So, for many of you, I know the thinking is we will never be in a position to exploit resources off-planet, that it will never happen, so there shouldn’t be any reason to worry about it. This discussion isn’t for you, basically, since if it never is feasible there really isn’t any point worrying about it.
I think a lot of the outer space treaty was formulated with this thinking in mind…basically, there was no reason to worry about it because it wasn’t ever going to be a thing. However, if it is we are kind of left with a real issue…who owns space and all the resources out there? How do we arbitrate those resources going forward wrt either countries or private companies who want to exploit those resources?
Take the Moon, for example. There are companies who have the idea to try and mine the Moon for water, and use that water to create rocket fuel to be used by satellites. Again, for those of you who think this is a pipe dream that will never happen any of this is a problem…after all, whatever treaty or agreement we have is moot, since those companies will never be able to actually accomplish mining water from the Moon. However…what if they can?
That’s kind of the focus of this discussion. What should…and can…be done? The Moon is just the first step, really, wrt this issue, as there is more material to exploit in the solar system than there is on Earth, by orders of magnitude. Who owns it? Should it be sort of like international waters and fish or other resources? Should the UN regulate it somehow? If not, what should arbitrate this and how will it work? What if you never bring the resource back to Earth? Say you use it in space (such as the refueling bit wrt Moon ice and satellites)? And what if a company goes off-planet to have their headquarters on a space station or something else?
Just curious what 'dopers think of this issue. To me, this is going to happen at some point, and currently, there doesn’t seem to be a consensus on what will or can be done about it. The US is actively encouraging private companies to do this sort of thing, and we aren’t the only country. Countries like China and Russia already are planning bases on the Moon in the 2030s and probably have their own plans about mining or exploitation. So, it might come down to…who can actually get there, and who has the power to protect or enforce their own will. But…is there a better way?
Your last sentence says it all. How in the world, so to speak, would any government enforce any policies against any other government? Is there any possibility that the U.S. would go to war with China over a moon base? Would China start a war with the U.S. if SpaceX or Blue Horizon put a base on Mars where the Chinese wanted to go?
Without firm enforcement policies, any talk of controls is naive at best. If China and Russia won’t join climate accords for an already occurring existential threat what worth would an international Mars base agreement have?
Realistically, nothing will or can be done except idle talk until an actual conflict is imminent. By then geopolitical affairs will be so different that we might as well be inventing the United Nations in 1945, and putting France on the Security Council.
This probably means it will be a free-for-all, with corporations and countries doing whatever they want and can accomplish. But, yeah, that seems to be the way it’s shaping up. As you noted, countries aren’t even aligned or onboard wrt climate change, so something like this is going to be even more remote, especially since it’s only going to be a few companies and countries that can even do anything in this area for a while…and initially, at least there will be more opportunities to exploit than agencies able to even attempt it on a cost basis. The real pain point will probably be once the low-hanging fruit is all covered and more agencies (i.e. companies and countries) are able to even attempt to play in this space that conflicts will emerge.
Well at some point, you need to bring some wealth back to Earth. I don’t imagine even the most forward-looking multi-billionaire is planning on abandoning Earth completely. After all, that’s where the luxuries are.
So even if you keep most of the physical resources you exploit in orbit or beyond, you’re still exposed to government control, via taxes and the like.
Now, you could potentially find a friendly terrestrial government who would be willing to rewrite their tax laws to protect your assets, but you’d still be somewhat limited in what you could do. The US, for instance, is notorious for trying to exert its tax laws far beyond their national borders. Taxhavenistan would likely find itself on the wrong end of various sanctions.
And ultimately, that’s the answer. The Outer Space Treaty is full of nice-sounding glad-handing about the common heritage of all mankind, but once there’s the real possibility of money being made, that’s likely all going to go out the window.
So, yeah, at some point, we’ll need to have some country make laws to figure out how to decide who owns what in space, and that country needs to be large enough that no one else really wants to mess with them on this issue.
The US will probably end up being that country. Not only is it still the most powerful country on Earth, it’s also the best at projecting power into space. It also has an established history of expansion, with historic examples of rules for establishing legal claims on newly discovered resources, and how to monetize them back in civilization.
I personally think the first forays into off-world commerce will be from state (or state-aligned) actors. Then will follow a period of widespread piracy. Then, potentially after prolonged conflict, the off-world sites will by and large break off into their own polities, at which point the piracy will mostly die out. Either that or, it may turn out we can only sustain a significant population / project significant power from Earth.
Agreed. You see how quickly it’s going away once the possibility exists. It doesn’t…yet. Oh, I think a return to the Moon and a Lunar orbiting space station are going to happen fairly soon. And a base is probably in the cards for the 2030’s, either from the US and/or China/Russia, who both claim they are doing it in that time frame. But with NASA actively looking to get out of the space station business and actively trying to get private companies to step up (basically, what they do with SpaceX…give us a ride to orbit and we’ll give you money, or put up a space station and we’ll pay to use it) it’s only a matter of time. Already satellite companies are setting a price point for refueling, and eventually that will become feasible…I know at least 2 or 3 companies that are looking into automated systems that could harvest water ice on the Moon, refill tanks, go into orbit, rendezvous with a satellite, refuel it, then head back and do it all over again. The amount of delta-V needed to get off the Moons surface is much less than the Earth, so if you could automate the process and use essentially drones (all big ifs, but it’s already being looked at) you could make money doing this. And that’s not even the tip of the iceberg, pardon the pun. Water is going to be like gold in space, especially if you don’t have to lug it off the Earth and into orbit.
