# Does the USA own the Moon? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 19, 2015, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765 "2015-09-19T14:01:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/41 "2015-09-22T01:59:05Z")
If there _was_ anything of value discovered there, you better believe the US would be claiming ownership. Since there isn’t anything of value, it’s sort of a moot point. ---
**Author:** ![user\_hostile](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/user_hostile/32/474_2.png) [@user\_hostile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/user_hostile)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/42 "2015-09-22T02:09:36Z")
I’d say a moon rock is worth something… ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/43 "2015-09-22T03:20:02Z")
> [@user\_hostile](#): > > I’d say a moon rock is worth something… Not as much as a [rock from the Hamptons](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=767973). Although maybe if it were wrapped in twine… ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/44 "2015-09-22T04:12:21Z")
> [@XT](#): > > The only one so far. And since we haven’t been back, ownership, even if it were that easy, would be more a theoretical thing. Well, the USA sent missions a few times. But no, we haven’t settled there. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/45 "2015-09-22T06:36:24Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > If there _was_ anything of value discovered there, you better believe the US would be claiming ownership. Since there isn’t anything of value, it’s sort of a moot point. There are billions and billions of dollars worth of gold, titanium, platinum, helium-3 and all manner of rare-Earth metals. There is a lot of valuable stuff on the Moon. The government cannot claim ownership because of the Treaty. But a private company could, in fact, go there and start mining. Moon Express is working on that right now. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/46 "2015-09-22T09:02:50Z")
> [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > There are billions and billions of dollars worth of gold, titanium, platinum, helium-3 and all manner of rare-Earth metals. There is a lot of valuable stuff on the Moon. The government cannot claim ownership because of the Treaty. But a private company could, in fact, go there and start mining. Moon Express is working on that right now. Really? Go figure. I wonder what the salary of a moon miner will be. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/47 "2015-09-22T12:54:36Z")
Man, you guys are loony. Lucas? Kubrick? Tarantino? You think NASA’s budget could afford those heavy hitter film makers to shoot the moon landing? Shear lunacy! The Apollo 11 moon landing was a Middle School film project, shot by a couple of kids on a shoestring budget. The command ship Columbia model was just a stainless steel coffee percolator ([like this](http://www.promo-wholesale.com/Upfiles/Prod_m/Stainless-Coffee-Maker---14-Oz_20090666295.jpg)) suspended by 6lb monofilament fishing line. The Lunar Module was an impulse lawn sprinkler ([like this](http://mkrittenhouse.com/media/catalog/product/cache/2/small_image/200x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/P/G/PG-1211_1.jpg)). For the long shots of the moon, the kids achieved the _spectral reflection of sunlight effect_ by wrapping grey papier-mâché around a lit light bulb (if you look closely in the “Sea of Tranquility” you can clearly see “GE” shining through the paper). For the landing sequence, the close-up shot of the moon was actually a close-up of a pockmarked forehead of one of the students with severe acne, nicknamed _Crater Face_. But, what really amazes me, is that out of all the 500-million people around the world intently watching TV July 20, 1969 with bated breath, I’m the only one who figured out that _“Neil Armstrong”_ climbing down onto the _“lunar”_ surface was actually stop-frame animation of a GI Joe wrapped in tissue paper with a Ping-Pong ball head (with a dab of mirror paint on front) and a pack of cigarettes strapped to his back, climbing down a Habitrail ladder (note how the _“moon rocks”_ look suspiciously like Gerbil droppings). _Whaddya got in your eyes, people of Earth, moon dust? It’s obvious!_ And, what Armstrong really said was,\* “that’s one small step for Stan \*(what the kids named GI Joe); _one giant **heap** for mankind_ (i.e. _“heap”_ of s\*\*t—a sham). Of course the military terminated the kids with extreme prejudice to keep the hoax alive…Excuse me, someone’s knocking at my door. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/48 "2015-09-22T13:35:15Z")
…Well, that was odd. A couple of guys in black suits and sunglasses were at my door and they flashed some kind of light in my eyes…and that’s all I remember. I don’t even recall what we were discussing before. Oh, yes—the moon! Does the USA own the moon? No But, I think Charmin® should buy it and send some of their creative people up there to dig a big long trench right down the middle. Then they can hang a giant sheet of toilet paper from the bottom of the crack. Great advertising campaign! Plus, every night, we humans can look up and see the moon _mooning_ us. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/49 "2015-09-22T16:11:38Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > Really? Go figure. I wonder what the salary of a moon miner will be. Yea. Helium-3 alone has sold for as much as $5000 per liter. Current figures put it abouy $1000 per liter, and the Moon has a million TONS of it. The hard part is working out the logistics.The scary part is that China will probably be the first ones there to start profitting. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/50 "2015-09-22T19:46:36Z")
> [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > Yea. Helium-3 alone has sold for as much as $5000 per liter. Current figures put it abouy $1000 per liter, and the Moon has a million TONS of it. The hard part is working out the logistics.The scary part is that China will probably be the first ones there to start profitting. Lunar mining of [SUP]3[/SUP]He is the solar power satellite of the 21st century, i.e. a spurious justification for crewed space exploration that makes little sense once start evaluating the technical details. To begin with, the only current commercial appliction for [SUP]3[/SUP]He is medical imaging, for which only small fractions of a miligram are required. The general justificaiton for [SUP]3[/SUP]He mining is its use as a fuel for nuclear fusion power generation; however while it is true that D-[SUP]3[/SUP]He fusion would be desirable from the standpoint of low neutron emissions (which are destructive to structural materials and can activate normally stable elements), the fact is that we can’t even achieve sustainable breakeven output with the much easier D-T