E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Bigelow Aerospace / msnbc.com
A scale model shows Bigelow Aerospace's proposed lunar colony, prefabricated using inflatable modules, with lunar landers in the background.
For 45 years, an international treaty has barred countries from laying claim to the moon and other celestial bodies — but some policy analysts say private ventures might be able to stake their claims, and they want Congress to create a legal framework that takes advantage of the "loophole."
The concept was unveiled last week by Rand Simberg, an adjunct scholar at the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, and it aims to take advantage of the same market incentives that drove the settlement of the American frontier. The way Simberg sees it, the lack of property rights in space "partially explains why we have not developed the next and, in a sense, last frontier — space."
The inability to claim sovereignty over other worlds goes back to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. A hundred countries, including the United States and all the other spacefaring nations, are parties to that treaty.
Yet another treaty, drawn up in 1979, bars private ownership of extraterrestrial property in the solar system — but that pact, known as the Moon Treaty, has not been ratified by any of the world's spacefaring nations. The differences between the two treaties suggest that it's possible to have private ownership without national sovereignty, and that's the loophole that Simberg wants to take advantage of.
Multibillion-dollar incentive?
Backers of the proposed legislation, known as the Space Settlement Prize Act, say it could create, "at no cost to taxpayers, a multibillion-dollar incentive for private companies to finance and build permanent settlements on the moon and/or Mars."
The proposal would set up a process for the U.S. government to recognize ownership of extraterrestrial territory if a private venture establishes a permanently inhabited settlement on another world. For example, the first venture to establish a moonbase could lay claim to up to 600,000 square miles of the lunar surface. Having the first Mars base would entitle the operators to up to 3.6 million square miles of the Red Planet. Putting a permanent base on an asteroid could be rewarded by with up to 1 million square miles of surface area, depending on how big the asteroid was.
The owners would have to guarantee that anyone could buy a ticket to travel to the territory. Each succeeding settlement group would be allotted 15 percent less land than their predecessor. And if two potential claimants couldn't resolve a land dispute, U.S. courts could step in.
But doesn't that sound like sovereignty?
"In some sense, it gives the imprimatur of the U.S. government," Simberg said. "But it doesn't make it a sovereignty question. It's a recognition, not an appropriation." He said the first commercial moon colonies could well be headquartered in different countries. In that case, the United States would be recognizing the property rights of non-U.S. ventures on another world.
What would the U.S. do?
Simberg emphasized that the federal government wouldn't be obligated to take any action to defend extraterrestrial property owners. "How the U.S. government would respond to future claims and conflicts of claims on the moon would be entirely a political decision," he said.
Some legal experts say the loophole doesn't really exist. They point to a section of the Outer Space Treaty that holds national governments responsible for the space settlement activities of their citizens, and say that would preclude any effort to uphold property claims.
"Even if the United States withdrew from the treaty in order to implement such land grants, what would stop the Chinese from adopting domestic legislation that went further?" Berin Szoka and James Dunstan asked in an essay published by Wired. "What if the first time a Chinese probe lands on the moon, the moon could be claimed by the 'Great Wall Company,' owned by the People’s Liberation Army? The United States would then be left to argue that our law should be followed, but the Chinese law shouldn’t. That’s precisely the kind of territorial jockeying the Outer Space Treaty was intended to prevent."
Simberg said a lunar land grab would almost certainly not play out that way. If Chinese leaders really wanted to take over the moon — a scenario that billionaire Robert Bigelow laid out last year — all they'd have to do is withdraw from the Outer Space Treaty and do what they will. "They wouldn't try to play this legislative game," Simberg said.
Why go to the trouble?
The bigger question is, why would anyone go to the trouble of claiming the moon, or Mars, or an asteroid? Right now, there's nothing out there that's worth the hundreds of billions of dollars it would take for a commercial venture to set up its own space program and establish a beachhead beyond Earth. But Simberg and his colleagues say that situation could change if the cost of spaceflight goes down and the perceived value of extraterrestrial resources (helium-3? rare earth elements?) goes up.
Simberg acknowledged that he's thinking about the long-term future of beyond-Earth settlement rather than short-term campaign issues. "Nothing like this is going to pass this year," he said. What he'd love to see is a new international process that takes the place of the Outer Space Treaty and provides a jump-start for private-sector space colonies.
