Who Will Control the Moon?

[jordan179]

BackgroundAs I'm sure everyone knows by now, Barack Obama has ordered the abandonment of the American Constellation rocket program, whose principal aim was the American return to the Moon (http://www.space.com/news/obama-nasa-space-plan-reactions-100128 ( Read more... )

Comments

Re: Resource harvesting. In SPACE!

[jordan179]

Wait, if you're against Nationalized Health Care why are you for Nationalized Space Travel? It doesn't make sense.

Among the minimal functions of government are defense, police and judicial. Scouting our way offworld is a logical implication of "defense," as is patrolling and providing courts to the colonies we found.

It's also a trivial cost, compared to nationalized health care.

What needs to be done is simply allowing people to gather resources and make genuine property claims to the resources and their site of origin.

Well, yes. We need to repudiate the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Maybe when we get a President with some vision, we will.

Most likely these resources will be energy of some sort.

Solar, tri-helium, thorium ... yes. Though there may also be precious non-energy materials on the Moon, and we know that there are useful structural materials (iron and titanium).

I like deregulation but without property rights it's half-assed.

There will be de facto property rights, regardless of the 1967 OST. No Power or corporation is simply going to give up its investment because the UN bleats.

Re: Resource harvesting. In SPACE!

[polaris93]

The questions you are addressing here are more evidence that American education has gone to hell. Most people born before around 1960 would have followed the news about American involvement in space since the 1950s, and would have realized what you are pointing out, but fewer and fewer born since then have any idea what you're talking about. The increasing infantilization of the American public brought about by the mainstream media and our public schools is now threatening not merely the survival of this nation, but of the world in general. If humanity doesn't successfully meet the challenge of the Final Frontier, Earth won't have any more chances to have her babies, i.e., colonies of Earthly life on other worlds -- there isn't time for another species to arise that can do the job. And if the US doesn't survive, you can bet the rest of the world will give up space for good, because they aren't interested and/or don't want to lose maximum control over humanity.