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

On 4/7/14 3:01 PM, Al Globus wrote:

> Some day there will be lots of people in space and there will be
> competition for material resources. Then we will need property
> rights. But right now that is not the situation. The situation is
> that nothing is there. Nothing. Anyone (who can pull it off) can go
> out and get de facto control of any heavenly body or at least part
> of one. In fact, that is exactly what the Apollo program did, albeit
> for extremely limited times.

It's (obviously) not true that nothing is there. There is a great deal
of territory there, each bit of it unique in some way.

It is true that no*body* is there, yet. Your argument seems to be that
we shouldn't establish any legal regime for property rights until we
already have people occupying it.

But that seems quite counterproductive to me. Occupation is a very
substantial investment; this will always be true for the early settlers,
whenever that happens, because it's mainly through volume that costs
will come down. But investment requires investors, and investors want
as much certainty as they can get. Give them a gray, ill-defined,
we'll-make-it-up-as-we-go-along situation, and they will find more
sensible places to put their money elsewhere.

Conversely, give them clear criteria by which they can make a claim, and
investment will appear much sooner.

> I think space law needs to be based on space reality. It does not
> necessarily need to look like terrestrial law, and what works here
> may not work well out there.

...Oh-kay... was somebody suggesting that it needed to look like
terrestrial law?

It does need to look like *something*, however! Saying "you can't own
it, no matter what" is simply saying "don't bother attempting to develop
cislunar space." In such a climate, I would predict decades of not much
happening in space at all. Why, it could be 50 years after the Apollo
program, and we still wouldn't have any commercial presence on the Moon.
Indeed, that's what we have, and that's what happened. We've tried
that, it hasn't worked; I don't see how anybody who actually wants to
see space development could argue that we should continue in the same way.

But saying "maybe you can own it, someday, by some means we refuse to
define now, but I'm sure we'll work out the details after you pour
billions into territory you may or may not get to keep" isn't much better.

> I will sell you 50 acres of the Moon, right now. Send me a check for
> $1,000 and tell me where you want your acres.

You have no basis for such a claim. And that's the whole point. Show
me a basis for ownership legally recognized by at least the U.S., and
then we can do business. (If it's also recognized by China, so much the
better, since if we don't step up soon, it's likely to be China who
takes over the Moon anyway.)

Best,
- Joe