April 30 , 2012: the first day that I heard a space lawyer talk about the legal complications of asteroid mining not in a science fiction movie or at a futurist conference but in a regular news item about potential current(ish) events.
On Tuesday, plans were unveiled for Planetary Resources Inc., a company founded by Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson and financed by Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page and chairman Eric Schmidt. Planetary Resources expects to launch robotic prospectors within two years.
[…]If those daring plans succeed, von der Dunk said, it would create its fair share of confusion about mining rights in space – from who owns what to how business interests beyond Earth’s orbit would be specifically protected.
[…]He cited the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which forms the basis of international space law and to which all space-faring nations are a party. The treaty says that outer space constitutes a “global commons.”
[…]The problem, von der Dunk said, is that specific international legal parameters have not been sufficiently established to protect legitimate public or private concerns beyond very general, vague considerations.
“This prompts several questions: What rights of protection would the mining company have against others wishing to ‘intrude,’ given that a global commons is in a principled fashion open to everyone?” Von der Dunk said. “And, who is going to be held liable – and to what extent – when mining activities cause damage to other space activities or are harmed by them?”
Gonna mark my calendar for this one.
Zifnab25
Well, it does raise some interesting questions. I don’t know how miners plan to bring their resources back down to earth. But I’m willing to bet it involves a loud crash. If they mine asteroids in any way similar to how they mine coal, they’re going to make a mess.
Spaghetti Lee
Ah, whatever. The wingnuts will probably scream for the industry to be free of government meddling, and a combination of unsafe equipment and incompetent contractors will send an asteroid hurtling towards downtown Calcutta.
I’m not optimistic about technology, as a rule.
Tim F.
@efgoldman: People cost too much. Robot Sean Connery will watch over robot miners while other robots bring the goods back. If all that works then eventually we will bow to the obvious economic advantage of sending up robots that can fix and build more robots while out there, and then it’s a matter of time before they decide to check out the stars on their own.
@Zifnab25: More likely a loud splash.
redshirt
And so my dreams of owning a space trucking franchise grow ever closer…
MobiusKlein
Who has jurisdiction to prosecute Space Piracy?
Slugger
I am starting a company to recover diamonds from Venus. It has the potential to make billions! I just need some start-up money. Don’t let this pass you by.
Hunter Gathers
@Slugger:
Take Romney’s advice and ask your parents.
Loneoak
“International space law” sounds awfully like Charlie’s “bird law.”
Yutsano
@MobiusKlein:
Space Marines. It’s why they were founded after all.
priscianusjr
This sounds like something Newt Gingrich would be promoting.
“plans to launch robotic prospectors”. Launch them to where?
To me, the relevant precedents would be the early papal bulls and, in Protestant countries, especially England and the Netherlands, chartered companies, authorizing exploration and conquest for their respective sovereigns.
But for some reason I can’t take this seriously. I hope the judge throws it out.
PeakVT
Planetary Resources expects to launch robotic prospectors within two years.
If rich people want to burn their money on vanity projects, I certainly won’t stop them. But why not try to finance the world’s largest wind farm, or fund development of a commercial MSR, or something else down here on ye olde planet Earth? We have a lot of problems and running out of iron ore isn’t close the top of the list at all.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
OT: Kos’s plan to make his site completely irrelevant grows ever closer: Slinkerwink has been banned for commenting on a pie fight. I’m pretty sure I only agreed with her about half the time, but Kos seems to have zero clue how to handle things now.
kindness
In true sci-fi the asteroids would be smelted in outer space. Lotta technology to go to get there though.
Advantages though would be no air pollution. Alloys would meld better in zero g. Detriments: would probably need a plutonium sodium reactor to power it though, unless we get a whole lot better at solar or figure out fusion.
Richard
It just seems way, way too early for space mining to be even remotely practical.
To send a payload up into low Earth orbit on the Space Shuttle was comparable to the price of gold into terms of cost per unit weight.
What they intend to bring back from the Moon or asteroids would have to be an extremely valuable commodity indeed in order for this not to be science fiction.
Richard
It just seems way, way too early for space mining to be even remotely practical.
To send a payload up into low Earth orbit on the Space Shuttle was comparable to the price of gold into terms of cost per unit weight.
What they intend to bring back from the Moon or asteroids would have to be an extremely valuable commodity indeed in order for this not to be science fiction.
redshirt
This should be a straightforward pursuit, in my opinion. It’s simple: Head to a Lagrange Point, find all the asteroids and materials you want without expending much energy at all in controlling the asteroid. No need for telescopes, or intensive capture procedures. After all, shipping the stuff back is easy. Controlling the asteroid is the hard part. And it’s much easier in the LP’s, since everything is mostly stationary.
redshirt
This should be a straightforward pursuit, in my opinion. It’s simple: Head to a Lagrange Point, find all the asteroids and materials you want without expending much energy at all in controlling the asteroid. No need for telescopes, or intensive capture procedures. After all, shipping the stuff back is easy. Controlling the asteroid is the hard part. And it’s much easier in the LP’s, since everything is mostly stationary.
Redshift
Well, *I* agree that it’s cool.
MikeJ
The law talk is all bullshit. Get gold on the ground and all that treaty stuff is toast. If I’ve got it, people will want to buy it, and transactions will happen.
