Space junkies ask 'who owns the moon?'
Within the next 10 years, the U.S., China, Israel, and a host of private companies plan to set up camp on the moon. So if and when they plant a flag, does that give them property rights?
A NASA working group hosted a discussion this week to ask: who owns the moon? The answer, of course, is no one. The Outer Space Treaty, the international law signed by more than 100 countries, states that the moon and other celestial bodies are the province of all mankind. No doubt that would irk all of the people throughout the ages, like monks from the Middle Ages, who have tried to claim the moon was theirs.
But ownership is different from property rights. People who rent apartments, for example, don't own where they live, but they still hold rights. So with all of the upcoming missions to visit the moon and beyond, space industry thought leaders are seriously asking themselves how to deal with a potential land rush, cowboy-style.
"This is a very relevant discussion right now. We've got this wave of new lunar missions from around the world," said William Marshall, a scientist in the small spacecraft office at NASA, but who spoke this week at an event hosted by NASA's CoLab, a collaborative public-private working group. He was speaking from his personal interest and not on behalf of the agency.
(Credit: NASA)To be sure, the United States aims to send astronauts back to the moon by as early as 2015, in a mission that would include a long-term settlement. China and Israel, among others, are also working on lunar projects. And for the first time, several private groups are building spacecraft to land on the moon in an attempt to win millions of dollars in the Google Lunar X Prize. Some participants say that they plan to gain some property rights in the mission.
One of those people is Steve Durst, a director on the board of the International Lunar Observatory (ILO) and owner of the Space Age Publishing Co. He's linked to one of the Google Lunar competitors Odyssey Moon, and he said during the talk that he hopes to scratch out his initials on one of the legs of a lunar rover and "claim his acre."
His group has calculated that there are about 10 billion acres on the moon, not counting crater slopes. Given that there are about 6.7 billion people on Earth, it aligns nicely with the idea of "I want my acre," he said.
The question is, he said: "how do you get activity going if the moon is owned by everyone at the same time?"
Durst has helped start the ILO in Hawaii to eventually put an astrophysical observatory on the moon that will generate power, communicate, and act as a property rights agent, he said. Durst gave a talk in China last week and he jokingly said that he skipped over the part about property rights.
Ultimately, he thinks it's about balancing the common good and free enterprise. "I'm happy to deed over half of my acre to a common acre pool. I see this as a way of reconciling a right of individual ownership and the idea that the moon belongs to the whole Earth."
The question of lunar rights also hit home when someone from Russia bought part of the Russian rover and then subsequently claimed that he owns a bit of lunar surface under its foot, according to Marshall. Land rights could also get tricky when it comes to coveted areas of the moon with "peaks of eternal light" that could be more valuable for research, he said.
"It's much easier to solve this problem by thinking it through and thinking through what would most benefit the best interest of humanity...rather than doing it once it's a mess," Marshall said.
So, he said, it comes down to assigning rights in the best interest of humanity, including ensuring no monopolies and no military installations.
Entities can apply for space in geostational orbit and receive a slot on a first come, first serve basis, according to Marshall. That's an interesting model, he said, because it does that without granting ownership and allows access by less prosperous nations.
"In conclusion: Who owns on the moon: no one. Who should own the moon: no one. Does this stop property rights? No. The best way forward is probably some sort of property licensing body like how it works in geo," he said.
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Last time I checked, we all were the same species and race. Could be wrong though........
Maybe those individuals making policy and directing agencies are de-evolving into a past genus?
Right now the space race just displays how fast we are going towards future conflict that should have been resolved in the past.
I'm just not sure anymore
His answer was to set up dummy companies in every country that the moon literally passes over (basically within a 20-some-odd degree arc from each side of the equator), and buy the rights to own the moon in every one (in the story, this was had for dirt cheap). This makes the moon essentially private property.
OTOH, you could simply have the UN declare that the Moon become its own sovereign nation, and the inhabitants can write their own laws, rules, etc.
As far as ownership, well... whoever parks a house/lab/whatever on the Moon, owns only that spot of it, and maybe a small buffer of land around it, with no "claims" being held as legal unless the owner of that claim actually lives there or has built a habitable presence there. Also, make it so that no claim can extend for larger than structure-plus-some reasonable buffer.
Coming up with a solution is fairly easy... it's the enforcement of a reasonable solution that's a raging pain in the butt.
These are the voyages of Free Enterprise...
Its mission, boldly go where no sniveling Harvard MBA would dare...
There?s been money made for decades from intel gathered from satellites parked in LEO and GEO. . .
But what there was never a lot of, was mass, and now we are finally gotta get all we need of oxygen, aluminum, and soil begging for seeding . . . food for factory personnel, factories to manufacture consumer goods where there is no environmental impact (no atmosphere, no environment, no impact)
Sure, that first dish washer is gonna cost a billion dollars, but then the price for #2 thru #10,000,000 slides to about a buck. . .