fusion and earliest predictions of when we may achieve practical fusion power generation are around mid-century. Given that D-[SUP]3[/SUP]He has a Lawson criteria of 16 (the product of required temperature, plasma density, and confinement time to achieve fusion) and a power factor of 26.4 (the ratio of fusion power output to power losses within the plasma) compared to a D-T fusion power baseline, we can’t say when or if [SUP]3[/SUP]He may be useful as a fuel. And even if it is, trying to “mine” it from the Lunar regolith, which would consist of sifting through many tons of dust to extract the estimated 1 ppm of [SUP]3[/SUP]He is probably the most impractical way of doing it. Current [SUP]3[/SUP]He is produced by decay of tritium, which itself it produced by bombardment of deuterium with thermal neutrons. Since most of our power production fission reactors are light water reactors we produce very little tritium (and capture none of what is produced). However, it is in no way infeasible to use heavy water reactors to produce tritium, or even use non-fission source neutron bombardment to directly produce tritium. And of course, if we have controlled D-T fusion, the undesired neutron product of that reaction could be used to breed large amounts of tritium and therefore [SUP]3[/SUP]He far more easily than trying to scrape the surface of the Moon for trace quantites. If the Chinese space program sends people to the Moon (and it still isn’t clear that they will dedicate the necessary resources to do so, nor that their current Soyuz-based system would support a Lunar mission profile) it is for the prestige. They have shown no signs of any attempt at commercialization of their crewed space progam and the same handicaps to long-term surface habitation and commercialization of the Moon apply as equally to the Chinese space program as they do to everyone else, e.g. the high radiation environment, lack of readily accessible volatiles, problematic cementing and erosive electrostatic dust, and low surface gravity all pose significant difficulty for long term habitation or machinery operating on the Lunar surface. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/51 "2015-09-22T19:59:40Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Of course, the silence in all the lunar footage is a dead giveaway. Sound travels perfectly well in outer space, but the technology of the late-'60s couldn’t convincingly replicate the sound of rocket motors. The whole “sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum” thing was concocted at a late-night writers meeting. This fraud has been exposed by my dog and the results replicated by my cat. They run away every time I turn on the vacuum because - noise. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/52 "2015-09-22T21:14:45Z")
> [@Bear\_Nenno](#): > > There are billions and billions of dollars worth of gold, titanium, platinum, helium-3 and all manner of rare-Earth metals. There is a lot of valuable stuff on the Moon. Not really, not over the cost of extraction and the cost of getting the material to some place someone will be able to do something with it. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/53 "2015-09-22T23:37:16Z")
There are hundreds of billions of dollars worth of minerals on Earth. It just takes a lot of money to extract the minerals from the dirt and rocks. If the cost of extracting the minerals is greater than what you could sell the minerals for, then what’s the point of talking about how many minerals there are at any given location? We could mine gold by filtering seawater. Except that would be idiotic. The minerals on the Moon would only be extraordinarily valuable if you wanted to build stuff on the Moon, and didn’t want to pay the cost to ship raw materials from Earth. Even if the Moon was solid platinum, diamond, gold, and uranium it wouldn’t be worth it to mine the Moon and send the precious metals back to Earth. And if it were worth it at current spot prices for those minerals, it wouldn’t be worth it once we started shipping back tons of those minerals. The price would crash and it would suddenly not be worth mining the Moon anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/54 "2015-09-23T00:26:20Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Even if the Moon was solid platinum, diamond, gold, and uranium it wouldn’t be worth it to mine the Moon and send the precious metals back to Earth. And if it were worth it at current spot prices for those minerals, it wouldn’t be worth it once we started shipping back tons of those minerals. The price would crash and it would suddenly not be worth mining the Moon anymore. But, but… imagine how many pimps would be able to fulfill their dreams of owning solid-gold Cadillacs. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/55 "2015-09-23T00:42:38Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > There are hundreds of billions of dollars worth of minerals on Earth. It just takes a lot of money to extract the minerals from the dirt and rocks. If the cost of extracting the minerals is greater than what you could sell the minerals for, then what’s the point of talking about how many minerals there are at any given location? Is there such thing as private and government ownership of land on Earth? Of course there is. Any why is that? The point is what you seem to be missing. This thread is about property rights and ownership of the Moon and/or portions of the Moon. A comment was made that it doesn’t matter because there is nothing of value there. My retort is that there _are_ in fact valuable resources there. Just because there is no profitable way to doing anything with it at the moment, doesn’t mean that land ownership on the Moon is a nonissue. Give it time. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/56 "2015-09-23T00:47:13Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > The minerals on the Moon would only be extraordinarily valuable if you wanted to build stuff on the Moon, and didn’t want to pay the cost to ship raw materials from Earth. And you think that will never happen? ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/57 "2015-09-23T02:00:03Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > No we don’t. > > [Outer Space Treaty - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty) What a stupid treaty. No wonder we’ll never have colonies in space with shit like that around. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765/58 "2015-09-23T02:21:51Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > What a stupid treaty. No wonder we’ll never have colonies in space with shit like that around. It could have been worse: the 1979 [“Moon Treaty”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty) would have effectively banned private enterprise from space! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-usa-own-the-moon/731765.md?page=2)