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The interesting question to me personally is the political one. The 'Moon Treaty' [0] apparently is a failure. Is Musk on record anywhere about 'ownership', 'r

The interesting question to me personally is the political one. The 'Moon Treaty' [0] apparently is a failure. Is Musk on record anywhere about 'ownership', 'rights', 'obligations' of those exploring, colonizing and profiting from Mars? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty

randommodnar 11y ago
Anybody who knows anything about human behaviour will know that it was a failure from the beginning. If there is strong demand for the resources in the moon, powerful people will move in and take them. Watch what will happen with the Arctic as its oil becomes more accessible. A law or treaty is only as good as its enforcement mechanism.
LyndsySimon 11y ago
If there is only one entity capable of reaching the place, I'm not sure pre-existing treaties and such have any relevance.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  Being able to bomb a place is much easier than being able to land a human crew safely and establishing a colony or mining operation.
- brooklyndavs 11y ago
  They still have relevance. Lets take the Antartica treaty for example. Lets, for the sake of argument, say only one entity has the knowledge, resources, etc to reach Antartica and this entity is a subsidiary of BP. BP-Antartica lets say. BP-Antartica wants to drill for oil. This would still be a violation of international law under the treaty that governs Antartica. Same thing applies, or should apply to SpaceX or any other entity (public or private) with regard to any existing and future space treaties. "International law identifies Antarctica and outer space as two of four global commons (the others being the high seas and the atmosphere). Both have been defined within international regimes as spaces outside the territory of nation states and beyond the normative inhabitable zones of the human species. In both instances the current governance regime were outcomes of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) (1957-1958)." http://phys.org/news/2015-08-antarctica-key-space.html http://phys.org/news/2015-08-antarctica-key-space.html Specifically in the Antartica treaty: "No acts or activities taking place while the present Treaty is in force shall constitute a basis for asserting, supporting or denying a claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica or create any rights of sovereignty in Antarctica. No new claim, or enlargement of an existing claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica shall be asserted while the present Treaty is in force." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    Does territorial sovereignty mean anything to an international corporation that just wants resources and can hire private security?
    - brooklyndavs 11y ago
      Yes! Or it should as humanity has identified Antartica as a Common. Just because you are an international corporation doesn't mean you get to violate international law. Unfortunately, the environmental protection protocol is open for review in 2048. This will probably roll back the protections in place for the environment of Antartica :( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Environmental_Protection_to_the_Antarctic_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Environmental_Prot...
  - gus_massa 11y ago
    If tomorrow the 5 permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, UK, USA) and their atomic weapons decide to cancel the Antarctica treaty, then the treaty is void. They can invite to the ceremony the other members of the UNSC, but I guess it's better to invite the other countries with atomic weapons. They didn't cancel it yet because for now there is currently no activity there with a profit, and they are not sure how to divide it. But once there is a way to gain money, don't expect that the treaty will last too much.
    - brooklyndavs 11y ago
      I know, and then humanity will have destroyed the last remaining wilderness on Earth and the ecosystem that goes along with it. Looking at our collective history we should know better. How tragic.
    - djrogers 11y ago
      Realistically any 1 or 2 of those members could unilaterally 'cancel' the treaty. Treaties are only useful until someone violates them, then you have to figure out what comes next...
    - 11y ago
- maxerickson 11y ago
