7 ms·
When such discoveries are made who "owns" that real estate?
by kharms 9y ago
When such discoveries are made who "owns" that real estate?
- jccooper 9y agoWhomever can occupy it. Outer Space Treaty prohibits national claims but not use for peaceful purposes. So if you sit on it, you own it.
- r00fus 9y agoAccording to link above the treaty prohibits all sovereign claims. However, getting there can be made into a reasonable barrier to competition. Sure you can also exploit the moon, but how are you going to get there?
- wongarsu 9y agoGiven enough potential profit, getting there shouldn't be a big problem. You already have a bunch of nations currently selling orbital launches, and various private companies didn't seem to have big problems designing their own engines and rockets.
- kobeya 9y agoIf you think getting to the Moon is hard, where many resources are surface extractable, look into what it takes to mine certain ores on Earth kilometers below ground in remote regions.
- jawbone3 9y agoOne of the things it takes is piracy being severely restricted, but by the usual interpretations of the space traty, thatsfine in space.
- r00fus 9y agoAre you saying piracy is fine in space? It's not the way I read the treaty - sounds like it'd be not ok - therefore potentially opening up options for "defense" based armament.
- kobeya 9y agoThe treaty explicitly says that piracy is not okay. In fact, because of the way outer space is in many cases treated as international waters, the same laws governing piracy on the seas govern space activities as well, just with some differences regarding how ships are assigned to nations ("what flag they fly"). However the real outstanding issue with the OST is how to handle mining claims. Claim jumping is a real issue, since you could spend a ton of money prospecting a resource, only to have your competition to rush over and build a hut on top of it and legally claim it as their own. There needs to be some sort of mechanism, perhaps even not governmental if renegotiating the OST is too dangerous or unlikely to happen soon, by which a company can claim a mining claim over a resource they have prospected and have that claim be legally protected from claim jumpers for a period of time.
- galaxyLogic 9y agoIf you break it, you own it
- dangpzanco 9y ago"Who Owns the Moon? | Space Law & Outer Space Treaties" - https://www.space.com/33440-space-law.html https://www.space.com/33440-space-law.html
- samstave 9y agoI'm only familiar with Bird Law, and as there are no birds on the moon, I am sure that "rock law" will predominate in that if I hit you over the head with a big enough rock, I then obviously own the moon.
- BurningFrog 9y agoWe'll see how much those words on papers mean when real value is to be had up there.
- jawbone3 9y agoAbout the same as human rights in similar cicumstances I would imagine
- IncRnd 9y agoTreaties on Earth have very little meaning. They have zero meaning on the Moon.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoOn the contrary... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas Look at that line, and note which non-European countries speak Spanish and which ones speak Portuguese. For instance, Brazil wound up being Portuguese (a rarity in South America) because it stuck over the line into Portuguese turf.
- IncRnd 9y agoThe point is that since treaties are regularly ignored on Earth, they are mere artifices and have no meaning on the Moon. Do you really dispute that?
- cabaalis 9y agoWhoever wins the inevitable conflict if anything of value is found.
- ericjang 9y agoThis is a very wise answer! This reminds me of the movie "Iron Sky" which involves Nazis on the Moon. I found the film surprisingly intelligent (at least more than I expected) and had some visually nice political commentary.
- ballenf 9y agoAre there any figures on the minimum $/gram of minerals that would justify a mining mission (presumably unmanned)? Just can't imagine that gold, platinum or any stable metal would be worth it. Maybe high grade diamonds that don't need to be extracted from other rock. The surveys would have likely identified the presence of such a high density substance and we haven't seen any mention of it. I know you probably meant in terms rights to the "best" cave on the moon, but I'm just wondering what happens if the cave turns out to filled with frozen water, for example, that would be worth its weight in antimatter (not quite) on the moon.
- DougWebb 9y agoThe most common elements on the moon are quite common on the earth too; I don't think the value in mining them will ever come from bringing the mined materials back to earth. The value is going to come from having and maintaining an established base on the moon. The moon is a high point in the earth's gravity well that's full of raw materials that can be used to build things that can go further out. Mining on the moon is going to be about building and supplying interplanetary (and maybe interstellar) spaceships, not selling jewelry back on earth. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Moon#Elemental_composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Moon#Elemental_...
- yeukhon 9y agoThough a jewelry made from Moon elements would probably have a ten-fold price tag than the Earth’s counterpart, because it’s from the Moon.
- DougWebb 9y agoMaybe at first, but not once they're mass-produced on the kind of scale that would be needed to justify the cost of moon-based mining.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]