Probably. The US seems to be the only country who is really pushing the private industry to space as a service angle anyway, so far at least. And I think it’s a brilliant way for NASA to save it’s money for the real mission critical things they want to do.
Well, I hope not, but it does seem like this is the most likely outcome of the current way things are.
Well, you could ask Canada to police the Final Frontier for you. It’s been often mentioned that when the US wanted to expand west, they just let anyone who wanted to move there, and the police followed afterwards, while in Canada, we created the Northwest Mounted Police, and sent them in first. I sure wouldn’t mind being a Space Cop!
If a conflict happens, it will be likely be over some space resource that is localized yet valuable.
For example, imagine if China or Russia plants a flag on 61 Psyche, then installs some kind of missile system that will target anyone else approaching, and tells the world that the several quadrillion dollars of metals are theirs and no one else can have them.
Until there is something valuable to protect, any agreements we come up
up with for resource sharing are useless. If a nation desperately needs a resource, they aren’t going to let some old treaty signed when no one thought space was important stop them from grabbing it.
No, I don’t think we have to worry about space invasions of bases. But scarce resources exist in space - for example, the rim of Shackleton crater is a uniquely valuable place on the moon that might be contentious. Or perhaps a lava tube with something valuable about it, or some particularly high concentration of thorium or helium-3 in the future.
Another possibility for conflict could arise if some group or country does something that endangers others. For example, landing a really heavy rocket conventionally on the moon could cause regolith dust to be blown all the way around the circumference. That could play havoc with other bases, dirty telescope mirrors, whatever. We’ve already seen a bit of this with the Indian ASAT test which causes a lot of debris that could eventually be a danger to other satellites.
Whatever conflicts might develop in space in the future are probably not even on our radar yet.
I disagree, I think space-ports would be one of the first resources worth fighting over. Fuel and such, especially in the early days, will have to be manufactured or supplied from Earth. Setting up a functional space-port would extend a craft’s range considerably, but would take a lot of investment. It doesn’t even take weapons to start a conflict, just a refusal to allow certain ships to use the port.
Except that in the early days when this would matter most, space-based ports would be some of the most delicate ports ever built. Even a minor skirmish could potentially destroy the whole place.
I suspect that, if a “war for the ports” ever really becomes a possibility, we’d be more likely to see such ports declare themselves a Free Port, where any ship that can pay would be refueled. Make yourself so valuable to everyone that no one wants to risk destroying you.
Heh. I’ve never even heard of those books. Have you read them? Are they any good?
Anyway, I was actually thinking of this:
There are a number of places with highly concentrated minerals on the Moon. And of course ice in the permanently shadowed craters coukd be the most valuable of all, as it could lower the cost of space travel and enable large-scale habitation off-Earth
Also, meteorite prospecting could be a thing. Meteors don’t burn up before they hit the moon, so all those sweet resources could be just there for the taking. The central peaks of large craters are suspected to contain pieces of whatever object caused the crater. Who knows, we could find a mountain full of platinum on the Moon.
Discoveries like that could cause some friction if there isn’t enough real estate for everyone to stake a claim.
Well, it’s a mid-50s kids space opera story, but I re-read it quite recently, and it’s still fun. Quite the Cold War feeling about it. My dad had an old physical copy when I was growing up which is when I first read it, but you can get it online now.
There’s one point where the “Good Guys” blatantly exploit the rules regarding saving derelict ships in space to screw over the Bad Guys, but of course that’s all right because they’re the Good Guys. So that gives you some idea of what it’s like
Destroying a space station would be trivially easy and impossible to prevent. Just fly a missile in an intersecting orbit and throw a bag of gravel at it. They’d never see it coming, would have no way to deflect or stop it if they did, and a tock hitting a station at 20,000 mph would ruin their whole day. Or just fire any missile at it. Near-peer nations and a number of corporations already have this capability.
Given the asymmetry between the cost of building and maintaining a space station and the ease with which it could be destroyed, another deterrant is needed. I could see a new treaty in the future which declares that any attack on an orbital asset will be considered an act of war and be met with instant and severe reprisal.
A more serious book recommendation would be this one:
To illustrate this potential, Lewis includes an order-of-magnitude estimate of the economic value of the smallest known metallic ( M-type ) near-Earth asteroid: 3554 Amun. With its diameter of 2 kilometers and assumed composition similar to typical iron-type meteorites, he calculated a mass of 3×1010 (30 billion) tons and a 1996 market value of $8 trillion for its iron and nickel alone, another $6 trillion for its cobalt, and $6 trillion more for its platinum-group metals.[1]: 112 (Of course these numerical values must not be taken too seriously, partly due to the large variations in commodity prices with time, and even more because of the great impact on market prices such huge quantities of materials—especially precious materials—would inevitably have. They merely serve to suggest that the economic benefits of obtaining such enormous resources would probably far exceed the costs involved in accessing them.)
This is the gripping hand of space resources. If we ever develop the technology to actually mine asteroids, the resources are so plentiful that they’ll completely rewrite the entire economy.
Near-Earth asteroids, or NEAs, are asteroids that have orbits that pass close to that of Earth. Asteroids that actually cross Earth’s orbital path are known as Earth-crossers . As of June 2016, 14,464 near-Earth asteroids are known[30] and approximately 900–1,000 have a diameter of over one kilometer.
That’s just a metric shit-ton of stuff to work with. It will be some time before we really need to worry about claim-jumping. I’d be more worried about space piracy myself, but even that might not be worth it if the price of gold collapses.