  It depends more than a little bit on how independent from Earth you are. If you are dependent on Earth, you are pretty meaningfully subject to the governments where you are operating.
  - LyndsySimon 11y ago
    "If you sanction us or cut access to our launch site in Nevada, we will redirect a 50m asteroid to impact Washington, DC." It would be a classic Mexican standoff, but the group with access to orbital and inter-planetary platforms would win. You could try to starve them out, but you couldn't keep them from obliterating you while it was happening.
    - vidarh 11y ago
      > "If you sanction us or cut access to our launch site in Nevada, we will redirect a 50m asteroid to impact Washington, DC." At which point you have become the worlds most wanted terrorist, and will have to watch your back for the rest of your life while large portions of the worlds security apparatus tries to find ways of taking you out (not just the US - everyone else will worry they are next).
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        > At which point you have become the worlds most wanted terrorist Only you're not on this world... Interplanetary games of brinkmanship have new rules.
        vidarh 11y ago
        But most of your resources likely still are, or the threat would be pointless.
        LyndsySimon 11y ago
        The purpose of the threat is to prevent the grounders from denying you access to your resources planetside. Seems to me that the first entity to get a real foothold in space will be the de facto ruler of Earth.
- r00fus 11y ago
  I'd say it also heavily depends on whether anything of monetary value can be extracted from Mars...
brooklyndavs 11y ago
Agree, I'm interested in the political aspect of this as well. For most of modern history (past WWII lets say) exploration of unknown frontiers (Antartica, space, the moon etc) has been done under nation states with various levels of funding from governments either at 100% public or a public/private mix. This exploration is done usually with the end goal of expanding human knowledge or sometimes for national defense as in the space race and the moon. What makes me SUPER uneasy about what SpaceX is trying to do with Mars is the 100% private nature of this, at least from an ownership perspective. Is SpaceX trying to claim ownership to Mars, or a least a part of it? Who or what gives them the right to make this claim? Wouldn't humanity as a whole be better served to see Mars the same way we see Antartica? Additionally, why does SpaceX get to say who goes to Mars and who doesn't? Shouldn't we choose who gets to go on missions to Mars based on expertise in technical and scientific fields vs how much one can pay for a ticket? Why should the ability to go to Mars be based capital? Does a little child who wants to be an astronaut also need to be a billionaire? Ultimately, what gives the super rich the right to leave this planet for a colony on Mars while the rest of us try to figure out how to survive on the planet that they had a large hand in destroying in the first place. Why should we, as a society, even support a colony on Mars that will take many years to be self sustaining in the above configuration. Hopefully our international bodies wake up and start taking the privatization of space seriously and at least start enacting and enforcing some guidelines, regulations, and treaties around space and bodies in our solar system.
- mikeash 11y ago
  SpaceX isn't standing in anybody else's way. Any and all other interested parties are free to pursue their own plans. Adding guidelines and regulations won't suddenly make it so that other people go, all it'll do is make it harder for SpaceX to do so. This post sounds to me like sour grapes. "I can't go, so I don't want anybody to go unless we all can." I hope I'm wrong, because that idea terrifies me a bit.
  - brooklyndavs 11y ago
    Good, it should be harder for SpaceX and other completely private entities to go since space is identified as a public Common (see my comment above). Its not sour grapes. When Neil Armstrong went to the moon it was for all Americans and all of Humanity. During the space shuttle missions there was a public effort to try to select a broad representation of cultures, backgrounds, educations, nationalities etc to be astronauts. However, if the only ultra rich get to go, which it sounds like the case since that would be the only way to fund a private mission, why should everyone left be ok with it? Why should the richest people in the world, most who have had a incredibly large role in environmentally destroying the ONLY planet all of humanity can live on, just leave everyone else to clean up the mess? It would be the ultimate FU to the rest of the 99.9% of humanity. http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9792854/neil-degrasse-tyson-interview-delusions-of-space-enthusiasts http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9792854/neil-degrasse-tys...
