The Return Of The Frontier

Thoughts from Wretchard on the recent commercial space bill:

The Dawn of the Space Mining Age probably signals the Twilight of Socialism as much as it does the end of all material poverty. It marks the end of a way of life. We live in a special time; a brief epoch when the human universe has become as small as it will ever be, a moment when no man living is more than a few moments away by text messaging from any other and no home is beyond 48 hours of subsonic jet travel.

If man takes to the Cosmos, then distances will become real again; and goodbyes will be for the first time in a hundred years once more forever.

The price of knowledge and plenty is to leave the Hive. Someday we may regard our stuffy politically correct Earth with more tolerance than is presently the custom. The future does not belong to those poor souls on American campuses who become hysterical at the slightest perceived micro-aggression, but to those with the boldness to take risks. In that context humanity may someday miss such coddled children in nostalgia for a lost Eden, which no sooner found at the start of the 21st century, just as soon slipped away.

A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding this, though:

The 2015 Space Act does more than recognize property rights; it breaks down bureaucracy by exempting the space industry from much regulation until 2023. As with the historical Western frontier when the law remained “back East,” there will be few sheriffs in the far reaches of the void. There, as nowhere else on 21st-century Earth, safety is your own lookout.

As his own blockquote from Eric Stallmer indicates, the only thing that won’t be regulated (that is, continue to not be regulated, as it never has been in the past) will be the safety of spaceflight participants. Everyone will still need to get launch licenses from the FAA, and continue to satisfy it that the public is not at risk, and that the launch isn’t contrary to the national interest.

As for treaty compliance, I actually had a beer with Ram and Steven Freeland (from Australia, a signatory to the Moon Treaty) on this topic a few years ago in Lincoln, and we politely agreed to disagree on the issue. The bill is not in conflict with the OST, though it clearly is with the Moon Treaty. But the latter, contra this foolish piece, is not “customary international law.” The US has no obligation to it, never having ratified it.

[Late-morning update]

Related thoughts from a well-known professor of space law, over at USA Today.

10 thoughts on “The Return Of The Frontier”

  1. An end to material poverty would be nice. But first we must have an end to institutional theft, as the left likes to use.

  2. So that’s it. The rest of the world can go to hell. The US can mine and make all the money in the universe. Then it will soon be joined by private companies from EU states, the Brazilians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Nigerians. Don’t forget space science is no longer the preserve of any small club. Technology is increasingly democratized and democratizing. And all these will happen and not one thing will go wrong and we will live in a perfect world. I don’t think so.

    Oh no! People from other countries will engage in commerce, the horror! It is funny to see someone who probably supports the democratization of the workplace being against people having the power to democratize space. The author seems to think the USA is motivated by hatred of other countries like he is.

    If China or Russia had made this kind of move I dare say the responses might be quite different.

    Yes, to respond through competition rather than making laws to keep them stuck on Earth. It seems the author doesn’t like the USA and views laws and treaties as a way to hold us down.

    Moreover that does not really answer the question why should we alter the natural environment of celestial bodies.

    This is just plain anti-human. Every living being alters the environment somehow and same with non-living objects.

    The comments on that op-ed were great. Good to see some familiar names over there pushing back and responding with a high level of knowledge.

  3. “The Dawn of the Space Mining Age probably signals the Twilight of Socialism as much as it does the end of all material poverty.”

    Jerry Pournelle made a strong case against both propositions in his Falkenberg novels.

  4. Wretchard’s post was outstanding. Of course, you can say that about pretty much all of his posts.

    I’m really sorry that PJM went to Disqus comments, because I absolutely despise Disqus and refuse to use it.

    1. Not a huge fan of Disqus myself, but there are worse systems out there. Spaceflight Now, for example, uses the execrable Facebook comments plug-in which requires one to have a Facebook account in order to leave comments at all. I refuse to have any truck with Facebook in any way, shape or form so I don’t comment over there anymore.

  5. Buckminster Fuller coined the term “Spaceship Earth” but I’ve always felt that was too narrow a focus. Within our solar system, we have more resources than we can imagine. Spaceship Solar System seems a more aft vision to me. It allows us to lift our vision beyond the constraints of Earth.

  6. Depends. Today we have synthetic materials. So space mining is not always the best alternative. e.g. you can grow crystals (e.g. diamonds) via CVD or high pressure methods. So I think we should focus on platinum group metals and consumables to be used in-situ or in that gravity well (volatiles like H2O, CH4, etc).

  7. Just read the Conversations article. It’s basically sub-moronic. It seems to be a whine about the evil, nasty Americans grabbing off the the ‘limited’ (the author actually says this) resources of the Solar System, thereby depriving the righteous Less-Developed World access to this extraterrestrial bounty. He’s also concerned about the survival of any off-planet microbes we may find in the face of America’s relentless commercial exploitation. Put the damn things in a petri dish preserve and get on with opening up the Solar System!

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