"The treaty's outdated," he said. "It just doesn't work. I don't think anyone back then could conceive of a private launch system based on the Isle of Man, launching somebody into orbit who would then be transferred to L1 [an Earth-moon transfer point] on a tug that was run out of Dubai, and then to a lander operated by somebody in Australia."
Does all this sound like science fiction, or future science fact? Feel free to register your vote in the poll above, or share your opinion as a comment below.
More about space settlement:
- Could lunar real estate spark a future war?
- Colonies on the moon? It's not a loony idea
- Russia wants to build moon colonies
- Synthetic life could help humans colonize Mars
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy--Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars--covered a lot of these issues in the mid-1990s. It was not easy for the survivors of the First Hundred, when the nationals and the multinationals extended their grasp to a new world; but it all had its end in a new polity that was somewhat wiser--and truly Martian.
How stupid - Only we would be so naive to 'lay claim' to lands we have yet to set foot on. The last time I did such a thing was maybe 5 years old where everything was mine mine mine! It's a shame that some people still haven't grown up and matured.
There has to be other intelligent life in this universe. It is just far too massive to think we are by ourselves. That being said, it'll be interesting to see if these lands we humans lay claim to will actually constitute trespassing by the 'rightful owners. I guess one way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that we are not alone out here is to defile someone(thing)'s property and have them come check it out.
You might want to read the article again. The proposal is to allow claim of land only AFTER establishing a "permanently inhabited settlement" (which implies setting foot upon it, and a great deal more).
This is how the west was settled, you were allotted 40 acres and you went west to "stake" your claim. So now they have to get to the moon and stake their claim. It worked before, it should work again.
This could also work as a profit center for the space station, use it as a fueling station for the departing ships.
Free enterprise profit motive at it's best.
"There has to be other intelligent life in this universe. It is just far too massive to think we are by ourselves. That being said, it'll be interesting to see if these lands we humans lay claim to will actually constitute trespassing by the 'rightful owners."
If they're as close as the Moon or asteroids, they already know we're here on the third planet, and they've had plenty of time to advise us of their prior claims...
In my opinion, all countries would back out of those treaties. If space travel could become profitable for a corporation to travel to, explore, and setup mining operations on a distant body then they will want some form of protection from land grabs and robbery. If not space would become the Wild West.
If I remember history, land had to be occupied and worked by people for a length of time. Who would protect those workers? If SpaceuGlobalHyperMegaNet, a subsidiary of CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet, goes bust will they bring you home or leave you to die?
Behold! The Sultan of Tattooine!
That's swell. Anybody interested in some quit claim deeds to the lunar surface? $1000/acre! CALL ME!
I have them on sale.. $999/acre. Don't call that Jonathan fella. I can make your lunar dreams come true. We'll beat anyone's price.
Ok, don't jump on me for the shameless plug because this does tie in with the Cosmic Log article and the loophole itself was catalyst that inspired my 5 minute story, which should be evident on viewing:
auoNE63Vfik?hd=1
Corporations will obviously have the financial where-with-all to be able to accomplish these monumental tasks. And I do believe that there will need to be a strong motivation for expanding the human existence into space. And that motivation will likely be for financial reasons. But the people who do the work will go for many other reasons.
I think my biggest objection to this kind of legislation, other than the fact that it's geared strictly towards corporations, is the fact that the land plots are already marked out. I think the first to utilize the plots of extraterrestrial land should get to mark out there own plot. Whose to say they should get 600,000 square miles, if they don't use it. You should only get to lay claim to what you can use and inhabit and defend. If you can defend the whole moon then perhaps you deserve to have the rights to it. But then there are the moral questions...
mob,
you need to have some way to define 'concessions' so that you don't have company A setting up shop in one spot, then a competitor setting up shop a few hundred feet away. This is partly what the moon treaty was trying to solve, but left it incomplete because it wasn't going to happen in the near future (and still isn't). If the moon treaty was successful, then a company making a plan to mine the moon would have triggered the creation of the international agency to manage it.
Right now, a country is required, as per the outer space treaty, to assume liability and responsibility for the actions of its subjects, and therefore, the actions of an american company are as though they are the action of the united states itself (apply that to any company/country).
