ASTEROID MINING: US CONGRESS CONSIDERS BILLS, AND SOME HIGH OCTANE ...
Recently I had a fascinating conversation with former Assistant Secretary of HUD Catherine Austin Fitts, and the subject of our conversation was - as it often is - space, and global finance, and the links between the two. We'll get back to that, but I wanted to mention it in connection to today's article, which was shared by Mr. S.D.:
The companies vying to turn asteroids into filling stations
As noted, the 1966 UN Space Treaty " already prohibits national appropriation of space resources. Basically, mining the moon is legally off limits," but asteroids are that wonderful "gray area" that's now being looked at for commercial exploitation. But really, folks, with the recent Chinese announcement about their willingness to mine the Moon, it would appear that the 1966 treaty is a dead letter, simply because financial exigencies and technological developments are once again proceeding faster than international jurisprudence can adapt.
Hence the need for "legislation" protecting investors, a necessary component to the minimization of risk in space commerce:
"As the commercial space industry grows, with billions of dollars already invested, entrepreneurs argue they should be able to own what they find. The costs are simply too great to risk having their discoveries taken from them by governments or competitors.
"Lewicki says the lack of legal certainty over ownership is already giving potential investors pause and hurting his company's growth.
"Other private companies aren't the only competition, either. Lewicki says China has launched unmanned exploratory missions to asteroids as well as the moon, and Nasa is working on a manned mission to collect samples from a near-Earth asteroid in the 2020s.
"If the US wants its private space industry to jump into the fray, argues Lopez-Alegria, legislators must create a more "predictable environment" in which companies can "enjoy the rights of their extraction or to extract without interference" in space."
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First, it’s the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, it is still very much in force, and it does not render the Moon off limits. It is the 1979 Moon Treaty that is dead, as it has not been ratified by a single space-faring nation. The Asteroid Act was vetted by the US State Department before it was submitted as a Bill, and both they (and I, and a host of other interested parties) find it compliant with the ’67 OST. I have been lobbying co-sponsor Kilmer’s staffers to add the Moon and Mars to the Asteroid Act (at a minimum, any non-governmental venture to either location is going to do ISRU, sample return, or both), but with no luck so far. Lewicki may say that about uncertainty hindering investors, but David Gump of DSI told me that it has not hindered their fundraising yet, and I can say that it is the fundamental, not the legal, risk that gives investors pause.
It is common, once a Treaty has come into force, for signatory countries to enact legislation implementing it, and that is exactly what the US is in the process of doing with the Asteroid Act.
What I think is going to happen is that the US will make law and policy here and, as long as things are done as wisely as they have been so far, the US law will become the de facto global standard. Call that a third way if you will, but I think it is a lot more likely than either a new treaty or a global government, and it has a lot of historical precedent.
Thanks for the info! Good stuff!
If past history is anything to go by we can look forward to the space equivalent of the ancient Cilician pirates, Barbary pirates or the Brethren of the Coast to do the space corporations dirty work. When has legal difficulties stood in our oligarchs way of making a dishonest buck.
There is another factor to be considered. Are there other Off World concerns mining the asteroid belt? There has been much speculation about our Shadow Gummint’s Off World alliances and how much harvesting of the Earth and our inner Solar System has been transpiring. My SWAG is, the 3.0 leap into space will only happen if the Off World presence allows it and or gets it’s cut.
I sort of know where you are going with this, but the high octane speculation article sort of made a bit of a leap. Now the missing steps might be missing on purpose for might I conjecture that the leap concerns leap frogging the Federal Reserve, etc with an alternative currency based upon Lunars.
Well it smells sort of like a pipe dream to me, especially as there really will be no such thing as an alternative currency that Shylock is not ultimately in charge of….but that brings us back to earth and World War III or shall we say Armageddon…
The fact is that there is no such thing as the question of minimizing investment risk when the investor is a sovereign nation like China that his intended to lead the globe in going to the moon and mining He3 for Fusion Power. Now the only one’s standing in the way are the insane Zionist Anglo-Americans desperately seeking to stay in power. Yes they may well take up this path of ‘high octane speculation’, launch a one world crupto currency, the lunar to start the next speculative bubble, beyond the stratosphere, into deep space……while exchanging the dead weight of the current world financial ‘Black Hole’ and flip that into MOOOOLaaaaaa as it is known on Saturn.
“alternative currency that Shylock is not ultimately in charge of”
Try moving beyond the cliché.
And He3 fusion as an energy solution for planet earth is a wasteful joke, a distraction.
Serious energy generation and alchemy (likely very far along) need neither exotic isotopes nor loyalty to the periodic table of elements.
“The Truth is anti-semitic.”
Frankie Calcutta
Frankie,
And you just “know” this thing about truth how?
If the US Federal Reserve is broke, why are its purchases of garbage investment vehicles honored? The point is that something is else is backing this central bank. And that something is likely a good bit more valuable than gold.
The truth is not in them. The root problem….is they are the problem, SQUARED.
Gaia,
” leap frogging the Federal Reserve.” I was wondering the same thing. But it would be awfully convenient for the banksters to close up the Federal Reserve on their own volition. Aside from the fact that the Fed is openly broke, they could also put to rest all that bad paper they have been collecting since 2008. And then there is the whole bearer bonds thing and the pesky Kuomintang Chinese who want their gold back. Shutting the doors on the Federal Reserve would be an easy way out of that problem and those very old financial obligations. Rand Paul for President? Even the NY Times likes him now.
I would also imagine the shylocks would be licking their chops at an opportunity for a tender. Considering they have never been audited, the Fed could write its own ticket. Making lemonade out of lemons. And with that new windfall of cash and their heads out of the chopping block, they could get back on their feet and cook up an entirely new scam which could put them back in front of the money printing machine once again.
regarding old treaty obligation: Why not have the room which house all the UN treaty documents catch on fire? Or, just announce an ambitious Rockefeller Foundation funded program to transcribe all UN treaties onto computers,,, and then quietly delete any inconvenient bits that might get in the way of US commercial interests or renewed attempts at uni-polarism? In this age of short memories, no one will notice.