White House Gives Green Light To Commercial Space Mining
Keith’s note: I tweeted this and it went viral due to a retweet by Trump critic Rick Wilson. Oops.
White House Gives Green Light To Commercial Space Mining https://t.co/vFfuDgQvxX pic.twitter.com/SRgCDEaQsa
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) May 6, 2020
Executive Order on Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources
“Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons. Accordingly, it shall be the policy of the United States to encourage international support for the public and private recovery and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law.”
Trump administration drafting ‘Artemis Accords’ pact for moon mining, Reuters
“The Artemis Accords are part of the Trump administration’s plan to forgo the treaty process at the United Nations and instead reach agreement with “like-minded nations,” partly because a treaty process would take too long and working with non-spacefaring states would be unproductive, a senior administration official told Reuters. As countries increasingly treat space as a new military domain, the U.S.-led agreement is also emblematic of NASA’s growing role as a tool of American diplomacy and is expected to stoke controversy among Washington’s space rivals such as China.”
Keith’s note: I know that you need to start somewhere. But cutting corners on the ususal process and expecting that major space powers like Russia and China will not sign sounds like this thing will be lopsided at the onset. And everyone is going ahead with their existing Moon plans and will claim areas as their own zones. How is this going to have any real impact unless everyone who is going to be doing things on the Moon agrees in advance? Just wondering.
” How is this going to have any real impact unless everyone who is going to be doing things on the Moon agrees in advance? Just wondering.”
By laying down a *big* marker for negotiation. Note, that this negotiation for an Artemis Accord is *not* the last negotiation. It looks to me like getting together those who want to allow private market allocated resources throughout the Solar System, …. so that when the government-dominated economy crowd demands we talk about this later, we have agreements with those who think as we do already lined up and operational as a precedent.
It will give us the *chance* to form up an “Artemis Block” for future negotiations. Space resources are going to be an on-going topic of dispute, with the yelling growing louder as the resources begin flowing between different points around the Solar System. It *won’t* be “settled”, but it *can* be kept, somewhat, civil in actions beyond the atmosphere of Earth. We don’t want to negotiate with a world that has been cowed by Beijing, or we’ll have to move off-planet ourselves.
One thing it will do is provide cover for American companies to do things such as mine asteroids or the moon. Previous international agreements state that a nation cannot claim a planet or moon for itself, but there was a grey area regarding private corporations, mainly because that was such an outlandish concept back in the 1960s that probably no-one even thought about it. But here we are. (Actually, that is not exactly true. Robert A. Heinlein wrote about rich industrialists going to the moon, but the point is, that was Science Fiction. Never mind that even a travel to the moon was Science Fiction only a few short years before).
Currently, it is a “first come, first served” kind of situation. Thus, it is a rush to the moon’s poles, which have (some) perpetually sunny ridges which can provide solar power continually. Once these few ridges are claimed, then other bases will need to rely on more expensive nuclear options to provide continuous power. Evidently these “Artemis accords”, which we haven’t seen yet, allows a company to establish a perimeter or somesuch on its operations.
We will see where it leads. But it is a good first step. Whether this administration can gain any traction convincing “like minded nations” to agree is highly questionable. They will more likely ask, “well what have you guys did for us lately?” Which the answer will be an embarrassed silence.
The right to mine has existed since President Obama signed the Space Resources Act of 2015. This Administration is just using the “carrot” of being part of the Artemis Program to do what Luxembourg is already doing after creating it’s own law based on the U.S. law. And Russia might not be as opposed as some believe to joining in.
https://www.reuters.com/art…
Russia wants to join Luxembourg in space mining
Vladimir Soldatkin
March 6, 2019 / 8:06 AM
“LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – Russia, a leading producer of natural resources, plans to join Luxembourg in mining for minerals in outer space, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said on Wednesday.”
China has also been working with Luxembourg in this area.
BTW I remember discussing that this type of network of interlocking agreements would be one path to international standards on space mining on a space law panel chaired by Dr. Greg Autry at ISDC2018, so this is more evolutionary than revolutionary. A network of agreements between the U.S., Canada, U.K., Japan and Australia linking to China and Russia via Luxembourg would go a long way to creating a stable international framework for space mining.