In addition, much of the point of this is to incentivize corporations to actually do it. If I'm SpaceX or Bigelow Aerospace or whomever, and thinking about establishing a colony on the Moon, I need to know how to make the numbers add up.
Well, if I get 600 thousand square miles (miles? really guys? -but that's another issue), and I only need 1000 square mile for my colony, then that's 599 thousand square miles I have clear legal title to, which I can turn into cash in other ways (by renting or selling it off for example). That makes it a LOT easier to close the business case, and so gets us colonies on the moon much sooner.
And all those worrying about this favoring big corporations over individuals: quit worrying. The big corporations WOULD sell the property off, and if you're an individual wealthy enough to found one of these colonies yourself, you have a corporation (or many) to work through anyway. So in the end, it's ownership in the hands of regular people, just as we all want.
THERES gold in them thar HILLS!
It isn't a loophole, because they ignore the part of the outer space treaty that states, pretty clearly, that a nation is responsible for its citizens and any activity by its citizens are the responsibility of the state that is assuming liability.
The ONLY way that the loophole could be a loophole is if one of the very few nations that hasn't signed the outer space treaty would create its own space program, with absolutely no help or connection with a country that has signed the outer space treaty, and then IT could legally lay claim to a non terrestrial body.
The 'other' way really isn't a loophole because it would require that a country revoke the outer space treaty, so the terms wouldn't be binding on that nation.
The moon treaty really isn't an issue either, because while it continues the essentials of the outer space treaty, it provides a mechanism where a country could exploit the resources of a non terrestrial body, but leaves the details of that mechanism out until such time that this type of venture was more likely. So when a company decides to mine the moon or an asteroid, then that will trigger the creation of an international body to manage it for the benefit of the global community. However, as stated in the article, only 13 nations have ratified the Moon Treaty and of those, only one, Australia, would be likely to ever have a space program.
This view is a typical extremist libertarian view where they read one part of something and completely ignore other parts.
As for the helium-3 question (the last bit in the article), it would take the mining of 100,000,000 tons of lunar 'soil' to mine one ton of helium-3, so not only is that not even economically feasible (there is a market right now of about 60,000 litres of Helium-3 now, and we can make that on the planet using the decay of tritium), it quite frankly isn't even technically feasible, unless someone can find a way to transport one of these puppies to the moon:
Bagger 288
"economically feasible" is an interesting thought. As a simple example, the mining of gold is an interesting beast. There is a program on television (On Demand) right now that details extraction of gold and the process which takes it from minute amounts in MANY tons of dirt and through the process of producing gold bars. (This program is in the History and science section and deals with the periodic table of elements. It's a fun episode)
Anyway, one gold mine goes through hundreds of tons of Earth's soil and the amount of gold the get out of each ton is ridiculously small.
This process is economically feasible on Earth, primarily because the special needs of the workers and machines are really all that extraordinary. To mine the moon requires a very different (and much more expensive) set of special circumstances. But, I tend to think that if the payoff is there (at all) then some business man will go after it.
mob
Automation of many mining tasks as compared to even 20 years ago has made the increasing viability of many previously marginal mines, and you would need one hell of an economic statement to, at least at this time, make it viable. My comment though was specific to helium-3, other because 100,000,000 tons of 'soil' isn't marginal, it is beyond marginal, and at this point, there really isn't a known workable need. We hear all the time about this fusion reactor, but we don't know if such a reactor would ever work.
No one in government (ours or any other) or big oil wants it to work heh heh. At least not yet.
Since helium is an inert gas, it doesn't stick to anything, so getting "helium 3" would be a case of scooping up the extremely thin lunar atmosphere - or pumping gas out of a deep dust pit - and processing to separate the helium 3 from the much more abundant helium 4, hydrogen, methane, and xenon.
No mining needed.
cm,
You need to do a bit more research as to where the helium 3 is on the moon. hint, it ISN'T in the atmosphere, it is in the lunar regolith (soil).
Nor does He-3 matter until and unless there are commercial fusion reactors that can use it. Until then, there's no market.
frank,
There is a current market for He-3 which is satisfied by creating it from Tritium decay.
