Here are the proceedings of the symposium in the Netherlands. Haven’t read through them, but I expect to see a lot of support for Moon Treaty-like “solutions.”
4 thoughts on “Space Resource Utilization”
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Here are the proceedings of the symposium in the Netherlands. Haven’t read through them, but I expect to see a lot of support for Moon Treaty-like “solutions.”
Comments are closed.
Then someone says ‘no’ and all the verbal masturbation is out the window.
It’s simple: A claim is made. A claim is defended.
If it weren’t for the high cost to get started this would have become obvious. The amount of stuff out there makes the earth insignificant. It remains significant only because it’s the only known life source.
The only thing I’ve seen lately that’s more stupid than the “space royalties” proposed by my fellow countrymen is this article about war over space resources. http://nautil.us/blog/mining-in-space-could-lead-to-conflicts-on-earth
Maybe it’s intended as satire. One can only hope.
Such lack of imagination is astounding. Space resources will have a major impact on space itself. Bringing minerals back to earth is not what it will be about.
Fights are over limited resources. These are not so limited.
The documents listed present views that are fairly predictable from the viewpoint of political virtue-signalling. Those views are mostly not associated with any obvious intent to actually do anything to provide the resources for homo sapiens sapiens to settle the solar system.
Only Deep Space Industries spoke for the US viewpoint, and they did a fairly good job, considering they did not want to make anyone frown. that itself was an obvious fault, however.
The Russians plumped for the Moon Treaty that in the 1970s they were relieved floundered, calling it a “Moon Agreement”, to skim over the fact that the Treaty is not binding on the US, because the US Senate refused to ratify it. Belgians, from the heart of the EU, took a stance reinforcing the idea that everyone must agree before anyone does anything, …just like the EU. The Brazilian presentation spoke of colonization as though this could be done by governments in Space, even though the US law said we cannot and will not claim asteroids to do that as a government. It did not distinguish between governments and private groups.
In general, there was a great deal of kvetching about the horrid Americans, whether privately or publically, doing something that other nations won’t *allow* their own people to do. This seemed in the documents a subterranean theme, that the Americans were setting a bad example, by not sufficiently constraining their entrepreneurs.
this might give such ruffians in their own countries ideas that they should be free to do such things without the permission of their own governing hierarchies. The implication was that this was obviously a disaster not to be endured. In general, this seemed yet another attempt to enforce some sort of Global Hierarchy on human beings, in the firm belief that without hierarchy there is only chaos. No one mentioned the development of industrial networks as a producer of order, which lack I fault DSI for. That should have been their main theme, IMHO.
In the comments section of a “Singularity Hub” article in February ( http://singularityhub.com/2016/02/19/space-and-technology-review-asteroid-detection-and-mining/ ) I found similar views from a commentor who was quite willing to threaten that the US could get into a war over this that we “must” lose. He was also derisive of US culture, describing his own, un-named, as “arguably superior”. Again, his “solution” was a world government, based on the UN. So far, this subject seems to be little more than a way for academics outside and inside the US to pound that World Government drum.