Under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty — to which the United States is a signatory — neither nations nor private citizens can make territorial claims on the Moon or other celestial bodies. However, this doesn’t mean that people can’t use resources they find there. If you want to mine for Helium-3 or water, go right ahead; just know that you can’t legally claim the mine as your own or keep anyone else out, any more than a fisherman can keep other people away from a school of tuna (admittedly, it’s a little unclear whether you can sell those materials back on Earth as your property).
From a property rights perspective, this is a shame in that it discourages exploration and development. Besides being cool, this means that there are resources sitting there that potentially aren’t being used simply because we haven’t adopted a legal framework that allows people to profit from their work. Still, it could be worse: neither the United States nor any other space-capable country signed the Moon Treaty, which explicitly banned commercial operations on the Moon. As if that isn’t bad enough, the language it uses is the sort that most Model UN participants would find too utopian, collectivist, and bureaucratic (“The Moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind… Neither the surface nor the subsurface of the Moon, nor any part thereof or natural resources in place, shall become property of any State, international intergovernmental or non-governmental organization, national organization or non-governmental entity or of any natural person.”).
Fortunately, there’s been a smidgeon of good news on the subject. It’s been revealed that, late last year, the FAA wrote a letter to an American aerospace company confirming that it would use its licensing authority to keep other (American) companies out of its way if it proceeded with its planned moon base:
The Federal Aviation Administration, in a previously undisclosed late-December letter to Bigelow Aerospace, said the agency intends to “leverage the FAA’s existing launch licensing authority to encourage private sector investments in space systems by ensuring that commercial activities can be conducted on a non-interference basis.”
In other words, experts said, Bigelow could set up one of its proposed inflatable habitats on the moon, and expect to have exclusive rights to that territory – as well as related areas that might be tapped for mining, exploration and other activities.
…
“We didn’t give (Bigelow Aerospace) a license to land on the moon. We’re talking about a payload review that would potentially be part of a future launch license request. But it served a purpose of documenting a serious proposal for a U.S. company to engage in this activity that has high-level policy implications,” said the FAA letter’s author, George Nield, associate administrator for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Transportation.
To reiterate, this means that the FAA would refuse to grant a launch license to other American firms who proposed to land near Bigelow’s location (though it couldn’t prevent Russians, Chinese, and Europeans from doing so). It’s not quite property rights, but it’s an incremental step in that direction.
While I’d prefer we just amend or withdraw from the Outer Space Treaty (processes for each are described within), here’s an alternative option: if enough American firms built moon bases with contiguous territories — all of which are required to recognize and respect each others’ “territories” — and assuming that no foreign rival wants to deal with the trouble of creating an international incident, wouldn’t that de facto constitute a territorial claim, without having to amend or withdraw from the treaty?
Published in General
Great! Then the US gets first dibs on stifling all that innovation in it’s infancy. Let’s spread collectivism throughout the universe!
Despite that sad note, it’s good that there’s some real attempts to colonize the moon.
How long until environmentalists decry the defacement of our pure natural view of the barren moon?
Yesterday?
When I wrote “From Lunar Outpost to Permanent Moon Base” for Ad Astra back in 2008, I briefly mentioned strip mining. Â I was asked to remove the bit, because it would upset some of the environmentalist types, who felt we would be harming the Moon.
I pointed out the Moon is a lifeless rock, without a biosphere to be harmed. Â The editor agreed, but said it wasn’t worth stirring that particular hornet’s nest. Since I was being paid, and the issue was peripheral, I removed it. Â The Golden Rule, you know (the one with the gold sets the rules).
Seawriter
Would you prefer a future where it’s impossible to escape the bright glare of all the moon’s cities?
Once humanity fully populates the moon it’ll mean the end of truly dark nights. Good bye stargazing. Good bye Earth-based astronomy.
;-)
Also, surely folk here have read Kim Stanley Robinson’s MARS trilogy, where the evil developers are the “greens” (because they want to turn the red planet green with plantlife) and the environmentalists are the “reds” (because they think the red planet should remain red).
So, wait, giving the US government the authority to ban private citizens from leaving the surface of the planet on their own accord is a step towards greater liberty?!
it’s a little unclear whether you can sell those materials back on Earth as your property.
Not really. There is established precedent for this from both Apollo and Soviet sample-return, in which lunar rocks have been exchanged for items of value.
I had an extensive essay about this at The New Atlantis a couple years ago.