Audacious Tactics

>
> I can't really see national sovereignty being extended to celestial
> realms. This asteroid belongs to Zimbabwe. This portion of the Moon
> belongs to Slovenia. This arc of the asteroid belt belongs to the
> US.

I think there are good reasons to believe that something along these
lines is exactly what will happen. It makes no sense, but there will be
a perception among third world nations that the developed world is
making a land grab and that by the time the third world is sufficiently
developed to participate all the prime territories will be gone. There
is some basis for this concern, but the most likely solution is to pass
UN resolutions which have the effect of hampering development of ET
resources by anyone. The US could simply ignore such resolutions, but
it will be harder to raise venture capital if there's a perception of
increased risk due to the possibility that every election might sway
the government towards changing policy. Especially in the early phases
of ET resource development the industry won't be employing enough
people to deliver significant numbers of votes, so there is
considerable risk that foreign policy concerns will outweigh space
development concerns.

Some small amount of UN involvement might be better than a go-it-alone
strategy, since that would mitigate the risk associated with ignoring
the UN. Probably the best would be to acknowledge some amount of UN
sovereignty, such as allowing the UN to parcel out ET resources to
individual nations, or payment of a direct tax on profits to the UN
general fund. Both of these have problems, but the problems aren't as
bad as the problems caused by not knowing for sure whether your
property claim is going to be yanked out form under you.

......Andrew