Coal miners extract coal; elastolytic the diamonds are mined; miners mine the gold; space miners will mine space — and will produce everything from precious metals to compounds that could be spent on rocket fuel. But, as the first three types of “resource extraction”, sky view will face many philosophical, financial and legal complications.
On November 24, President Barack Obama signed the “Act of the competitiveness of the U.S. space law” into law. Among other things (like the fact that now the state will not get SpaceX), it States that any U.S. citizen who will just pick at the asteroid, will be the owner of this pinch.
This law also applies to other celestial bodies, blessed “resources” like the moon, other planets and small celestial bodies, because “resources” is a very vague word. Citizen of the United States — or, more likely, a group of citizens that are part of companies like Planetary Resources or Deep Space Industries — “have, possess, transport, use, or sell” these resources.
The leaders of the two companies in the natural resources on asteroids, which I hope to extract precious metals and water from space rocks, excited by the prospects.
“It is the only major recognition of property rights in history, says Eric Anderson, co-founder and co-Chairman of Planetary Resources (though some would argue). — This law establishes the same favorable conditions, which appeared historically great economy, and will contribute to the sustainable development of the space sphere”.
Rick Tumlinson, Chairman of Deep Space Industries, says the following: “In the future, mankind will look back on this bill and remember it as one of the cornerstones of that open space for people. In the flow of such an abundance of bad news, in the perspective of history it will be a kind of positive movement that will change civilization, and while no one knows when we’ll begin to uncover the riches of the Solar system for the inhabitants of the Earth, this point will be considered as a turning”.
Their joy is not meaningless: without this law they would not be able to make money, if he ventured to go to space rock to extract the titanium. They would not have possessed this metal, so it might not sell. Now. And that’s the key to be a new generation of space business.
Both companies primarily plan to use space resources to build more space stuff, like dwellings for future astronauts, the solar arrays and propellant. They hope to create a solar system in which they will sell the resources to create (or already finished) extraterrestrial hotels, orbital research stations and rockets deep space — from outer space. Some think it’s a market of one trillion dollars.
But if this materializes, the market — and will it be legal even with this act, remains an open question. The market may not materialize until technological opportunity, but this opportunity will not be direct flow of investment without the market.
This is part of why the new act is so important for companies like Deep Space and Planetary Resources. Prior to that, their ability to own specific pieces of space was vague, and the investor could not be sure that he will get the profit from the sale of resources. Now at least they can invest legally, if you’ll believe that someday, this market will exist.
But although this is the first step, it’s not the end of the road.
The international space Treaty, concluded in 1967, forbids any country to have a claim to “sovereign territory” in space. And when the President signed the bill, he explained that a particular asteroid may not be only a piece of his can be your piece if you separate this from a large piece of stone, and if this piece would be considered a “resource”.
In other words, you cannot own an asteroid: that would be illegal under new and old laws — but you can own him a valuable part when it will not be part of the asteroid. It’s a bit confusing (and somewhat contradictory). In addition, the international community has every right not to take the law honest: right now U.S. citizens are the only people entitled to ownership of these resources, while the previous agreement on space assets worldwide.
In addition, it is unclear how the Economics of it all. And if mining companies will sell their orbital colonies to other companies, there is no guarantee that this wealth will not flow down to leading business citizens of the Earth.
In the long term mining and living in space will change the life on Earth (even if not will make the average person richer), because our society is divided into those who walk on the earth, and those who swim in a vacuum.
And the best way to come to that, most likely, is in private industry — or even industrial-state associations — as a commercial organization run faster, risk more and do not depend on contributions from Federal agencies. If they can prove that make money at the expense of one, we will do both.
Planetary Resources claims that is ten years from the implementation of their plans. And while we are waiting for their building space to the harvester, the U.S. can play a leading role in promoting international discussion and consensus. Space belongs to no one — and should not. But, maybe we’ll find a way to divide it into pieces for all of us. In the end, a lot of space, enough for everyone.