Redshift
@Richard: Some of the things they’re proposing to produce are water and rocket fuel. In other words, things that it’s valuable to avoid taking up, rather than things that it’s valuable to bring down.
PeakVT
@redshirt: Problem: there aren’t any natural bodies at any of the Earth-Moon or Earth-Sun Lagrange points (or Venus-Sun, or Mars-Sun). The nearest are at the Jupiter-Sun L4 and L5 points, which are a lot farther away than the Asteroid Belt.
VincentN
While that’s probably true, it’s not like it’s going to get more practical simply by waiting around for it to get more practical. Somebody has to be the first person to attempt it.
We would have never gotten to the Moon if we had just given up because we were convinced that our tech base wasn’t anyway near ready for such a task.
Ken
the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which forms the basis of international space law and to which all space-faring nations are a party
I’m sensing another ship-registration revenue stream for Panama or Liberia. Headquarter the corporation in Bermuda and bank in the Caymans, and they should have time enough to tow Vesta into Earth orbit before the legal situation is straightened out.
PIGL
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): yup….he’s completely insufferable now.
Suffern ACE
Meh. It’s like throwing money down a black hole.
tkogrumpy
I’m no rocket scientist, but I know physics, and I know economics, and they both tell me this is bullshit.
tkogrumpy
@VincentN: We went to the moon as an ego trip and damn the cost, mining an asteroid or any other cockamamie scheme has to be justified in dollars. not gonna happen.
Mino
Tim, have you heard any discussion of the use of robots to raise embryos shipped to a habitable planet? Or just robo-manufacturing DNA proteins on distant planets? Seems a fascinating solution to our lack of faster-than-light.
Mino
@PeakVT: I think it’s rare earth ores they are after.
Dream On
If it is illegal to mine in Antarctica, I don’t see why we should give a free pass for asteroid mining. (Although I admit there are likely no penguins in space…)
someguy
@Dream On:
Yeah, we wouldn’t want mining to fuck up the valuable space ecosphere and endanger all the life on those asteroids.
Marshall
I am not a lawyer, but I am interested in this, and have read the Outer Space Treaty, which it sounds like Mr. von der Dunk has not. It is very clear on damages, in Article 7
So, you break it, you pay for it, there as well as here.
Now, as far as mining, I would view outer space as basically like the open seas before the Law of the Sea Treaty, except that (Article III)
While countries cannot claim asteroids as their own territory there is nothing to prevent mining – it talks above “activities” and “use” of outer space. There is language to prevent interference from others – and, by Article 8, your country’s laws apply, even in outer space. Now, it may be that after a few decades of mining there will be a “Law of Outer Space” treaty, but I see nothing in the Outer Space Treaty to prevent all the asteroid mining anyone could want.
Shrillhouse
Great Floyd reference in the title. Such a terrific song…
RSA
@Zifnab25:
The newly formed K-T Boundary Mining Co. is willing to take that risk.
pluege
still with the same old resource exploitation crap. You’d think at least Google big wigs would be beyond it – it being so 19th century and all. But stupid is as stupid does and it goes to show how mentally pedestrian and unenlightened society’s icons are. So very sad they can’t think of anything better to do with their billions than play a 200 year old exploitation game.
dmsilev
@Mino: Doubt it. Despite the name, rare earths aren’t all that rare here; the current shortages are due largely to increasing demand on a timescale faster than what is needed to find new sources or reopen previously shuttered mines.
Given how expensive space-anything is, there aren’t many things which could be profitably mined with our current technology. Helium 3, maybe. Platinum-group metals. Not sure what else.
redshirt
@PeakVT: Are you sure? I would assume there are asteroids in Earth’s Lagrange Points as well. Over billions of years, a few rocks would have drifted into the Points and there remained. In fact, I would imagine there is all sorts of materials gathered in Earth’s LP’s.
We should be sending robotic probes to all 5 Points in order to fully determine what’s there. I bet, for example, there’s plenty of water.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@dmsilev:
Water.
(I posted on this, briefly, on my own little site).
Bet the team is focused on water, too, behind closed doors… but it’s probably difficult to get venture capitalists excited about water, so they’re pushing the “rare earths!” aspect.
It currently costs $20,000 to $85,000/gal to launch water into orbit (depending on whose papers you read). So after some technology development it really does start to become cost-effective to move small (ie school-bus sized) comets or water-laden asteroids into orbit and extract it up there. Any rare earths or other metals extracted as well are simply useful by-products.
BTW most analysts tend to miss the point: We’re sitting at the bottom of a deep gravity well. The point is to exploit space resources in space, to minimize launch costs. Find your own water. Make your own fuel. Grow your own food. Eventually, manufacture what you need.
To the naysayers, I’ll just say this: We were talking about ancestry in one of the other threads below. If you’re an American of European descent (just for example), then your ancestors colonized Europe when it was covered with an ice sheet two miles thick, with little more than stone tools, skins and fire. Much later, other ancestors spent 2-3 months cooped up on a ship to cross the Atlantic.
Yet there’s the moon, only three days away. In 20-30 years, Mars could be as close as 40 days away. And we already know several ways to move small comets/asteroids into any orbit we desire. The only thing holding us back at this point in history are the bankers.
Long term, space colonization is absolutely inevitable. Get used to the idea, and hope you live long enough to see it.