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Whose Space is Space? Asteroid Mining Rights Raise Questions

President Barack Obama ushered in a new era of U.S. law—an era in which the American President has taken a stand on how mining rights in space may work in the future. The new law grants private companies the right to any materials they mine from the moon and asteroids, potentially painting space as a capitalistic free for all.

Ostensibly, the bill is intended to serve as motivation for the private sector, to encourage private companies to continue to allocate resources, including money and talent, to the goal of space exploration. In that vein, the government does not currently perform oversight over the construction of spacecraft by private companies, and the bill would extend that freedom.

Obama’s actions are controversial. On the one hand, asteroid mining may be crucial for humankind’s future. Space promises a largesse of rare and valuable materials, including helium-3, which could promise clean and effectively limitless energy, and platinum and similar metals, which are critical for the tech realm. On the other hand, divvying up those materials to the highest bidder (i.e. the company willing to put its resources to the test and get to them first) is viewed by many as being a less than ideal solution.

Space and Our Sustainable Future

Expert opinions vary regarding just how long Earth can easily support us, given population growth, but most agree that the upper limit is somewhere around 10 billion human beings… and that’s only if we make some significant improvements to our resource allocation. We’re already at 7 billion, and are expected to reach 10 billion sometime around 2100, by some estimates.

One answer to this conundrum, of course, is for humanity to begin to colonize the moon and other planets in our solar system. But even if that possibility is some time off, making use of the resources that space has to offer could be possible much sooner, and could be very useful. Additional resources could help the Earth support more people, and they could also help speed the process of attaining colonization on the moon or other planetary bodies.

Legal Questions

But saying that we will need to mine asteroids for their resources, and determining who should be doing it, how it should be done, and how the resources and profit will be distributed are very different things. Obama’s law states that “asteroid resources obtained in outer space are the property of the entity that obtained them, which shall be entitled to all property rights to them, consistent with applicable federal law and existing international obligations.”

The problem is that, while the law states that this ownership must be consistent with international obligations, detractors say that it’s already overstepping its bounds, particularly in regards to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. In essence, this international treaty states that no nation will lay claim to celestial bodies, as they are considered to be mankind’s common heritage. For some, like the director of the London Institute of Space Policy and Law, the new American law usurps the spirit of the treaty. Others, however, point out that mining laws, even on our planet, can be rather more ambiguous than declaring sovereignty and the U.S. law should stand as written.

Another treaty, the Moon Treaty of 1979, also declares space’s resources as belonging to all of mankind—but the U.S. is not party to that treaty. That, of course, does not mean the international community won’t take exception to laws which violate it.

Sustainability at Home and Abroad (in Space)

Another concern is whether or not such mining will take place in a responsible manner. With private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin racing to be the first to lay claim to space’s ample resources, the new law has been described as ushering in a modern-day gold rush. For those of us for whom sustainability is a concern, this terminology alone may be troubling. Humanity has not always reacted to new resource availability with what might be characterized as moderation or responsibility. Gbenga Oduntan, a University of Kent lecturer specializing in International Commercial Law points out that legal issues aren’t the only ones at stake.

We know little about the effects that mining asteroids might have on their environments, or the long term effects that mining might have on humanity’s future endeavours. The same can be said for mining on the moon.

Political and social sustainability should also be taken into account. Even if the international community doesn’t unite against the U.S.’s new law, that doesn’t mean that private sector mining in space (and the profits it generates) won’t contribute to conflict on earth. The very resources that could unite humanity and support its future survival could end up generating factions and causing conflicts that tear us apart.

Time Will Tell

The reality of asteroid mining isn’t going to take shape this week or this year. However, the new law will provide those that invest in these efforts with a measure of greater security—they know that (at least) they will not be breaking U.S. law by pursuing this new frontier. Some companies, including the asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, have already benefited from this security and have experienced an increase in value already.

Working out resource rights has traditionally been complex, whether the resource in question has been newly discovered in known territory, or present in a newly discovered territory. Now we are looking farther afield than ever before, and those complications may be multiplied as a result. If we are to embark on these new ventures, the technological hurdles may be less challenging to overcome than the political and societal hurdles we’ll face.

It’s important to keep in mind that, profit motivations and legal entanglements aside, space is the collective heritage of humankind. One of the reasons for our current need to make use of its resources is the difficulty we have faced in treating even our own planet Earth as a common heritage. Let this be not only an era of new technological advancements, but a new era of responsibility towards sustainability, one another, and our universe.

The Permaculture Research Insitute

PRI Zaytuna Farm functions as a model farm (in development) and permaculture training facility. Geoff and Nadia Lawton, world-renowned permaculture educators and consultants, lead the project. Much of Geoff and Nadia’s time over the last few years has been spent away from the Institute, consulting and helping set up projects in diverse locales around the world. Seeing the worldwide demand for knowledgeable permaculture consultants and teachers increase exponentially, as fuel and fertiliser prices skyrocket and the effects of climate change, soil depletion and water shortages begin to hit hard, priority and focus is now shifting back to the Institute, where growing the training program will increase the output of quality teachers to help fill the growing need for them.

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