Some thoughts from Michael Listner.
[Update a while later]
The asteroid miners need to get their legal act together.
Category Archives: Business
The EPA Crucifier
Just who and what is he?
Improved Lunar Prospecting
Astrobotic has landed a NASA contract for a prospector.
The EPA’s Dirty War
November can’t come soon enough.
[Update a while later]
The official “apologizes” for the comment. That’s OK — we know what he really thinks now. It was a Kinsleyan gaffe aka a Freudian slip.
Asteroid Mining
Does it violate the law?
No, but Tanja Masson-Zwaan has been tweeting that it’s now time to start setting up the “regime” under the Moon Treaty to redistribute the wealth:
Possibly parties to Moon agrmt 79 must start talks about regime governing exploitation, as it seems ‘about to become feasible’ 2/2 #spacelaw
Personally, I think it means that it’s now time to have the Senate actively repudiate it by vote, to indicate that we will have no part of that nonsense.
Tomorrow’s Announcement
Here’s a WSJ piece on it. If they do actually move an asteroid, under current precedent, they’d own it.
I won’t be covering it in real time, because I’ll be at a workshop at JPL giving a talk on propellant depots. Interestingly, Dennis Wingo gives a talk following mine on extraterrestrial resource utilization. It seems like a lot of things are coming together at the same time.
[Evening update]
Sorry, workshop link was wrong. Fixed now, I hope.
Another One-Week Slip
The Dragon flight has been pushed off again, apparently to do some final validation on code. There’s entirely too much political pressure on the successful outcome of this flight.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the official release from SpaceX: “After reviewing our recent progress, it was clear that we needed more time to finish hardware-in-the-loop testing and properly review and follow up on all data. While it is still possible that we could launch on May 3rd, it would be wise to add a few more days of margin in case things take longer than expected. As a result, our launch is likely to be pushed back by one week, pending coordination with NASA.”
Oh, The Humanities
A better question is, should they be, at least in anything resembling their current form. It won’t change until parents realize what a massive fraud the whole thing is.
Just A Coincidence, Obviously
Wealthier states that had strong Democrat connections got most of the “stimulus” money. Based on the reaction to the economy, it mostly “stimulated” campaign donations.
A Rebuttal To Jim Dunstan On Space Property Rights
[Note: this is a guest post by Alan Wasser, Chairman of the Space Settlement Institute]
As the Space Settlement Initiative says, the settlement of space would benefit all of humanity by opening a new frontier, energizing our society, providing room and resources for the growth of the human race without despoiling the Earth, and creating a lifeboat for humanity that could survive even a planet-wide catastrophe.
Unfortunately, it seems clear that, as things stand now, space settlement will not happen soon enough for any of us to see it, if it ever happens at all. The US government has now officially decided not to go back to the moon, philanthropists cannot afford it, and there is nothing else on the moon or Mars that could be profitable enough to justify the cost of private enterprise developing safe, reliable and affordable human transport. Continue reading A Rebuttal To Jim Dunstan On Space Property Rights