The moon is not Antarctica.
Many of the “rocks have rights” crowd would like it to be, though. One of the problems with the Outer Space Treaty was that it was modeled on the Antarctic Treaty.
[Update a few minutes later]
Oh, Paul, please:
With launch costs of thousands of dollars per pound (and unlikely to come down significantly for the foreseeable future)
They are likely to come down to hundreds, or tens of dollars per pound within a decade, now that we have some actual competition and innovation happening in the industry.
I am going to do the definitive Environmental Impactact Statemnt for Luna right here and now:
“It is self-evident that no human activiticy can negatively impact a planetary body that does not possess any native lifeforms. Therefore, the envronmental impact of any and all past, present and future human lunar activities is assessed at zero.”
bookmark it, remember it, reference it.
I agree with Leland. I’m adding it to my charter.
Mars is wet. Compared to the moon it’s sopping wet: the atmospheric humidity is 100% and the salts on its surface are hydrates. That surface is covered with trillions upon trillions of identical tiny balls. Are you willing to take the bet that those aren’t small sea creatures that rolled up when it suddenly dried out?
Don’t play their game by their rules.
Don’t play their game by their rules.
Always good advice. Actually, rules themselves are the problem since they can never anticipate all contingencies (that’s before adding in Godel.)
Ed, ya gotta stop watching that Red Planet movie. Water beetles aren’t going to supply us with air.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1709143/
One of the problems with nonsensical regulatory proposals like this is that they increase the incentives to break laws. Obviously, no one is going to go to the Moon now for any reason, but down the road, such regulations would keep out legitimate activities while providing a harbor for the illegitimate. If I’m running a space pirate outpost or slave trading ring on the Moon, who’s going to do anything about it? If there’s nothing legal on the Moon, where’s the UN (assuming they magically got competent) going to get the infrastructure and logistics to police the surface of the Moon?
I expect that the moment Antarctica is really valuable the Antarctic Treaty will be thrown away, especially now that there’s no USSR and Russia isn’t in a position to want to start a nuclear war over it.
Treaties are things states obey when it’s seen as more valuable to obey them than to discard them.
(It might be nice if we lived in a world where they were more, but we don’t – we live in Clausewitz’s world and almost certainly always will.)
Veronique seems to be a true member of the 1%. She has a science degree from Yale, but works as a freelance journalist living in NYC. So she has an expensive education living in an expensive town with no clear signs of a significant income. All thus while writing circular logic that we should preserve the original moon landing footprints in such a way no one could ever see the preservation. This is predicated on the footprints still existing to be preserved, which is doubtful. It’s doubtful Neil and Buzz made sure never to step on Neil’s first print. And it assumes the blast from take off didn’t cover the prints.
Of course the best way to protect the moon us to simply create artificial barriers to getting there, which is something easy enought to do if you have the wealth and resources to erect barriers to prevent others from gaining what you neither need nor want. This is what Veronique is proposing to do. And really there is a movement bigger than her to do this, so it’s not an idle threat.
BTW, We should call the first comment “Puckett’s Law of Celestrial Environmental Impact”
This crap is exactly why precedents need to be established because the raw fact is force is the only law and he that gets there firstest with the mostest wins.
How does anybody have jurisdiction over anything? By taking it. Law follows. The U.N. has been maneuvering since forever to have jurisdiction. Do nothing and they will get it. That would be a sad day for life in the universe.
Humans have always had the right to claim by possession. If enough of them do it in an orderly manner even all the kings of the earth (what? You don’t think Obama considers himself that low?) would be powerless to overrule that.
They will get there little roped off pieces regardless. But it’s too valuable to real individual people to allow them to rope off everything. They have no more right to any piece of rock floating past the earth than any exoplanet that’s been discovered. The people that risk their lives to go and possess are the ones with the right and they will be raising the wealth of all humanity rather than hiding it in some warehouse for nobody to touch (which is just another example of the immorality of most government actions.)
