Hearing on Space Settlement and Commerce
Reopening the American Frontier: Exploring How the Outer Space Treaty Will Impact American Commerce and Settlement in Space, Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness
LIVE
“This hearing will examine U.S. government obligations under the Outer Space Treaty on its 50th anniversary, specifically compliance with Article VI of the Treaty that requires governments to authorize and continually supervise the activities of non-government entities. This hearing will also explore the Treaty’s potential impacts on expansion of our nation’s commerce and settlement in space.”
– James Dunstan, Mobius Legal Group, PLLC [statement]
– Laura Montgomery, Ground Based Space Matters, LLC [statement]
– Matthew Schaefer, University of Nebraska College of Law [statement]
– Mike Gold, Space Systems Loral [statement]
– Peter Marquez, Planetary Resources [statement]
– Colonel Pamela Melroy, Retired and Former Astronaut [statement]
– Bob Richards, Moon Express [statement]
That was interesting .. panal 1 seemed to be .. pass a few rules of the road and we are good to go…
About right as you would be hard put to develop a better framework than the OST for economic development and space settlement, But you need to move beyond Earth based thinking, and the Wild West analogies that so many folks seem to be stuck on.
Or analogies to a Wild West which never actually existed. The prevalence of gunfighters and claim jumpers has as much to do with Hollywood as to do with history. Company mining towns were pretty common. But even that may not be a good analogy. I’m afraid I can’t think of a very good one.
Ever watch “Hell On Wheels” on Netflix? It’s a 5-year series about the race to complete the transcontinental railroad, replete with recently freed slaves and imported Irishmen.
I’m certainly no expert on the nature of the west in the decades around and after the War of Yankee Aggression, but this television series appears reasonably accurate.
I haven’t seen it, but General Dodge ran the UP construction camps just like Army camps. You might lose your money gambling or die from bad liquor, but conflicts were minimized. There was work to be done.
You know, until the General Mining Act of 1872 there were no real laws to cover mining on federal law. None. The California gold rush, The Comstock gold rush, even the Rockies gold rush were done without any federal mining laws. The miners just got together and set up the rules themselves in each district. If someone violated them they were tossed out of the district.
And forget the gun fights. They were few and far between. More miners were killed from firearm accidents than gun fights.
Apart from claim jumping etc. Owning property on moon and other asteroids will allow a company to take loans on said properties. Banks will be more likely to lend for space exploration if you own the asteroid that you want to give as collateral. By arguing against freehold ownership you are excluding a very important source of funds for space exploration.
That is what the ocean mining firms thought in the 1960’s. The resulting LOS Treaty completely destroyed any hope of mining sea floor resources. Although the property right laws are now in place, after 50+ years of arguing, they are so hostile to free enterprise no one is even looking at sea floor resources anymore.
You need to stop thinking like an Earthling and seeing space as the American West and start thinking like a space settler. Real property rights means some entity to manage them. That means taxes, environmental regulations, etc.
“Although the property right laws are now in place,”
What property right laws? There is no private property rights in the deep sea outside of EEZ which belongs to the country to which the EEZ belongs.
There is no ocean privatization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
That is why it has not developed. The same thing is going to happen to space resources if we don’t grant ownership privileges.
“Real property rights means some entity to manage them. That means taxes, environmental regulations, etc.”
That is what the UN should be for. That is why OST should be modified to grant property rights.
Americans are arguing against property rights whereas I (from India) am arguing for property rights. Go figure.
There is a difference between privatization and property rights. Privatization means ownership while property rights means you have rights to use and/or possession.
Also you are confusing Real Property Rights with Personal Property Rights and Intellectual Property Rights. The latter two are far more important in space development since the prohibition on sovereignty, combined with the different operating environment in space, eliminates most of the advantages of Real Property Rights.
The UN is the force behind the Sea Bed Authority that manages the resources of the sea floor outside of Economic Exclusion Zones. Why do you think, given the Moon Treaty, the UN would manage space resources any differently?
No, the current system where under the OST each nation is free to manage its nationals extracting resources in space is an order of magnitude over anything that would come out of the UN. Its the one will best defend both the private personal and intellectual property rights of firms in space.