The Common Good in Space or.......
Posted by Flootus5 9 years, 3 months ago to Government
Can this be the first time that regulatory bureaucracies will beat us to the frontier?
Or did Congress actually do the right thing in 2015?
And:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisf...
Sigh.
Or did Congress actually do the right thing in 2015?
And:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisf...
Sigh.
The idea that we need to protect space from 'pollution' by regulating the development is absurd -- as you point out.
We do need to have some way to determine ownership for mining other than shootouts at the OK asteroid, some way to manage claims.
And they have to have substantial contact, it can't be like Balboa claiming all the land that touched the Pacific ocean when he first saw it.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-c...
Although there are some disturbing little clauses in there regarding existing international obligations and "harmful interference" in outer space.
What would be needed, since nationalities are actually recognized, is a means and a criteria for which an asteroid body or cluster of such is claimed by a nation as being a territorial type status, which then citizens of that nation may stake a claim (needing a space appropriate definition) and enter into recognized private property rights. This is very basically how the 1872 Mining Law works/worked. And criteria for national territorial discovery and then individual discovery would more than finding it in a telescope.
What is interesting is that many of the comments added to the article mirror the modern day attack on the 1872 Mining itself. You have those opining that only wealthy corporations would be able to do this thereby making themselves even more "obscenely" wealthy, and that a leasing system of "common property" owned by "all of us" overseen by some kind of UN like Space oversight body. And that proceeds should be taxed all to hell to create funds for special programs like poverty, education, healthcare, disaster relief, climate "disruptions' - all the usual suspects in socialistic redistribution schemes.
And you can just about hear the rhetoric about space and asteroid ecosystems and rare species all requiring huge drawn out Environmental Impact Studies, etc. Here comes the Prime Directive.