The fact that all three of us have decided that such a situation would not be in our best interests.
There’s not much to be interested in across the whole of Antarctica … although digging down a couple miles through ice may be cheaper than sending mining equipment to the Moon …
davidmich - I very much urge you to take a large grain of salt with the responses that say, in varying degrees, “nobody knows” or “there will be a war.” Those response clearly have no actual expertise in this area.
The clear answer has been provided: the Outer Space Treaty is the legal framework that establishes that celestial bodies are the “province of all mankind” and are not subject to appropriation by any country.
Yes, it is of course possible that some country may violate these principles, just as countries have violated prohibitions on torture, chemical weapons, and so on an so on. But it is clear that any such claim is illegitimate.
I commend Heracles for contributing facts rather than opinon.
[Cue the outrage that international law doesn’t really exist…]
If we’re talking near term, relatively current tech - then we’re talking solar system. traditional “spheres” don’t apply, it’s all relative. After all, he various planets and satellites, asteroids, etc. -move. Very few have the fixed relative location such as a Trojan point to Earth or Jupiter. So most likely, the concept will be “first come first serve”, followed by “I want that”.
The whole of space infrastructure is so fragile - not just the resupply chain, but the habitats themselves. This will give every participant incentive to negotiate, unless one or two players have an overwhelming superiority. I think some of the earliest disputes will be over valuable and scarce resources, like the smaller deposits of ice at the lunar poles.
As I said, I see inhabited bases as “sitting ducks”. So attacking a habitable base is like nuclear war - it crosses a line, killing people and destroying very expensive infrastructure - and the attacker will be equally vulnerable, because like nuclear attack, you cannot 100% protect everything. You can’t even barricade and demand someone leave, because once we’re out of earth orbit, a base is unlikely to have a return ship sitting around - they will have to wait on supply ships, so now we’re back to the question of intercepting supply ships. How? Intercepting a spaceship is the same problem - destroy it, you kill people too. the only easily derailed space exploitation is robotic… but then, prove that an “accident” by robotics against human aggressors is really not an accident? The only space wars that might carry on a while would be robot vs. robot.
So any arguments will still boil down to negotiations. And in any negotiations, possession is 9/10 of the result. I’m already mining water? Too bad. What can you offer me to make me share? OTOH, one mining concern can’t really prevent another from setting up ten miles away on the moon.
But if we ever get beyond pure ownership of outposts - then it depends. What makes Ghana or Mauritius decide to be in the USA or China or Russia (or France or Britain) sphere of influence. History, population sources, politics, financial aid, trading partners, and travel distances - all the same reasons will influence whether Triton aligns with Mars or Luna. Perhaps the distant bases will become friends - or rivals - as say, the moons of Uranus and Neptune move relatively close or extremely distant to each other for decades.
But Ravenman, why does anyone pay heed to the Outer Space Treaty? Because of the possibility of war. The great powers respect the treaty because they want the other great powers to respect it, and the lesser powers respect it because the great powers do.
To my knowledge the Outer Space Treaty has not been ratified by mainland China. Re the OP question about “spheres of influence”, the treaty states:
“Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States”, but “is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty”. This seems to indicate any non-military use whatsoever is within the treaty provided a nation did not plant a flag and claim sovereignty. IOW given sufficient technology, a capable nation or approved private corporation could capture an entire asteroid, melt it down, transfer the ingots to earth and sell them.
Often “spheres of influence” has a military connotation but the treaty says “The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies shall be forbidden”. OTOH it also says “The use of military personnel for scientific research…shall not be prohibited”.
So at first glace, a moon base staffed with civillian paramilitary personnel operating under Title 50 and reporting to the CIA director would be “non military” within the context of the treaty: harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Vol-3-Wall.pdf
However the treaty does say “Any…threat or use of force…on the Moon is prohibited. It is likewise prohibited to use the Moon in order to commit any such act or engage in any such threat in relation to the Earth”. That that would seem to indicate that intelligence operations in support of earth-based conflicts are not permitted.
Re private corporations, the treaty says: “…the Moon, nor any part thereof…shall become property of any…non-governmental organization…or non-governmental entity or of any natural person. The placement of personnel, space vehicles, equipment, facilities, stations and installations on or below the surface of the Moon…shall not create a right of ownership over the surface or the subsurface of the Moon or any areas thereof.”
According to the treaty, specific permission is required of non-governmental entities and each government is responsible for their own: “States bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, whether carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried on in conformity with the principles set forth in the present Declaration. The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the State concerned.”
Note the treaty is speaking solely of military emplacements on celestial bodies, not in space itself. So a weaponized purely military space station would be within the treaty but not that same facility on the moon or an asteroid.
