Who owns space? Looking at the US asteroid-mining act

An event of cosmic proportions occurred on 18 November when the US congress passed the Space Act of 2015 into law. The legislation will give US space firms the rights to own and sell natural resources they mine from bodies in space, including asteroids. Although the act, passed with bipartisan support, still requires President …

[Boothy]

Orbital conglomerates threaten Earth Govs....

Earth Govs, cease all assets of said Orbital conglomerates, including all launch facilities.

Orbital conglomerates attack.

Missile takes out Orbital conglomerates station.

[lforsley]

Who needs a missile? A handful of bbs will do the trick. Sort of a new version of people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

[disgruntled yank]

Hmm

It reminds me of the old Guano Islands law, which allowed the US to claim any old guano covered rock in the high seas that nobody else had yet claimed.

On the other hand, I think that the immediate mining work will be on the pockets of speculators hoping for the next Facebook/Twitter/Whatever. There's gold in them there seams.

[Eclectic Man]

Patentents (pending?)

The ESA landed Philae on a comet. Whoever owns the (universal) patents for a viable asteroid landing system will be in the money.

As for what mineral might be sufficiently valuable to be worth mining, palladium would be my guess. Platinum is quite cheap in comparison, on a par with gold. Definitely not diamonds: de Beers keeps the price of 'natural' diamonds artificially high, and artificial diamonds can be bought for as little as £5.

Possibly the only thing that would actually be worth bringing back to Earth would be a microbe or catalyst which took in atmospheric CO2 and exhaled ethanol or long chain hydrocarbons

[kbutler.toledo]

Hubris and pomposity

This @#$% is reminiscent of the actions when, on May 4, 1493, the Spanish-born Pope Alexander VI, generously divided the entire world between the Spanish and the Portuguese.

For those who slept through world history in the fourth-grade primary schools, please use the following shortcut:

http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/pacific/spice-islands/demarcation-lines.html

Lets just wait and see what The Flying Spaghetti Monster has to say about this.

[lforsley]

Not to worry. There's room for all in Hilbert Space. What? Wrong space?