Many problems stand in the way, but most of the engineering ones are skull sweat. . . it is the others that will delay "saving the world". . . not least of which is keeping greedy governments and jealous fief protective bureaucracies from tripping up those willing to risk all to make something new
The trick is in accepting there are going to be winners, losers, thieves, nut cases, et al, and all the way from that Second Wave until there is a Bicentennial Planning Committee to celebrate the boredom of too much civilized settlement we are gonna have to figure out who is who. . .
http://www.lunarinternational.com/pages/mccain-moon-property.html
In all seriousness, private ownership of lunar real estate seems to be a reasonable answer for the question of who owns the moon. Why turn this over to governments? They'll just manage to somehow screw this up.
Okay, the species part is partially correct but the race part is ummm, WRONG! Check again please!
That's assuming we have been to the moon of course and there is a Lunar Rover parked there as they want us to believe. The Japanese Satellite in orbit there as we speak has already logged over 12,000 hi-res 3 meter resolution images of the moons surface. Since they can see large rocks clearly in these photos, are they going to show the world pictures of a Lunar Rover or the landing vehicles supposedly left behind? Being that they are Japanese, they should look to those areas first to discredit our claim to have visited the moon. Still, they have said nothing. Is NASA powerful enought to influence their findings? To maybe slip a few "Old file photos" they used in the 70's into the data stream coming from the *** sat? Where are Mulder & Scully when you need them?
Of course America would just go in and topple all the crystal moon people statues and setup a democracy and give the moon back to the moon people. However, that would just upset the moon people because they're not individuals. They're all of one telepathically linked mind so they have no need for democracy. We've just made it harder because now they have to use paper ballots even though they all vote exactly the same way. They'll just get frustrated and just take it out on us by using their death ray.
See, maybe the moon people don?t have hands like us. Maybe they have suction cups or something. This is why I say paper, rock, scissors because there's a good chance it will give us a strategic advantage. Also, we may want to consider a high jump competition considering our current state of gravity.
Anyway, some other solutions are to divide it proportionally according to country or population density. Also, they could set up an independent council where nobody owns it, but the council decides who builds where.
You could divide the surface up evenly and sell the land off to whomever and collect the money in a world fund for world aid. Or whomever builds there keeps it until they sell it or get killed by someone bigger. Who knows?
Do we really have to destroy everything we can reach?
Which is one reason why the native australians and north americans don't own their continents anymore.
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by tribolumen
August 25, 2008 7:24 PM PDT
- In the long run, the Outer Space Treaty is moot. It's necessary to think beyond it, and most importantly, figure out how to enforce it.
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See all 24 Comments >>For the moment, the Moon is the common heritage of all humankind. The international agreements laid out in the Outer Space Treaty are sufficient for the moment. Every nation knows what the rules are, which makes it easier for everyone to play nice.
However, if history is any guide, this state of affairs won't last.
The air was considered the common heritage of all humankind as recently as the early 20th century. As long as flying was difficult and expensive, there wasn't any point in claiming the skies. With just a few eccentrics flying in a whole lot of sky, ownership just wasn't worth worrying about. As the cost of flying dropped, the sky started getting more crowded, and it also became clear that aircraft had commercial and military value. When that happened, the concept of "airspace" began to develop.
One might argue that in a strict legal sense, claiming airspace isn't quite the same as claiming ownership of the air. But airspace is the property of the nation claiming it, in practice if not in law. Pilots straying into unfriendly airspace can expect to be escorted out at gunpoint, forced to land, or shot down. A nation's airspace is, in a real sense, the property of that nation.
A similar evolution is taking place even now regarding use of the ocean floor. It's beginning to be possible to get resources out of it, and nations are starting to talk seriously about claiming it.
As was true for flight a century ago, today doing anything on the Moon is both difficult and expensive. (Antarctica and Earth orbit likewise.) For now there's lots of moon, and hardly anyone or anything there to use it. As long as that stays true, the Moon can remain the common property of all humanity. Sooner or later, though, some nation or individual will figure out a way to use the Moon to gain an advantage. It may be profit or material resources, it could be military power, it might just be prestige. When that happens, the Moon will belong to whoever can defend a claim to it. Claims of ownership may be dressed up in pretty language, as with "airspace", but if events are left to themselves, someone will own the Moon eventually.
If you find that disturbing, see if you can come up with an alternative, and a mechanism to enforce it. Common property doesn't generally work well in the real world. Once the Moon becomes valuable, people and nations are going to claim it, unless there's something to stop them. Having a treaty is pointless if there's nothing to back it up.