Asteroid use

USAmerica is a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty; which would mean that it
would have to actively repudiate its treaty requirements to support the
nuttier Homesteading claims of groups like the SFF & ProSpace. The absence
of any international support for such probusiness posturing was shown at
last year's UNISPACE conference; where an attempt to get a probusiness
communique from the conference was blocked en mass by everyone else... a
foreshadowing of USAmerica's recent hatchet job at the Amsterdam climate
conference.

Given that our main goal is to develop space missions on a semicommercial
basis & want to actually convince investors that we're thinking about
profits over ideologies, we're ignoring all requests to claim this, that or
the other asteroid as private property; & will restrict ourselves to
claiming limited usage rights only (idiots at SFF conventions going NASA is
the enemy may generate good wrestling style pops; but have real financiers
quietly redlining their projects). Ultimately, though, the celestial body
definition in the Outer Space Treaty is unworkable in a manner not mentioned
by Darren.... technically, any miniscule fragment of space dust is a
celestial body; which supposedly can't be claimed by anyone....

There are a lot of lurks here which can be addressed with wit & subversion;
but that's a different issue.

All the best,
Robert Clements