Precisely. Those allowing their Trump Derangement Syndrome to throw a snit over this need to re-fill their Xanax.
The only deranged individuals are the ones who believe every single word Trump says, without question.
I don’t think the Outer Space Treaty is vague about private companies claiming land. They can say whatever they like about owning the land, but it’s basically meaningless. Unless it is part of a government’s territory, that government can’t recognize, enforce or protect one of their citizen’s real estate claims. So private land claims to the Moon are just empty words.
But in terms of this Artemis accord, there is something close to a claim and which could work under the Outer Space Treaty. As I’ve pointed out before, the treaty does prohibit “interference” with other nations space activities. That means a government can protest and use diplomatic pressure to prevent “interference” with a private company’s activities. (It would help, by the way, if the US recognized the World Court, since it could be a viable forum for such protests.) The OST is vague about what “interference” actually means. I doubt fencing off an empty lot and saying trespassers were interfering with non-existent activities inside the fence would get far. But add a camera, and say you’re studying meteor impacts, how much dust and ejecta they raise and how quickly it settles, and now you might have a case for trespassers interfering. But there is no international consensus about that, or where the line would be drawn, or whether or not some nations would disagree and do whatever they liked.
I have no idea what this Artemis accord might include. But it could include things like an agreement over those vague details in the OST. That would let private companies have more confidence in what activities are and are not protected.
They will likely include the following;
The first is that if a nation adopts a space resource act like the U.S. law the U.S. will recognize their law if they recognize the U.S. law.
Second, basic standards on non-interference in terms of how close you may approach a facility or rover on the surface and how close you may approach during landing or launch. The distance will be based on potential dust interference which would provide the strongest legal basis.
Third, recognition of a exclusion zone to protect historic sites on the Moon, again both in terms of surface and landing/launch operations. Along with this is the likely creation of a registry of what equipment is operating on the Moon and were it is located.
Fourth, an agreement on how to resolve conflicts since the OST merely states they will be worked out between the nations involved by negotiation.
Finally, a recognition that these provisions are incapable with the Moon Agreement and any nation agreeing to the Artemis Accords will withdraw from the Moon Agreement.
There may also be some provisions on IP rights as in the ISS Conventions.
Nations that agree to the Artemis Accords will be able to be part of Project Artemis. Those that don’t will be locked out. The carrot and the stick.
There is already very valuable ‘land’ that is being occupied by whoever has the $$$ to get there: geosynchronous orbit.
In fact, orbit of any altitude is the new ‘land’. And the moon is likely to be divided up by Big Money in the same way that earth orbit has been grabbed in a huge gold rush; Musk’s seizure of the sky is only the latest and more egregious example.
Next up: Legalize the private use of fission and fusion bombs everywhere other than Earth.
Those might not be bombs. They are explosive devices, just like using chemical explosives in mining, to set off potential avalanches or to provide a seismic signal for a scientific instrument. And I’m not sure how serious I am about this comment…
Explosives are also used routinely in mining to break up bedrock. Just drill a pattern of holes, pack with explosives, deonate, then muck up the rubble for processing. But nuclear devices don’t work that well for it as one of my mining professors who worked on Project Gnome explained. It vaporizes too much rock while leaving the rest too radioactive to process.
I wonder if that’s still the case. After all Gnome was 70 years ago? Surely we’ve made more suitable devices by now.
The goal is to just fracture the rock to get it ready for mucking, not vaporize it. Nukes just have too much concentrated energy to do that.
No one is going to spend the money and political capital to stop those countries participating in the Artemis Program. Indeed, few of even the opposing space faring countries want to limit their own ability to extract space resources. So, this just formally pushes things in the direction that it is going to end up at eventually. Countries not involved with lunar development are being told that they don’t have a say because they are not there. Safety zones are obvious necessities as evidenced by the keep-out zones around the ISS and the MIR. So, there’s really nothing particularly eyebrow-raising in any of this.
And finally, the cislunar and lunar economies are really iffy. There’s little current business and truly commercial prospects don’t look terribly encouraging. So I think that it is much ado about nothing.