Is it legal? I have some thoughts over at PJMedia.
5 thoughts on “Asteroid Mining”
Other than you shouldn’t be moving something you don’t own; I don’t think any impulse given to an object should have any bearing on ownership. Saying it is or isn’t a celestial body is just silly.
We need to think a bit more fundamentally. What right does anybody have to own anything? I think that’s a serious question that helps put things in perspective. How is it that anybody gets the right to own something?
Well, you bought it from somebody. Ok. Then follow that chain of buyers until you get to somebody that didn’t buy it. How did they get an ownership right?
They either created it or claimed it. Sovereignty is a red herring. If it happens to be a sovereign that claimed it, it really has no bearing on how it came to be owned. It was claimed.
This is fundamentally how everything comes to be owned. Once you have something that nobody owns, you can’t buy it from somebody that doesn’t own it… so you claim it. How is it there is any fuss about this? What’s hard to understand?
The next question becomes, “Is it a reasonable claim?”
What makes it unreasonable? Size for one. I can claim the local star cluster, but that’s unreasonable. I can claim an entire planet, but again (at least today, that’s unreasonable.)
But if I join with others to claim a same size parcel as others… that’s about as reasonable as you can get.
Sure it’s legal, no space sheriff last time I checked. Now, commerce in equipment and produced ore back and forth? Maybe not legal.
My point is, not being facetious, if you had some money, and wanted to do this, you could.
Rand,
If you took the time to do some research in one of the many fine law libraries in Southern California you would know this was discussed by legal experts at the time of the OST. In short it was agreed unintended movements caused by changing its mass don’t count, you have to demonstrate control.
Why do the blatherings of a bunch of lawyers matter? They can agree that pi is equal to three for convenience sake, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to go along with it. Whatever movement rule they come up with is completely arbitrary. Assume they come up with a rule that you have to change it’s velocity by 100 m/s. Suppose I do, then put it right back exactly in its original orbit?
This is the idiocy of man. Assuming they are somehow superior to truth or reality… because they said so.
People are always creating Gordian knots for no good reason. The simple truth is best. We have this historical fluke, the OST, that says sovereigns can not make claims. This is great news. So leave the rest of us alone.
Other than you shouldn’t be moving something you don’t own; I don’t think any impulse given to an object should have any bearing on ownership. Saying it is or isn’t a celestial body is just silly.
We need to think a bit more fundamentally. What right does anybody have to own anything? I think that’s a serious question that helps put things in perspective. How is it that anybody gets the right to own something?
Well, you bought it from somebody. Ok. Then follow that chain of buyers until you get to somebody that didn’t buy it. How did they get an ownership right?
They either created it or claimed it. Sovereignty is a red herring. If it happens to be a sovereign that claimed it, it really has no bearing on how it came to be owned. It was claimed.
This is fundamentally how everything comes to be owned. Once you have something that nobody owns, you can’t buy it from somebody that doesn’t own it… so you claim it. How is it there is any fuss about this? What’s hard to understand?
The next question becomes, “Is it a reasonable claim?”
What makes it unreasonable? Size for one. I can claim the local star cluster, but that’s unreasonable. I can claim an entire planet, but again (at least today, that’s unreasonable.)
But if I join with others to claim a same size parcel as others… that’s about as reasonable as you can get.
Sure it’s legal, no space sheriff last time I checked. Now, commerce in equipment and produced ore back and forth? Maybe not legal.
My point is, not being facetious, if you had some money, and wanted to do this, you could.
Rand,
If you took the time to do some research in one of the many fine law libraries in Southern California you would know this was discussed by legal experts at the time of the OST. In short it was agreed unintended movements caused by changing its mass don’t count, you have to demonstrate control.
Why do the blatherings of a bunch of lawyers matter? They can agree that pi is equal to three for convenience sake, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to go along with it. Whatever movement rule they come up with is completely arbitrary. Assume they come up with a rule that you have to change it’s velocity by 100 m/s. Suppose I do, then put it right back exactly in its original orbit?
This is the idiocy of man. Assuming they are somehow superior to truth or reality… because they said so.
People are always creating Gordian knots for no good reason. The simple truth is best. We have this historical fluke, the OST, that says sovereigns can not make claims. This is great news. So leave the rest of us alone.
UN authorizes land claims.
There ya go Thomas; officially sanctioned.