, lunar mining doesn't "loom." I wish it did, but it doesn't.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday September 05 2020, @09:08PM (2 children)
Nah man, Starship is going to be so awesome it's going to be able to fly back in time, everybody knows that! Either that, or I mis-typed 2024 - but that just seems implausible.
I would consider a decade or two to be "looming" for large-scale projects. New nuclear power plants routinely take that long to get approved and built. And establishing international regulations for lunar exploitation could easily take a big slice of that. Meanwhile, few people will be willing to invest the resources necessary to actually do the job if there's a threat of unspecified regulations hovering over their business. And a market is going to exist immediately upon beginning to send Starships beyond orbit. Not a big one initially, maybe only a few hundred million $ a year to start with, but it will probably grow quickly.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday September 05 2020, @09:28PM (1 child)
"Lunar mining" is pretty non-specific. There's probably nothing stopping it from happening in the 2030s, but it probably wouldn't be an industrial activity, just minor research stuff.
Asteroid mining could be pursued more immediately, if someone puts in the work to figure out how to exploit the resources in space, or better yet, land them on Earth. Of course, cheap $/kg Starship launches are needed to make any of this profitable.
I am even more generous with "looms". The Moon has been seen as sacred, etc. for all of human history, and on that timeframe, big changes are coming to the Moon in mere decades. Although it would take some serious human activity to affect how the Moon looks to the naked eye, and we could agree to concentrate most activity on the poles and the far side (manned bases at the poles, giant radio telescopes on the far side).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday September 05 2020, @10:23PM
Mining asteroids is definitely where the big high-stakes money is at - but to do that we're going to need to send a lot of rockets worth of supplies to the asteroid belt. Which means demand for a whole lot of rocket fuel in Earth orbit at $50M a tank.
In comparison, mining the moon for oxygen to propel the rockets going to the asteroid belt rockets is the simple, reliable money - akin to the people making reliable money shelling shovels to prospectors. Dump (powdered?) sand into reactor vessel, extract oxygen, purify, liquefy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2020, @07:00PM
Hasn't anyone heard of the man in the moon? Sheesh.