james-watson 11y ago
Treaties are great fun for the specific brand of nerd that loves treaties. In the real world, the only thing that matters is who has the bigger stick to backup whatever terms they dictate. No NATO treaties or US treaties would have any weight without the backing of the largest military force on the planet. So in regard to space, it's all meaningless, because there's nothing of value on Mars or the Moon that is economically worth sending a military to enforce a treaty over. Common sense isn't so common sometimes...
- soperj 11y ago
  Largest Military Force - so China?
  - djrogers 11y ago
    At the moment, a 4 year old with a stick in his hand would be the largest military force on Mars...
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  Well, there's the rub. While I imagine there's a school of thought that says "fuck you, we're on Mars, we're declaring independence, whaddya gonna do about it?", there's also a school of thought that says "we have nuclear weapons, interplanetary missiles, media control, and the political will to do the obvious". Economic worth is not what wars are fought over. They are fought over the prospect of losing face. It all boils down to dick-waving, even over the vast expanses of space. I mean, who would object to a limited tactical strike with no boots on the ground on a radical (possibly insane) terrorist controlled (I hear they abuse children) space-pirate-fortress?
  - rwmj 11y ago
    Don't underestimate the power of a large boulder dropped into the earth's gravity well.
    - vkou 11y ago
jerf 11y ago
Recent relevant HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11525788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11525788 Anyhow, it's premature to even be worrying about ownership rights until some person actually lands there, and even then, there's ample historical precedent to guide us. If you're seriously interested in this topic, spend some time with exploration-age history, because space is likely to look a lot like that, only without the ethical issues associated with ignoring the natives, which at least our local space doesn't seem to have. (And even if it does turn out Mars has some bacteria, well... Earth-bound conservationists are unlikely to hold back the progress for very long once it becomes a real possibility. It's really easy right now to posture about how we can't afford to colonize Mars if we would so much as tousle even one microorganism's precious little cilia, because the choice isn't real yet. When it is, someone's going to go.)
- peterwoo 11y ago
  Conservationists (or anyone else who objects) will have it easy. Interplanetary missions are sensitive to timing. All you have to do is disrupt the launch schedule for a few weeks, then boom, it's another few years before they can even try again.
  - jerf 11y ago
    The United States and the West is not the world. Maybe you can file a couple of lawsuits and get an injunction against a US launch, but try that in China and the best case scenario for you is that nothing happens to you, and the scenarios get progressively more, ah, "interesting" for you from there.
Symmetry 11y ago
You'll not that India is the only space faring nation that's actually signed the Moon Treaty. The relevant one is the Outer Space Treaty[1] which does prohibit owning celestial bodies but allows groups to establish installations and prohibits interfering with other nations operations so you can de-facto own what you build on. That's a lot better than allowing the USA to claim the whole moon because we got there first with a flag, though. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- spyspy 11y ago
  Perhaps space technology would be invested in more heavily if there was a finders-keepers policy in effect.
  - sangnoir 11y ago
    "finding" will need to be precisely defined: do you need a actual human to set foot on a celestial body before you can claim it, or is crashing a 'micro-probe' or even a ball-bearing be sufficient?