Not a single gram of dust has to be brought back to the earth for the entire world to have access to all the wealth in the solar system. Anybody that doesn’t understand that doesn’t understand that green paper they use to buy bread.* But I guarantee if we do exploit the wealth of the universe, politicians will be their to claim they invented it.
All economics is local. It happens (among other things) when two people trade. Even if they happen to be at the far ends of the universe from each other (speed of light causes some complications, but you know what I mean.)
You can have any number of reasons for not liking my settlement plan. But even if it doesn’t work exactly the way I’ve claimed it is still the right thing to do. We need to do it while space is still unimportant. If we wait it could be too late. You know the lawyers are just waiting (or not waiting) to tell us all what’s for our own good. We have a chance to fix the mistakes our founders made in underestimating the evils of government and those that want power.
* The banking system started with paper receipts for gold. It doesn’t matter where that gold is stored. Stock certificates have value. It doesn’t matter where the assets of that company are put to use. I know I’m singing to the choir here.
Rand,
I wish I shared your optimism about the near-term trajectory of launch prices to orbit. While I agree that there’s no physical reason the prices can’t come down to the range you’re talking about, the last 17yrs of following this industry hasn’t left me optimistic about near-term rapid change. I think we’ll get there, but the constraints on the various players are such that I wouldn’t be surprised if it took a long time. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it required most of the generation that saw Apollo dieing off first.
~Jon
But Jon, I don’t wanna die off… i don wanna. Wah!
The only thing that will change that is not to let government rule. That’s what happened when Elon called their bluff and said “then I might not bid on it.” he won short term. We just need to be consistent.
Leaving aside Jon’s hint of blood lust against the greatest generation of aerospace engineers, the two things that will be necessary for launch costs to start down is an increasing demand for launches coupled with the growth of providers willing to compete to service that demand without their hands out for government subsidies. It has nothing to do with Apollo veterans and more to do with the Solyndra approach to space commercialization.
Mark,
Blood lust? Seriously? I know that you like playing pop-psychologists, but you really shouldn’t give up your day job. I was just channeling Max Plank’s comment that “Science progresses one funeral at a time”. The point merely being that often false paradigms get so much buy-in by a generation that the truth’s only hope is to outlast the stupidity.
I agree completely that competition and bigger markets are important for progress in launch costs. I just don’t think that your usual solutions to said problem will actually solve them. I wasn’t expressing hope that you’d all die-off so much as cynicism that things will work out while the levers of power are controlled by people with so much faith in the power of technocratic central planning. There are plenty of companies trying to make things work via primarily market approaches, but with such blatant hostility from tools in Congress, I’m not optimistic we’ll make it out of our corner of the “flight rate/flight cost” chart anytime soon.
Thanks for the laugh though. 🙂
~Jon
So you have no problem advocating the spending of many billions of dollars on a government paper rocket that won’t do much for a decade – if ever. But actual federal government spending on real commercial launch that works for legitimate needs (here, the supplying of the ISS) is “Solyndra spending”? I detect a double standard.
Im afraid that the dreamed of dollar figures for pound to orbit will be long eaten by inflation by the time anything even slightly higher flight rate gets flying.
And there isn’t that much competition happening in any case that was not happening a decade ago. In many ways, there is less of it, actually. And there is still far less competition now than there was before the big aerospace industry consolidations, IMO.
I wish folks would learn to do some research. The Antarctic Treaty did NOT ban mining it Antarctica, it was the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection that created the ban on mining.
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_antarctica/geopolitical/environmental_issues/mining.php
And note that the trigger was the nations involved trying to work out an agreement on mining rights in Antarctic. A similar move to recreate mining rights to the ocean floor in the 1960’s sparked the series of discussion that results in the Law of the Sea Treaty. This is why I see proposals and call for creating Lunar real property rights as being so dangerous, It was just such ill thought out attempts to create real property rights for mining firms in Antarctica and on the Sea Floor that created the restrictions on bans on mining there.
The current legal regime, where if you pick up a rock on the Moon, it belongs to you, is more than sufficient for mining the Moon for resources to develop space. Folks should leave well enough alone without trying to export legal schemes based on the unique environment of Earth into space.
