It’s a dumb reason. He provides reasons why someone might want to claim the moon, but none for why anyone else should pay any heed whatsoever to such a claim.
Even ignoring the fact that it would be a blatant violation of the Outer Space Treaty, there is no traditional or even historical basis on which the nation could claim the entire body, nor is it necessary. Even if we could get an international consensus that off-planet property rights, or even sovereignty claims, are a good thing, we have to establish some criteria for making such claims beyond the fact that we stuck a flag on it four decades ago. Traditional claims, at least in modern times, involve actually occupying and improving the claim. For the U.S. to claim the entire moon without having even bothered to do anything significant on any part of it for almost half a century would rightly be viewed as almost as ludicrous as the Eros claim a few years back. It’s a planet too far.
The Wrights had their first controlled flight of a heavier-than-aircraft on this date in 1903. I had three separate pieces on the event back on the hundredth anniversary, which was also the day that SpaceShipOne first flew supersonic.
[Late evening update, after all the kvetching in comments]
Jeez, Looeeze, people.
OK, first controlled flight of a powered heavier-than-aircraft. Happy now?
The scientists ran their experiment on Arabidopsis plants—a go-to species for plant biologists. The control group was germinated and grown at the Kennedy Space Center (A), while the comparative group was housed on the International Space Station (B). For 15 days, researchers took pictures of the plants at six-hour intervals and compared them. Their results surprised even them: the plants in space exhibited the same growth patterns as those on Earth.
The researchers were looking for two specific patterns of root growth: waving and skewing. With waving, the root tips grow back and forth, much like waves. Skewing occurs when a plant’s roots grow at an angle, rather than straight down. Scientists don’t know exactly why these root behaviors occur, but gravity was thought to be the driving force for both.
So much for that theory. This means the potential for fresh food at ISS, if you’re a vegetarian (or even if not). They should be learning how to do weightless hydroponics. Of course, we still don’t know if animals, and particularly humans, can gestate, or how, and that’s true of partial gravities as well. And we’re not likely to until SSI gets funding for its variable-gravity lab.
You’ll know that Congress and NASA are serious about deep space missions when they stop pretending that Orion is adequate for them, and start serious work on Nautilus, or collaborate with Bigelow.
It’s very similar to my paper for CEI, but I have a new twist at the end:
…it is worth noting that, while the OST arguably does not prevent the recognition of property claims per se, it may prove to be a hindrance to any kind at all of large-scale space activity, not just settlement. In that regard, this is the most troublesome sentence in the entire treaty: “The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty.”
Consider the implications of the words “continuing supervision,” if taken literally. It could be argued that satisfaction of this requirement would demand that any person operating off the planet would be required to have a government minder with him at all times. Prior approval — for example, a launch license — might not be sufficient, because supervision could be argued to imply not just observation, but physical control. This wording in the treaty could imply that even the remote monitoring of private activity in space, which itself would be a significant hindrance for space settlement, would be insufficient.
With new affordable spaceflight technologies on the horizon, extensive private activity in space will be a serious possibility in the near future. If we wish to see humanity flourish in space, we have to recognize that the Outer Space Treaty is a relic of a different era. Fresh interpretations may not suffice: we may soon have to renegotiate and amend the treaty — or even completely scrap it and start from scratch — if we want not just to protect space as a mere scientific preserve but to open it for settlement as a grand new frontier.