Six things we’ve learned so far. The sixth is probably the most important. People are going to try to take advantage of this to do what they’ve always wanted to do.
An article on the legal state of asteroid mining. This isn’t true, though: “Much like the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the United States has not signed the Moon Agreement but by custom it adheres to the treaty — at least until Donald Trump’s recent executive order, which explicitly rejects the idea that such agreements are binding to the USA.”
The US has never adhered in any way to the Moon Agreement. Up until now, it has just ignored it. The executive order simply makes explicit our non-recognition of it, to pre-empt those who've been recently claiming that it is customary international law.
Meanwhile, Michael Listner writes that we must return to the moon to preserve the rule of law in space. Well, that’s certainly a reason, but not the only (or even best) one.
I hope that the Republicans are getting their campaign ads ready. Fortunately, at least some Democrats realize how disastrous, both economically and politically, this could be. I have to say that I’ve been pleasantly surprised by Sinema. She doesn’t seem compelled to toe the party line.
Yes, get rid of it. Take it behind the barn and kill it with an ax. It was always stupid, but in a time of possible food shortages, and oil at historic lows, it’s an insane policy. We had stopped using food for transportation at the turn of the 20th century, but these morons decided to bring the notion back.