randommodnar 11y ago

Anybody who knows anything about human behaviour will know that it was a failure from the beginning. If there is strong demand for the resources in the moon, powerful people will move in and take them. Watch what will happen with the Arctic as its oil becomes more accessible. A law or treaty is only as good as its enforcement mechanism.

LyndsySimon 11y ago

If there is only one entity capable of reaching the place, I'm not sure pre-existing treaties and such have any relevance.

rbanffy 11y ago
Being able to bomb a place is much easier than being able to land a human crew safely and establishing a colony or mining operation.
brooklyndavs 11y ago
They still have relevance. Lets take the Antartica treaty for example. Lets, for the sake of argument, say only one entity has the knowledge, resources, etc to reach Antartica and this entity is a subsidiary of BP. BP-Antartica lets say. BP-Antartica wants to drill for oil. This would still be a violation of international law under the treaty that governs Antartica. Same thing applies, or should apply to SpaceX or any other entity (public or private) with regard to any existing and future space treaties. "International law identifies Antarctica and outer space as two of four global commons (the others being the high seas and the atmosphere). Both have been defined within international regimes as spaces outside the territory of nation states and beyond the normative inhabitable zones of the human species. In both instances the current governance regime were outcomes of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) (1957-1958)." http://phys.org/news/2015-08-antarctica-key-space.html http://phys.org/news/2015-08-antarctica-key-space.html Specifically in the Antartica treaty: "No acts or activities taking place while the present Treaty is in force shall constitute a basis for asserting, supporting or denying a claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica or create any rights of sovereignty in Antarctica. No new claim, or enlargement of an existing claim to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica shall be asserted while the present Treaty is in force." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System
- nitrogen 11y ago
  Does territorial sovereignty mean anything to an international corporation that just wants resources and can hire private security?
  - brooklyndavs 11y ago
    Yes! Or it should as humanity has identified Antartica as a Common. Just because you are an international corporation doesn't mean you get to violate international law. Unfortunately, the environmental protection protocol is open for review in 2048. This will probably roll back the protections in place for the environment of Antartica :( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Environmental_Protection_to_the_Antarctic_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Environmental_Prot...
- gus_massa 11y ago
  If tomorrow the 5 permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, UK, USA) and their atomic weapons decide to cancel the Antarctica treaty, then the treaty is void. They can invite to the ceremony the other members of the UNSC, but I guess it's better to invite the other countries with atomic weapons. They didn't cancel it yet because for now there is currently no activity there with a profit, and they are not sure how to divide it. But once there is a way to gain money, don't expect that the treaty will last too much.
  - brooklyndavs 11y ago
    I know, and then humanity will have destroyed the last remaining wilderness on Earth and the ecosystem that goes along with it. Looking at our collective history we should know better. How tragic.
  - djrogers 11y ago
    Realistically any 1 or 2 of those members could unilaterally 'cancel' the treaty. Treaties are only useful until someone violates them, then you have to figure out what comes next...
  - 11y ago
maxerickson 11y ago
It depends more than a little bit on how independent from Earth you are. If you are dependent on Earth, you are pretty meaningfully subject to the governments where you are operating.
- LyndsySimon 11y ago
  "If you sanction us or cut access to our launch site in Nevada, we will redirect a 50m asteroid to impact Washington, DC." It would be a classic Mexican standoff, but the group with access to orbital and inter-planetary platforms would win. You could try to starve them out, but you couldn't keep them from obliterating you while it was happening.
  - vidarh 11y ago
    > "If you sanction us or cut access to our launch site in Nevada, we will redirect a 50m asteroid to impact Washington, DC." At which point you have become the worlds most wanted terrorist, and will have to watch your back for the rest of your life while large portions of the worlds security apparatus tries to find ways of taking you out (not just the US - everyone else will worry they are next).
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      > At which point you have become the worlds most wanted terrorist Only you're not on this world... Interplanetary games of brinkmanship have new rules.
      - vidarh 11y ago
        But most of your resources likely still are, or the threat would be pointless.
        LyndsySimon 11y ago
        The purpose of the threat is to prevent the grounders from denying you access to your resources planetside. Seems to me that the first entity to get a real foothold in space will be the de facto ruler of Earth.
r00fus 11y ago
I'd say it also heavily depends on whether anything of monetary value can be extracted from Mars...

brooklyndavs 11y ago

Agree, I'm interested in the political aspect of this as well. For most of modern history (past WWII lets say) exploration of unknown frontiers (Antartica, space, the moon etc) has been done under nation states with various levels of funding from governments either at 100% public or a public/private mix. This exploration is done usually with the end goal of expanding human knowledge or sometimes for national defense as in the space race and the moon. What makes me SUPER uneasy about what SpaceX is trying to do with Mars is the 100% private nature of this, at least from an ownership perspective. Is SpaceX trying to claim ownership to Mars, or a least a part of it? Who or what gives them the right to make this claim? Wouldn't humanity as a whole be better served to see Mars the same way we see Antartica? Additionally, why does SpaceX get to say who goes to Mars and who doesn't? Shouldn't we choose who gets to go on missions to Mars based on expertise in technical and scientific fields vs how much one can pay for a ticket? Why should the ability to go to Mars be based capital? Does a little child who wants to be an astronaut also need to be a billionaire? Ultimately, what gives the super rich the right to leave this planet for a colony on Mars while the rest of us try to figure out how to survive on the planet that they had a large hand in destroying in the first place. Why should we, as a society, even support a colony on Mars that will take many years to be self sustaining in the above configuration. Hopefully our international bodies wake up and start taking the privatization of space seriously and at least start enacting and enforcing some guidelines, regulations, and treaties around space and bodies in our solar system.