The Antarctic Treaty did NOT ban mining it Antarctica
Who said it did?
Your comments might be more useful if they were in response to things that people actually write.
Rand,
You know I am really starting to worry about you. You used to be a lot more rational before Obama was elected President. Now you are just becoming a zealot.
Another non-sequitur. Why am am I unshocked?
I’m going to continue to ignore idiotic non-sequiturs. As will most other commenters.
If/when you decide to actually post an on-topic comment, try to flag it so we might pay attention.
Rand,
Given the real impact of making the Moon a world heritage site would be the ban on mining it was on topic. But then you would need to understand what a world heritage site is to understand. That is the problem with becoming a zealot, you stop seeing the forest because of you are focused on a specific tree.
OK, I guess I will go to my grave waiting for you to write something that bears on anything I actually wrote.
Anyone remember the loons who protested the plans to impact a Centaur upper stage on the Moon, calling it an “Unfriendly act?” or “Act of war”?” I wonder where they think all those craters came from… but they are probably okay with that, due to it being “natural”.
I’d probably be in favor of designating lunar historical sites (Such as the Apollo 11 landing site) as protected, but that’s about it. I have reservations of going even that far, due to the potential for abuse by the “rocks have rights” nuts.
I have nightmare visions of a large asteroid on a collision course with Earth being found, say 20 years from impact. We could stop it, but the loons delay us, due to their horror at harming it (Or violating its rights)… and they delay us so long that it’s too late to divert it.
Apollo 11– Much better would be for someone to go up there (or send some rover surrogates) and fence the area off and then claim what’s inside the fence is private property. Posted: Keep Out. Why do some people believe that preservation of historic sites can only be done by gov’t?
(By the way, why aren’t there any rovers on the moon? You’d think that someone could spend a few million dollars and send some that way. With the short light-lag, they’d wouldn’t need much, if any, automation, and just enough insulation to survive a couple of weeks of darkness. Sell the right to drive a lunar rover for an hour. Seems like a business opportunity there.)
That’s a very good point; if it’s protected, it’s protected, and frankly, I’d trust a private entity a lot more than government to actually do a competent job.
I’m told that’s dangerously close to a good idea.
Arizona CJ,
Yes, the environmentalists are always looking for issues, it how they are able to fund their lifestyle, which is why its important not to give them one, Those space advocates who keep calling for real property rights on space are just playing into their hands by creating an unnecessary issue.
The artifacts of the Apollo missions are already protected by virtual of being the property of the U.S. government. If someone actually went there and distributed, or salvaged them like in the Old Andy Griffith series “Salvage One” they would be quickly prosecuted for theft of federal property. If a foreign country were to do so it would be in violation of the OST.
I’d like to see those first footprints preserved as well, but I do see your point. Plus, it will be a long time indeed before real protection is needed.
In a sane world, the enviros would have no say at all in lunar issues. But we don’t live in such a place.
Unless you get there firstest with the mostest. Amish on mars! Let the enviro wacko shunning begin!
hands out for government subsidies
Do you automatically become one of these subsidy suckers [SS] if you happen to have an item the government wants to buy? Don’t answer Mark, this is rhetorical.
I usually classify the SS as those with cost plus government contracts. You wouldn’t be painting with too wide a brush would you? (Not rhetorical.)
I thought blood lust was a Klingon trait? (This is a joke Mark; lame, but none-the-less.)
Well, the good news is that the Environmental Impact Statement would be pretty short:
Air pollution – zero (no air)
Water pollution – zero (no water)
Noise pollution – zero (no sound)
Endangered species – zero (no species)
Let the mining begin!
Bill,
Actually the Moon does have a atmosphere, that is what LADEE is all about.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LADEE/news/lunar-atmosphere.html
Careful, you’re putting those mining companies into the position of having to prove a negative before they can start mining.
As Admiral Fishhead said, “It’s a trap!”