Re nuclear weapons, the 1967 treaty prohibits “stationing” nuclear weapons in space, such as in orbit. However it does not prohibit nuclear weapons transiting through space (e.g, ICBMs) or detonating them in space: Outer Space Treaty - Wikipedia
Any state that signed the 1967 treaty is legally permitted to withdraw from it, there’s simply a one-year delay: “Any State Party to this Agreement may give notice of its withdrawal from the Agreement one year after its entry into force by written notification to the Secretary-General of the United Nations…”
Communication and transportation technology determine interstellar or interplanetary economics. How expensive and difficult is it to move information and goods and people from one place to another? And what’s there when you get there?
If you have to travel to Mars using current or near future technology, there’s no such thing as “spheres of influence”. There’s nothing on Mars that’s valuable enough to transport back to Earth, even if Mars were made of gold and platinum. If some boy scouts invent antigravity in their back yard and you can strap a booster onto an old airstream trailer and get to the asteroid belt in a week, then everything changes.
If you’ve got FTL technology that gets you from one solar system to another in a few days or weeks, and it’s really cheap, and you can move thousands of people and weapons and goods with it, and those other solar systems have valuable stuff in them, then unitary interstellar governments make sense. If the locals get too annoying, a giant fleet of space battleships show up, and suddenly they remember that they love being part of the galactic empire.
If, however, it is massively expensive and takes decades to travel from one solar system to another, and communication between systems is limited to light speed in the best case scenario, then Galactic Empires don’t make sense.
This is similar to the argument that the only reason anyone pays income taxes is because they don’t want to be shot and killed escaping from prison.
There’s a lot of policy options between “tsk tsk, you broke a treaty” and “this means war!!!” The vast, vast majority of international disputes are settled without resorting to war by means that range from negotiations that allow all parties to walk away with something they want, to one side deciding that it doesn’t want to be a pariah, to one side deciding that it has had enough of international sanctions.
Boiling international disputes down to a test of will through ultimatums of war as being pretty much the single deciding factor of whether countries adhere to international norms of behavior, is an assertion that only people who have no actual expertise on international affairs could reach.
The reality is that yes, some international disputes may ultimately come to war, but for the vast, vast majority of disputes, countries generally find that solutions can be found that do not even come close to the threat of armed conflict.
Superb post joema.
Ref this little snippet …
I read that as prohibiting mining, whether of water or of minerals. The act of digging up ore & converting it to an ingot of whatever and then transporting and finally selling it all depend on a “right of ownership” attaching to that ingot at some point in the process.
I’m assuming similar language attaches to the rest of the solar system, not just the Moon. Though I may be dead wrong in that assumption. The Moon’s natural utility as a source of harm to Earth, as well as it being the easiest = first place to get to, would make it logical and obvious for the treaty writers to erect the strongest barriers to development around it. Leaving the asteroid belt open as a kind of *terra nullius *Wild West is easy when you’re thinking it’s a few hundred years yet before the question becomes ripe.
My overall POV follows Lemur866.
At the present time it’s fully sensible to treat the entirety of the Universe less 6 specifically named continents on Earth as a giant nature preserve. It’s all pretty to look at, fascinating to visit and gather data on, but otherwise unusable for any economic or political purpose.
If and when either Antarctica, the Moon, or stuff farther out begins to seem likely to soon have economic or political value then there’ll be a tectonic shift. New arrangements will have to be made. Arrangements that will embrace economic and political use of these new resources. We (human society) will either make the new arrangements in advance, or be confronted with some entity, commercial or governmental, announcing a *fait accompli * (be it large or small) and demanding appropriate legal accommodations to that.
Going all the way back to the OP; this is probably a problem for 100 or 200 years from now. Interesting to chat about, but not a realistic near term concern. Though Musk may force the pace on Mars here in 10-20 years after re-registering his company in some Bumfuckistan whose GDP is less than his annual income.
Yes, technical capability is the key.
In the immediate future, I forsee that certain materials will be valuable simply for being out of a giant gravity well; mining bulk water (oxygen, hydrogen) or even bulk gravel for protection from solar flares and cosmic rays… Compare the Lunar Lander departure stage size to the smallest manned orbital rockets from earth. (Titan to lift a 2-man capsule) The difference in fuel costs to loft from the moon will make it a valuable pit stop for further exploration. Once there’s a reliable infrastructure, maybe the powers than be will create ice-mining operations on the tinier moons of Jupiter or Saturn… and so on.
For the next century or two, most habitations will be outposts, analogous to oil platforms or Antarctic research stations- heavily dependent on resupply, single-purpose facilities for industrial production or research. Expect large multinationals (Elon, is that you?) to perhaps arrange for the equivalent of “Flags of convenience” like Panama registered ships - most likely provoking the first rationalization of outer space treaties.
If we get to the point where FTL trips are cheap and easy, where any decent-sized entity can arrange to build or buy a spaceship and fly off into the wild black yonder, then expect something more like Polynesia or the American west around 1800 - relatively lawless until the cavalry rolled through.