mikeash 11y ago
SpaceX isn't standing in anybody else's way. Any and all other interested parties are free to pursue their own plans. Adding guidelines and regulations won't suddenly make it so that other people go, all it'll do is make it harder for SpaceX to do so. This post sounds to me like sour grapes. "I can't go, so I don't want anybody to go unless we all can." I hope I'm wrong, because that idea terrifies me a bit.
- brooklyndavs 11y ago
  Good, it should be harder for SpaceX and other completely private entities to go since space is identified as a public Common (see my comment above). Its not sour grapes. When Neil Armstrong went to the moon it was for all Americans and all of Humanity. During the space shuttle missions there was a public effort to try to select a broad representation of cultures, backgrounds, educations, nationalities etc to be astronauts. However, if the only ultra rich get to go, which it sounds like the case since that would be the only way to fund a private mission, why should everyone left be ok with it? Why should the richest people in the world, most who have had a incredibly large role in environmentally destroying the ONLY planet all of humanity can live on, just leave everyone else to clean up the mess? It would be the ultimate FU to the rest of the 99.9% of humanity. http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9792854/neil-degrasse-tyson-interview-delusions-of-space-enthusiasts http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9792854/neil-degrasse-tys...

james-watson 11y ago

Treaties are great fun for the specific brand of nerd that loves treaties. In the real world, the only thing that matters is who has the bigger stick to backup whatever terms they dictate. No NATO treaties or US treaties would have any weight without the backing of the largest military force on the planet. So in regard to space, it's all meaningless, because there's nothing of value on Mars or the Moon that is economically worth sending a military to enforce a treaty over. Common sense isn't so common sometimes...

soperj 11y ago
Largest Military Force - so China?
- djrogers 11y ago
  At the moment, a 4 year old with a stick in his hand would be the largest military force on Mars...
madaxe_again 11y ago
Well, there's the rub. While I imagine there's a school of thought that says "fuck you, we're on Mars, we're declaring independence, whaddya gonna do about it?", there's also a school of thought that says "we have nuclear weapons, interplanetary missiles, media control, and the political will to do the obvious". Economic worth is not what wars are fought over. They are fought over the prospect of losing face. It all boils down to dick-waving, even over the vast expanses of space. I mean, who would object to a limited tactical strike with no boots on the ground on a radical (possibly insane) terrorist controlled (I hear they abuse children) space-pirate-fortress?
- rwmj 11y ago
  Don't underestimate the power of a large boulder dropped into the earth's gravity well.
  - vkou 11y ago

jerf 11y ago

Recent relevant HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11525788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11525788 Anyhow, it's premature to even be worrying about ownership rights until some person actually lands there, and even then, there's ample historical precedent to guide us. If you're seriously interested in this topic, spend some time with exploration-age history, because space is likely to look a lot like that, only without the ethical issues associated with ignoring the natives, which at least our local space doesn't seem to have. (And even if it does turn out Mars has some bacteria, well... Earth-bound conservationists are unlikely to hold back the progress for very long once it becomes a real possibility. It's really easy right now to posture about how we can't afford to colonize Mars if we would so much as tousle even one microorganism's precious little cilia, because the choice isn't real yet. When it is, someone's going to go.)

peterwoo 11y ago
Conservationists (or anyone else who objects) will have it easy. Interplanetary missions are sensitive to timing. All you have to do is disrupt the launch schedule for a few weeks, then boom, it's another few years before they can even try again.
- jerf 11y ago
  The United States and the West is not the world. Maybe you can file a couple of lawsuits and get an injunction against a US launch, but try that in China and the best case scenario for you is that nothing happens to you, and the scenarios get progressively more, ah, "interesting" for you from there.

Symmetry 11y ago

You'll not that India is the only space faring nation that's actually signed the Moon Treaty. The relevant one is the Outer Space Treaty[1] which does prohibit owning celestial bodies but allows groups to establish installations and prohibits interfering with other nations operations so you can de-facto own what you build on. That's a lot better than allowing the USA to claim the whole moon because we got there first with a flag, though. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
spyspy 11y ago
Perhaps space technology would be invested in more heavily if there was a finders-keepers policy in effect.
- sangnoir 11y ago
  "finding" will need to be precisely defined: do you need a actual human to set foot on a celestial body before you can claim it, or is crashing a 'micro-probe' or even a ball-bearing be sufficient?