It also correlates well with President Obama’s wise decision to abandon a fruitless return to the sterile Moon, in favor of studying objects that might make us all rich.
The moon is no more “sterile” (as far as we know) than the asteroids, and there is plenty there to make us rich as well. It’s going to be a trade off between time and velocity, and there’s probably room for ventures in both places. There’s enough water on the moon to make it very accessible even with high-thrust systems, and likely a lot of asteroidal wealth buried under the regolith. And it’s only three days away.
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.
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.
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.
It’s sort of turning into a telephone game, like this piece:
Simberg, an aerospace engineer, says a new law granting the United States conditional permission to claim extraterrestrial land is internationally legal. His view: failure of the 1979 Moon Treaty to get even one signature nullifies the Outer Space Treaty.
a) The Moon Treaty has fourteen countries who have acceded to it.
b) I didn’t say that the Moon Treaty’s failure nullifies the OST.