Offworld real estate (was Ethicists Tell NASA...)

On 4/7/14 11:13 AM, Al Globus wrote:

> If you are building orbital settlements, property rights over
> heavenly bodies is a moot point for the settlements themselves. Only
> when doing mining does it become and issue, and the issues are quite
> different than on Earth.

That's true, and I (like most here) agree that orbital settlements are
the sensible way to go, long-term.

However, I do think lunar real estate will have substantial value, for
many reasons. Mining is one; tourism almost certainly another; but I
wouldn't discount manufacturing, agriculture, and even residence as
other uses. Its location right next to Earth means that it will have a
very prized place in the solar system for a long, long time.

> My understanding is that the only real treaty in force over space
> explicitly forbids nation states from claiming lunar or martian
> territory. Thus, governments cannot hand out bits of land as it
> isnt theirs in the first place. Im sure this provision is a
> reaction to the endless wars driven by European claims over
> not-European places.

Yes, and that's what needs to be changed. It wouldn't be hard -- none
of the current space powers (US, Russia, and China) have signed, acceded
to, or ratified the Moon Treaty, which is the one with the "common
heritage of mankind" nonsense. There is still customary law (see
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1954/1 for a good review), but it
wouldn't take a lot of political will to counter that.

In an ideal world, governments (starting with the three spacefaring
nations) would sit down and say, "OK, look, clearly this common heritage
nonsense is holding back development. Let's hammer out the conditions
under which people of any nation can claim ownership, so we can all move
forward."

I would imagine those conditions would be along the lines of "visiting"
(at least with robotic craft) an area, and "improving" it in some way
(e.g., providing reliable communications between Earth and that patch of
land), and perhaps with some requirement to follow up with in-person
visitation within X decades or the claim is lost.

> In any case, for orbital settlements we dont need ownership. We
> just need mining rights. Actually, we dont even need that. We just
> need non-interference. I.e., if you start a mining operation on a
> moon, planet, or small body you dont want someone else coming along
> and getting in the way.

Ugh. Please no -- I live in a state where mining rights (and water
rights, for that matter) are bought and sold completely independent of
land ownership. It's a royal mess. Let's not carry that mess into
space. Buy the land, get everything in it. Want to mine without
buying? Work out a deal with the land owner. But for gunny sacks,
DON'T set up a regime where some company the land owner has never heard
of can show up and say "Hello, we're going to dig up your yard now
because 100 years ago the mining rights to it were sold, and you only
have surface ownership."

> This is unlike Earth where all the land is pre-owned and thus we need
> elaborate property law to adjudicate conflicting claims.

I'm all for keeping the property law simple rather than elaborate! But
I do think that NO law is even worse, for two reasons: first, it will
lead to a lot more conflicts once people start squatting on land without
any clear property law; and second, the uncertainty of it all greatly
inhibits investment.

Right now, if somebody like Dennis Hope says "hey, I own the moon, want
to buy a piece of it?", the potential investor weighs his money against
the risk that Hope's claim will never be validated (which I perceive as
quite high). But if major nations have said "We've agreed this is how
ownership works," then company X can go to investors and say "we're
going to follow the criteria in that treaty to the letter, resulting in
a claim of these Y square kilometers on the Moon," then the investors
need only weigh their money against the expected future value of that
land, and the (much smaller) risk that the claim will be invalidated due
to some change in international law.

> In space,
> there is practically nothing. All that we need legally is the
> assurance that if we start a mining operation no one will come along
> and mess with us which is reasonable since there are lots and lots
> of other unused places to mine. Someday that will change, but right
> now its all we need.

Well, yes, that and something to mine that's worth more than it costs
you to extract it.

That's the great thing about property -- the investment to claim it
could be fairly small, on the order of what people are spending on the
Google Lunar X-Prize now, for a small piece anyway. Multiply this by
many thousands (millions?) to cover the whole Moon, and now you've got
substantial investment by a wide variety of players. That would include
the public, as many of those claims, once successfully made, would be
simply divvied up and resold, until eventually it filters down to small
fry like us who can pay maybe $10000 for a lunar hectare or whatever of
his very own.

Imagine the engagement in space development that would cause -- no
longer abstract, a large number of people would look up in the sky and
say "I own land there," and wonder "when can I go visit it?" Or at the
very least, "Whom can I pay to drop a webcam there so I can keep an eye
on it?" And when a static webcam isn't enough, they'll pay a little
more for ones that can rove around. Or, if they're more serious,
they'll want a minerological survey, whether done from orbit or on the
ground. All sorts of service companies would spring up to serve these
sorts of needs.

Instead of a Space Program, we would have thousands upon thousands of
invested space owners, all with an interest in further developing their
property and seeing its value increase. Comm satellites and towers
would appear; some owners would start getting revenue from their land,
renting out a particularly useful mountain peak for that purpose.
Others would discover they have PGM deposits on their land, and the
value thereof has just gone up accordingly. Others will see an increase
in value just because they got in early, before it was scarce, and hung
on until demand started to outstrip supply. Still others, with a
particularly nice view of Earth or whatever, would start talking to
Bigelow about building a tourist facility.

It's hard for me to imagine how clear property rights could fail to spur
a dramatic increase in private space investment and activity, and
actual, honest-to-goodness development of cislunar space. All for the
relatively modest government investment of getting the diplomats to push
a new treaty through, unleashing the power of the market which is now
almost completely blocked.

Maybe the reason this hasn't happened already is that it seemed too
pie-in-the-sky... but if somebody wins the Lunar X Prize next year, it
may not seem so ridiculous. Maybe that would be the time to push for
it? What do you all think?

Cheers,
- Joe