The figure I recently read (which really surprised me actually, though I never really looked into it) was that there is a market currently for 60,000 litres of He-3. Now that figure doesn't tell me much because He-3 is, I believe a gas, and volume really isn't all that useful a measurement for a gas.
There definitely isn't a market for the quantity of He-3 that would be mined from the moon however.
Completely agreed. I should say there's insufficient market for He-3 from the Moon.
yup, and until someone can prove that such a fusion reactor can work, there is no point starting to even propose such a venture to mine the stuff from the moon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjiGH9QNiU0
Sheesh, humans are so arrogant and egotistic to lay claim to any planet outside of our solar system. I can see it if a world is uninhabited but not if it belongs to another species. Shouldn't belong to anyone except the citizens of earth, no government if it is uninhabited, otherwise, it doesn't belong to anyone nor does anyone have rights to them.
First, the article clearly stated that the body in question, MOON, MARS, ASTEROIDS were all in THIS solar system. Not a million or a hundred or even one light year away, but right here in our own back yard. As far as who it belongs too, well there the descution has to take place. But I would point out that your utopian idea, if adopted, will ensure that we do not set foot on those bodies for a long, long time. If you don't want governments or companies to be involved, where are you going to get the money and the know how?
"Sheesh, humans are so arrogant and egotistic to lay claim to any planet outside of our solar system."
We'll address that when we have the ability to get to other solar systems. This is about extraterrestrial resources, but from places that are light-minutes or light-seconds away, not light-years.
Unless you think that's 'arrogant and egotistic,' as well...
And reading much of the news nowadays, the human species has become a pestilence on this planet. If there is any exsisting species out there, they should wipe out humans before they get a foot hold anywhere outside of our solar system.
There's nothing more ridiculous than a self-hating human. We survive and thrive because we are the most fit species. We are so fit to survive that we have the leisure time and cognitive ability to make faux-complaints about how terrible we are. If you think humans are so bad, then why haven't you terminated your pestilent existence. Simple, it is because you don't really think that; you just know that comments like that get you sex with hippies. Be careful not to make any more pestilent humans, they might set up a moon colony.
Treaties ??? Ask an Native American how well treaties work. If there's something valuable there, someone or company will find a way to get their hands on it.
Eventually, yes, but a clear legal environment could make it happen much sooner (which is the whole point).
joe, the thing is, the US cannot define that legal environment, it needs to be agreed upon by the world. Which is what the moon treaty was trying to do.
To be fair, neither the Moon, nor the asteroids have any natives that might indeed be screwed over...
Great stuff. Rand Simberg and I have disagreed on many issues, but I think he's absolutely right on this one. The Outer Space Treaty needs to go, and we need to start putting a legal framework in place for peacefully settling the solar system — and that includes owning the land you live on!
Who cares if the U.S. "recognizes" private land claims on celestial bodies? If they aren't granted or recognized by the sovereign of the territory (there is none), in which court would you defend those rights and what law applies? This is good news, however, because there's no need to find a loophole; just get there and claim it. Then you are the sovereign. But the rub is, you have to defend your nation. Good luck turning back the Chinese army when your sovereign moon nation is invaded.
There's isn't room for the two of us buster, so off you go! I claim this planet, in the name of the United States! Duck Dodgers, and the 24th and a half, century!
I've nvever understood this obsession about preventing private interests from establishing businesses in outer space. If private businesses were to start in space we would begin to see some real innovation in how we do things and in how we live. In a few years, private companies will start short term space junkets. Soon, someone will say, "Hey, why not have a space hotel & resort?" Then the next thing will be a moon hotel & resort. Then some one will discover gold on the moon and we'll have a version of the 1849er Gold Rush. The point is that until private interests start businesses, there won't be very much interest beyond the military in staying in space among the nations of the world.
Legal, shmegal, historically the land belongs to those who can occupy it, develope it and defend it.
Think Hawaii, California, Texas, etc.
We can just reuse the Monroe Doctrine. That way we have a precedence to kick sentient beings off their home worlds.
the one and only.
That principle has been superseded by the Outer Space Treaty which has been signed and ratified by the United States Government as duly elected by its people. Any and all terms of that treaty are binding, far more binding than the imperialistic musings of a very long dead president of long ago.