Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Gbenga Oduntan — Who owns space? US asteroid-mining act is dangerous and potentially illegal

An event of cosmic proportions occurred on November 18 when the US congress passed the Space Act of 2015 into law. The legislation will give US space firms the rights to own and sell natural resources they mine from bodies in space, including asteroids.

Although the act, passed with bipartisan support, still requires President Obama’s signature, it is already the most significant salvo that has been fired in the ideological battle over ownership of the cosmos. It goes against a number of treaties and international customary law which already apply to the entire universe.
The new law is nothing but a classic rendition of the “he who dares wins” philosophy of the Wild West. The act will also allow the private sector to make space innovations without regulatory oversight during an eight-year period and protect spaceflight participants from financial ruin. Surely, this will see private firms begin to incorporate the mining of asteroids into their investment plans.
Supporters argue that the US Space Act is a bold statement that finally sets private spaceflight free from the heavy regulation of the US government. The misdiagnosis begins here. Space exploration is a universal activity and therefore requires international regulation.
The act represents a full-frontal attack on settled principles of space law which are based on two basic principles: the right of states to scientific exploration of outer space and its celestial bodies and the prevention of unilateral and unbriddled commercial exploitation of outer-space resources. These principles are found in agreements including the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the Moon Agreement of 1979.…
Conjures up visions of future space wars. But this is not space fiction.

nbnsc
Who owns space? US asteroid-mining act is dangerous and potentially illegal
Gbenga Oduntan | Senior Lecturer in International Commercial Law, University of Kent

9 comments:

Ryan Harris said...

Congress can make laws and rules for US companies to replace old rules, laws and treaties. Other countries don't have to follow them but can if they find the value of support and defense from the US government attractive.

Applying earth values, such as resource-scarcity to space will probably be even more absurd than it is here. Though I'm sure progressives will do it anyway. Entire moons made of natural gas or water. Meteors made of platinum series metals with more than exists on the entire earth. Many of the values and assumptions hidden in earth laws, values and traditions to ensure cooperation aren't very meaningful when there is limitless abundance beyond any experience anyone on earth has ever been faced with in all of human history.

If you look at an eco-system after a fire when there is nearly limitless abundance of sky, water, and minerals for a plant, the successful organisms aren't the sequoia trees that follow strict rules amid intense competition but the wily, care-free weeds that worry not about competition, but grow fast and spread their seed.

Unknown said...

There's only one problem, Ryan. It's illegal. The United States signed treaties and is now violating them to help a handful of billionaires in the race to become the first trillionaire.

We've got so much neoliberalism on earth we have to export it into space to make room.

Peter Pan said...

I'm in favor of sending the 1% into outer space. Make it so :)

Tom Hickey said...

there is limitless abundance beyond any experience anyone on earth has ever been faced with in all of human history.

Just something else to fight over owning.

Ryan Harris said...

Treaties are just laws agreed by by congresses past. As soon as a fresh new congress passes a new law, the treaty is no more the supreme law of the land. The only penalty for breaking a treaty is the loss of the agreement. Sometimes a treaty will require a brief notice to other parties if they no longer intend to participate, most don't even require that much. International law is more a gentleman's handshake agreement of convenience than law. Look at the Euro and Europe!

"a handful of billionaires in the race to become the first trillionaire"
Trillions are only the beginning, a speed bump. These are real resources, not money. And there is no limit. A hard concept for a species that developed on a small planet with limited resources. NO LIMIT. There are more than a trillion planets in our galaxy alone, billions of trillions meteors. And there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe that is expanding rapidly.

The arguments about inequality and fairness, make no sense when there is nothing limited to fight over. As soon as the fueling stations are setup in orbit, it is much bigger than a few mines and sparse cities on nearby planets, we will be sending craft to the nearest stars in our galaxy to explore and the race begins in earnest. It's a big place, space, and it's now legally out of the hands of a few politicians. The economics of the endeavor should grow to logical and real extremes very quickly as the masses of people and investment get involved.

Tom is right, People will fight over everything anyway because that is what we do.
But all the logic and edifices upon which economics and politics are built are going to be shaken. It will take a few more years to heat up and the skeptics to be faced with reality. And a century to unfold, but it will blow up the conventional comfortable ways that we argue and agree to disagree on ideology of scarcity which underpins all property law, all laws really. The Rule of Capture, Rights of Tenure and all that common law, property law stuff that underpins our socieites and emerged from fuedalism to completely dominate our way of thinking. It may all have to be re-examined.

Unknown said...

Ryan, for a treaty to cease being in effect the Congress must withdraw from it. Nothing in the Space Act overturns or nullifies the pre-existing treaty obligations Congress committed to in the past and that's for a reason: American elites want the elite of other countries to continue being bound by those obligation while American elites exempt themselves.

Tom Hickey said...

Tom is right, People will fight over everything anyway because that is what we do.

This is entirely rational, btw. A key fundamental of policy is to secure resources and deny resources to others. Doesn't matter if it is a nation, a firm or an individual. The same principal applies in a zero-sum environment.

Of course, the environment is seldom zero-sum, and that's where the irrationality comes in.

This is very much related to pretending the world is still on a gold standard when it is not.

Ryan Harris said...

I know what you are saying, Ben, customary by UN not to be able to leave a treaty unilaterally, the key principle from the treaty on treaties but the Supreme Court disagreed and makes any act of congress that conflicts with a treaty, superior to the treaty (can't remember the case name -- Head vs US or something like that), and US never joined the treaty on treaties anyway.

I made the same assertion that you are awhile back, when we were talking about TPP and Dan Kervick pointed me to the Supreme court case and proved me wrong.

Tom Hickey said...

Supreme Court disagreed and makes any act of congress that conflicts with a treaty, superior to the treaty

Interestingly, upon the fall of the USSR and the drafting of the constitution of the Russian Federation, the US got Russia to put treaty over domestic law into it.

Now there is a strong push to change that provision and make Russian law superior to treaty.