The Province of All Mankind
But where technology and market ideology is willing, the law may prove somewhat more dificult. The Outer Space Treaty, written in 1967 and ratified by over one hundred countries including the United States, remains the international standard for what humanity is permitted to do beyond the confines of Earth. That treaty specifically states that space is the ‘province of all mankind’, with countries unable to engage in ‘national appropriation’ or sovereignty over the Moon or other celestial bodies ‘by occupation or by other means’.
That said, the treaty is a document of its time. Given it was forged in an era when only states had the capacity to engage in space exploration, and superpowers at that, it does not mention the rights and responsibilities of private business. Because there is no explicit prohibition preventing corporations from building or staking claims, mining in space could fall under legal parameters similar to those reserved for fishing in international waters.
Perhaps unsurprisingly then, Naveen Jain, co-founder of Moon Express, is optimistic on the legal issue, noting in 2011 how there ‘is strong legal precedent and consensus of “finders keepers” for resources that are liberated through private investment, and the same will be true on the Moon’.
There is of course one problem with Mr Jain’s thinking: ‘private investment’ is not responsible for our present level of technology, be it rockets, robotics, 3-D printing or other technologies critical to space exploration. Even now the most innovative private actor in the industry, SpaceX, remains dependent on NASA contracts to fund its research and development. What Jain wants, as we see repeatedly with the powerful, is to socialise the losses of publicly funded research and privatise the gains.
Mining the Sky
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