The Artemis program aims to put the first woman and second man
The Artemis program aims to put the first woman and thirteenth man on the Moon by 2024
FTFY
NASA has laid out a new set of principles that it hopes will inform how states and private companies will interact on the Moon. The new guidelines, called the Artemis Accords, seek "to create a safe and transparent environment which facilitates exploration, science, and commercial activities for the benefit of humanity". The …
An accord is an agreement, the moment anyone who is exploiting resources to provide needed materials, finds something really valuable, someone will disagree.
Particularly as the spirit of the accord is that nobody should claim property, they don't own what they are exracting, so theoretically anyone else can go and help themselves.
Time to get a robot parrot and a Tri-corn helmet.
> The purpose of the Accords appears to be establishing a rough agreement [...] without having to make a formal treaty
Given how much respect international treaties usually get when they oppose specific interests, those accords won't be worth the paper they're written on if somebody finds something of value up there...
Even if most entities involved might respect them (as long as it doesn't cost them too much), there is bound to be some who will consider that the end justifies the means, and that they never actually agreed on anything which could diminish their profits.
In space nobody hears your victims scream.
> you can own the resources you extract
That's all very fine, but they conveniently overlooked the extraction phase:
Imagine you are mining a rich asteroid (to keep things small), you have built your mining base on it, and you're extracting "resources you can own". Swell.
That's the kids' storybook version of space exploitation. Unfortunately reality will be a little different.
Imagine an enterprising competitor who notices you. What do you think will happen? And who will you complain to when the charred remains of your former mining base slowly drift away into the void?
We have already seen how this works: Great potential wealth + no laws always spells "might is right", and given the investments required, the gunslingers of tomorrow will be nation-states, who will take advantage of the lack of rules to take as much as they can from anybody who can't defend himself well enough.
There's no KNOWN oil on the moon. Oil does not require organic material to be formed; however, pools of dead dinosaurs work pretty well on Earth. But yeah lunar conditions do not match earth conditions for oil formation. This does not mean it is NOT there, and may suggest we wouldn't know how to find it (easily).
(apparently lunar carbon is deposited by solar wind as part of the regolith, but to form oil, would need to be trapped deep below the surface along with hydrogen - making it unlikely but not impossible)
Still I think Trump is just looking for a chance to advance further into space. It's been ~50 years that we've been "held back" from going past earth orbit, and it's time to just DO it. Again. Do something 'cool', or 'awesome', or 'inspiring', or even 'glorious'. Do something worth CELEBRATING! [it's like when your sports team wins the championship]
I'm so tired of all of the PESSIMISM, that having some OPTIMISM keeps me from going COMPLETELY insane.
And Antarctic bases, and the like
It's not all that different from those activities, in that nobody claims a trawler in the middle of the Atlantic or the Pacific or Indian Oceans needs to have its nation-state of origin claim sovereignty over the waters it fishes. It's also got some sanity that way - when any given site is several light-minutes away from Earth, the only way any given Earth Power could issue commands and expect to be obeyed is by taking over the CCC of any given spacecraft, or disabling and destroying it through DEWs like lasers or such.
Be interesting to see if they "extend" the peaceable conflict resolution to Earth Orbit instead of having the braindead temerity of the Dubbya Regime and claiming it for the US.
It's also got some sanity that way - when any given site is several light-minutes away from Earth, the only way any given Earth Power could issue commands and expect to be obeyed is by taking over the CCC of any given spacecraft, or disabling and destroying it through DEWs like lasers or such
Kinetic diplomacy can be fun, but the US would still have the option to pursue infringers in the US via the courts. So the usual raft of options to charge executives, levy fines, seize assets, deny launch clearances etc etc. Kind of assumes an agreement becomes at least US law while international treaties get wrangled. Plus there's the US Space Force and it's latest skunk-shuttle launched again the other day.
Seems like an interesting field of law though, but can probably borrow from historical precedent, ie carving up Antarctica, or ways to resolve disputes between high jumping claim jumpers.
"Kinetic diplomacy can be fun, but the US would still have the option to pursue infringers in the US via the courts. So the usual raft of options to charge executives, levy fines, seize assets, deny launch clearances etc etc."
Unless they are not a US entity and launch from somewhere else. Russia, Ukraine, New Zealand, China, India, Japan, Cornwall, Scotland. Ore even a sea or air launch from anywhere in international waters/airspace.
Unless they are not a US entity and launch from somewhere else. Russia, Ukraine, New Zealand, China, India, Japan, Cornwall, Scotland. Ore even a sea or air launch from anywhere in international waters/airspace.
Not a problem, unless it's a state supported launch. Otherwise the US has never had any real problems pursuing assets or imposing sanctions on non-US entities. Even off-shoring is no escape, although a staple of SF writers. Could be fun to have an international launch site, but the UN's already got treaties to not recognise artificial islands/structures.
Even the US do, even if they don't realise it...
And therefore manage to screw up like:
Instead of trying to use what we have in a more sustainable way we are continuing spend insane amounts of money on pie-in-the-sky (literally) schemes to mine on asteroids and the moon.
This just sums up how man is the smartest, most greedy and selfish being that has ever existed. Everything revolves round short-term monetary gains so a few corporations and their boards can make ever increasing amounts of profit to staff somewhere.
Sorry, just feeling very cynical in the current situation.
How about spy satellites? Peaceful purpose?
And is the control of predator drones via satellites regarded as a "peaceful purpose"?
ISTM that if we were really serious about restricting space for only peaceful purposes, all military satellites should be banned completely. But of course the ideal is impossible to realize, because like a bread knife many things can be used for both peaceful and non-peaceful purposes so there is no distinct line. A satellite equipped with the ability to destroy large meteors that threaten the Earth could also (if rotated 180 degrees) be used to destroy a city on Earth ...