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Does it? By "bring in", I assume we are talking about placing into a convenient orbit, because I do not see a reasonable way to bring a large asteroid down to t

Does it? By "bring in", I assume we are talking about placing into a convenient orbit, because I do not see a reasonable way to bring a large asteroid down to the surface in the forseable future. However, my (non laywer) understanding of space law is that it is prohibited (by treaty) to own celestial objects. You can own samples you minded from them, but not the objects themselves. If this understanding is correct, it means that after you park the asteroid in orbit, you are allowed to mine it, and sell the ore. However, so is everyone else; despite the fact that you invested the money in moving the asteroid.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
Law is a high-latency side-chain of authority. When / if we get to mining asteroids, and generally inhabiting space, either personally or via robots, treaties / laws will be remapped to match the reality of the times.
- shmerl 10y ago
  Hopefully no one will remap them to allow owning planetoids. That would be pretty nasty.
  - pitaj 10y ago
    It would probably be based on a homesteading system. In the case of a planet, you'd get what you changed. In the case of an asteroid, if you moved it into a different orbit and set up facilities on it that's probably enough to count as a homestead.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    Why not? Over 200 asteroids are known to be larger than 100 km,[49] and a survey in the infrared wavelengths has shown that the asteroid belt has 0.7–1.7 million asteroids with a diameter of 1 km or more.[1] The volume of a sphere 1 kilometre in radius 4.19km³. If you can build a mining operation on one of those I don't see any problem with granting you exclusive access. We already do something similar on Earth. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt#Characteristics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt#Characteristics
  - BurningFrog 10y ago
    The experience of unowned land and resources on Earth are quite terrible, so I hope for the opposite.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago

Law is a high-latency side-chain of authority. When / if we get to mining asteroids, and generally inhabiting space, either personally or via robots, treaties / laws will be remapped to match the reality of the times.

shmerl 10y ago
Hopefully no one will remap them to allow owning planetoids. That would be pretty nasty.
- pitaj 10y ago
  It would probably be based on a homesteading system. In the case of a planet, you'd get what you changed. In the case of an asteroid, if you moved it into a different orbit and set up facilities on it that's probably enough to count as a homestead.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  Why not? Over 200 asteroids are known to be larger than 100 km,[49] and a survey in the infrared wavelengths has shown that the asteroid belt has 0.7–1.7 million asteroids with a diameter of 1 km or more.[1] The volume of a sphere 1 kilometre in radius 4.19km³. If you can build a mining operation on one of those I don't see any problem with granting you exclusive access. We already do something similar on Earth. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt#Characteristics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt#Characteristics
- BurningFrog 10y ago
  The experience of unowned land and resources on Earth are quite terrible, so I hope for the opposite.