[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→
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.
Actually, while I do think it’s a federal responsibility to keep an eye out for impactors, it’s not clear that it’s NASA’s job. It’s one of the things we need a Space Guard for.
I was remiss in not posting much from the conference, but Clark Lindsey has some thoughts in the aftermath, with a lot of links. My impression? It wasn’t as exciting as last year, when Gwynne Shotwell came and not only gave a speech but answered questions. I think that both SpaceX and XCOR weren’t there in force this year (the latter for the first time, though ably represented by Mark Street) because they’re busy building hardware that will reduce the cost of access to space.
…as I said in the paper, any opinions expressed on this issue, whether Jim Dunstan’s, my own, or that of (for example) Tanja Masson-Zwaan, current president of the International Institute of Space Law, are simply that — opinions, and will remain nothing more than that until the matter is litigated and adjudicated.
We will agree to disagree until that happens.
[Update a few minutes later]
I did find this comment interesting:
Masson-Zwaan acknowledges that the current treaty is not perfect. “More rules are needed,” she said, “but I am also of the opinion that you do not need to create property rights.”
“More rules are needed.” We agree that the treaty is not “perfect” but I’m pretty sure that we’ll have a major disagreement on what we need to do to approach perfection.
Phil Chapman is giving a talk at Space Access on revitalizing the human spaceflight program, and in one of his charts, he just made a pitch for the U.S. Space Guard concept.
[Update a few minutes later]
Is there a Wikipedia editor in the house? The Space Guard article over there is woefully behind the times.