Even as late as the sixties we had people that could do that we can’t even dream of doing today (too risky.) Those people seem quite scarce today. Remember the words of Admiral Grace Hopper, “Better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.”
We have innate rights within ourselves (or were our founders fantasizing?) We don’t even need to ask forgiveness. Most of us lack the resources because space costs may come down but they will always be high. We need to take risks and embrace a plan that works. Waiting for better weather may lose the game entirely (I’m not talking about weather.)
No matter where you want to go it starts with a ship in orbit. Why can’t we all get behind that? This doesn’t require anything beyond current launchers. We don’t even have to wait for the FH. The ship the FH could put in orbit requires too much fuel to go anywhere, but we could still put a low mass, high volume ship in orbit with what we have today. It needs shakedown cruises and multiple refuelings before we take it anywhere beyond lunar space anyway. Experience comes from doing.
Ken,
Those folks are still around, they just saw other areas as being more profitable for their efforts. Adventure tourism and virtual worlds are good examples.
When there is money to be made in space other than as a government contractor or contractor to one of the telecommunication giants they will return.
Well, humans are what they are. However, I definitely see an overall pattern that is not reassuring. They never would have elected an incompetent like Obama in the 60s even thought the cultural guilt was the same.
The antarctica comparison has always struck me as being a bit weird. Antarctica is an extremely hostile place, most people there are cutoff for months at a time. And by law most commercial activities there are impossible. And yet thousands of people live there on several different bases, and the pace of activities there has been increasing rapidly over time. Moreover, many people have visited antarctica, some for tourism and some for other reasons. I personally know at least 2 people who have been to antarctica, for example.
So if antarctic exploration is some sort of model for Mars, then we should expect thousands of people living on Mars in the next few decades.
More to the point, Antarctica was commercial at the start. Nathanial Palmer who discovered it in 1820 wasn’t an explorer, just your typical New England sealer looking for a way to get rich. And Antarctica was the basis for a number of fortunes in seals and whaling before both industries declined in the early 20th Century. It was only after the commercial interests that explorers and then scientists showed up.
I once tried to envision a way for a probe to bring back an Apollo footprint. Probe would approach footprint, place box over it (surrounding all but underneath), release a gel that would harden over footprint w/o disturbing it, slide plate underneath to completely close box, return to lunar lander after gel hardens. What do you think one of those could get on eBay?
She argues that “because the Moon was part of Earth until 4.5 billion years ago” (a proposition not yet established), the United Nations should have legal sovereignty over its use and disposition.
If the Moon broke away from Earth 4.5 billion years ago in a bid for freedom and sovereignty, any attempt by the UN to reclaim it is colonialism, pure and simple. Long Live the Lunar Rebellion!
Logically then, since all matter started at the big bang, we should just hand the keys to everything to our betters now. It’s for our own good really. Like Obama’s dad said, paraphrased: “There’s no reason we shouldn’t tax 100% because we’ll give you what you need.”
Be good little sheople.
And that statement doesn’t even correspond to science’s best guess about the formation of the Moon, in the first place. Best guess at the moment is that the Moon was formed when the proto-Earth was hit by something about the size of Mars; this means that quite a lot of the Moon originated in another planet altogether, which no longer exists.
It can’t even really be said that the Moon is a satellite of Earth in quite the same way as the moons of the other planets are satellites of their primaries; the gravity of Earth is not the dominant factor in the orbit of the Moon. IIRC, Earth’s gravity on the Moon is about half that of the Sun.
Heck, Asimov pointed that one out in a popular science article about fifty years ago!
Yes, technically the Earth-Moon is a double planet system since the Moon’s orbit is always
convex to the Sun. The Moon going around the Earth is actually an illusion, in really the Earth and Moon weave around a center of gravity which orbits the Sun. This article has a good explanation and diagrams of the orbital relationship between the Earth, Moon and Sun.
http://www.eearthk.com/Articles08.html
Oops, that is the wrong link. This Wired Article has the diagram I mentioned.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/12/does-the-moon-orbit-the-sun-or-the-earth/