4 thoughts on “My Space Show Interview Last Night”
David must have gotten really burned by a transcript incident. Sounds like an interesting show.
I don’t know what guest it was, but they made a big stink about being misquoted by someone and Dave saw that this could drive off future guests. He says that prohibition at the start of every show, but he knows he can’t really enforce it.
This is a very tricky topic to step through, in part because many of those in the space advocacy community really don’t understand all of the issues involved with real estate rights or why they are needed in space.
The issue of real estate rights does fold into space governance though. In other words, what law is enforced when you are in space.
The Outer Space Treaty covers that to a small extent. For example, if you commit a homicide on the International Space Station, you will be tried by the laws of whatever module on the ISS where the incident happened (Japanese, Russian, or American law… depending on where it happened). That is ugly, but the legal precedent is there in the treaty. That issue becomes a whole lot more vague if the “crime” happens in Shackleton Crater on the Moon though.
Real estate rights are ultimately tied to local governance…. something my local municipal council constantly reminds me about when the property tax bill comes due every year. If you listen to discussions for municipal office or attend a municipal council meeting, it is rare if you don’t hear proposals that have a justification around raising property values.
Local governance doesn’t imply any claim of national sovereignty by a nation on the Earth… which may even be a good thing too. It implies local sovereignty and the whole mess of “independence movements” implied in most science fiction literature as moot, but it does open up some interesting concepts for competition in space between various space faring nations and perhaps even countries who don’t (at the moment) have an interest in space.
A legitimate reason to worry about these issues it to avoid sparking a world war over the exploitation of space based resources. Ultimately that is what the Outer Space Treaty was trying to avoid, even though there were some other unfortunate consequences.
Robert,
What space folks also forget is that the senior diplomats who negotiated the OST were probably just starting their career, or worked for diplomats who did, at the Paris Peace talks following World War I when the Ottoman and German Empires were divided up by the winners, the former leading to the mess that continues to this day in the Middle East. Their would have also been institutional memory of the European land grab in Africa 60-70 years before (late 1800’s) that led to the mess Africa was turning into in the 1960’s and still is today. A desire to avoid both in regards to space were probably an unstated fear during the negotiations.
David must have gotten really burned by a transcript incident. Sounds like an interesting show.
I don’t know what guest it was, but they made a big stink about being misquoted by someone and Dave saw that this could drive off future guests. He says that prohibition at the start of every show, but he knows he can’t really enforce it.
This is a very tricky topic to step through, in part because many of those in the space advocacy community really don’t understand all of the issues involved with real estate rights or why they are needed in space.
The issue of real estate rights does fold into space governance though. In other words, what law is enforced when you are in space.
The Outer Space Treaty covers that to a small extent. For example, if you commit a homicide on the International Space Station, you will be tried by the laws of whatever module on the ISS where the incident happened (Japanese, Russian, or American law… depending on where it happened). That is ugly, but the legal precedent is there in the treaty. That issue becomes a whole lot more vague if the “crime” happens in Shackleton Crater on the Moon though.
Real estate rights are ultimately tied to local governance…. something my local municipal council constantly reminds me about when the property tax bill comes due every year. If you listen to discussions for municipal office or attend a municipal council meeting, it is rare if you don’t hear proposals that have a justification around raising property values.
Local governance doesn’t imply any claim of national sovereignty by a nation on the Earth… which may even be a good thing too. It implies local sovereignty and the whole mess of “independence movements” implied in most science fiction literature as moot, but it does open up some interesting concepts for competition in space between various space faring nations and perhaps even countries who don’t (at the moment) have an interest in space.
A legitimate reason to worry about these issues it to avoid sparking a world war over the exploitation of space based resources. Ultimately that is what the Outer Space Treaty was trying to avoid, even though there were some other unfortunate consequences.
Robert,
What space folks also forget is that the senior diplomats who negotiated the OST were probably just starting their career, or worked for diplomats who did, at the Paris Peace talks following World War I when the Ottoman and German Empires were divided up by the winners, the former leading to the mess that continues to this day in the Middle East. Their would have also been institutional memory of the European land grab in Africa 60-70 years before (late 1800’s) that led to the mess Africa was turning into in the 1960’s and still is today. A desire to avoid both in regards to space were probably an unstated fear during the negotiations.