Some group - USA, UN, whatever - will “claim” jurisdiction or apply their version of “international law” to stop “crimes against humanity”, but only when they have a flagship nearby to help enforce it. Remember, China and India succumbed to the same process - Europeans asked for a spot to consolidate their trade missions, then proceeded to expand from there with divide and conquer tactics exploiting local politics, or to defend their people in trade disputes.
if your new Eden planet is not to far distant from an Imperial Navy station, then you will be subject to frequent visits to ensure you toe the party line… until you can build a big enough navy to counter them. Then it’s time for diplomacy.
there’s plenty of science fiction on the subject.
. . . so far.
The Space Act of 2015explicitly allows
So if you’re an American, you do own what you take, but you don’t own the object you took it from.
Which means that if I dig an open pit Moon or asteroid mine, spending a bunch of money to first locate an ore pocket and then remove useless overburden, then anyone who wants to can later waltz in and help themselves to the ore at the bottom of the hole I dug, right alongside my men and equipment doing the same.
If you can’t own it or at least control it, you can’t economically improve it. As is demonstrated in countless war-torn areas on Earth throughout history unto today where the practical inability to defend your property and improvements against predation freezes all economic activity beyond the basics of subsistence food-gathering.
IOW, that act has a nonsense at its base. Or there’s more unquoted, wherein the US is asserting that no, we’re not claiming land for our government, but at the same time yes we’re happy letting some US-registered mining company assert a claim of *de facto *ownership, or at least right of exclusive control, that we’ll defend by force of arms if needed. Sort of the East India Company or Hudson’s Bay Company model.
I think the act was meant to encourage entrepreneurs who are already, seriously working on the technologies of asteroid mining. The media is calling it “the 100 trillion dollar industry” and such, and they needed some clarity about the legalities of it.
It will probably be awhile before we’re racing the Chinese to the same asteroid.
No need to race. Just wait until somebody else has spent the money to find the right asteroid and remove the overburden then show up. It’s always been more efficient to steal somebody else’s working claim than to develop your own from scratch.
My point being you can’t have claims with having ownership. And you can’t have ownership without having government jurisdiction. Asserting the existence of the end result of the whole shebang without providing any of the foundation is a nullity. Both legally and practically.
Again, there’s no particular reason to sort out the Law of Outer Space right now, because nobody is going to be mining asteroids or the moon any time in the next couple of decades. And the first few asteroid mines aren’t going to have to worry about claim jumpers.
And when we have a lot more asteroid miners out there, what exactly is supposed to happen when you start up a mining operation on Vesta and just as you’re about to hit paydirt somebody comes in and starts harvesting your work?
A law against it doesn’t do any good unless there is some enforcement mechanism. And there aren’t going to be many Space Rangers out there arresting claim jumpers. Even if it’s illegal, the only thing the first miners can do is either feed the claim jumpers to the huskies, or send a complaint back to Earth, and hope that once the ownership status of the infringing operation gets sorted out some corporate parent organization gets fined appropriately by the correct supranational oversight agency.
The point of the current treaty is that, hey, nobody is making space mining illegal. Space mining is all good. But claiming to own stuff in space is right out. How we get from “you don’t own this lump of rocks but you totally own the refined products you extracted from the rocks” is going to be ambiguous for the next couple of decades.
That is one viewpoint. I read it as prohibiting only sovereign or “estate” or territorial ownership. E.g, it is common on earth for mineral rights to permit extensive mining without requiring estate ownership of the surface property.
The undeveloped nature of space and celestial bodies could be likened to frontier territories in 18th century America. If an explorer cut down some trees and burned the firewood on unclaimed, unowned land, he is not laying claim to the land, just scavenging materials. He might even haul the firewood back and sell it, but he’s no more claiming the land than an offshore fisherman claims the ocean when hauling in a catch.
You could then argue that the frontier explorer is at least claiming ownership over the wood. But does the 1967 act prohibit claiming ownership over geological fragments of celestial bodies? If it does, then what legal basis did the US government have to haul nearly 1/2 ton of moon rocks back to earth and claim ownership over them – at a time when they had already signed and ratified the 1967 treaty? Isn’t an asteroid just a bigger rock, and a tiny fragment of the original larger body?
In the western frontier case, even though during certain periods nobody had unassailable sovereign ownership of the land, there was some risk of conflicting claims. In theory Napoleon Bonaparte could have challenged the wood-cutting explorer, saying the wood belongs to France.
However in the space case, the 1967 treaty has already prohibited ownership. So by treaty nobody can complain if someone takes 1/2 ton of moon rocks off the moon or a small asteroid since they signed the treaty and agreed to not claim or contest ownership. OTOH by that viewpoint it is simply “first come, first served”, provided you don’t plant a flag and claim sovereign, territorial ownership.
100 trillion dollar industry ???
That seems a little excessive (but then again) I could be wrong
Yeah, seems extreme, but here’s one article bandying about that number:
Slightly off topic but this graph of all the asteroids is fascinating