NASA Wants to Mine the Moon, but Law Experts Say It's Not That Simple
upstart writes:
NASA Wants To Mine The Moon, But Law Experts Say It's Not That Simple:
Exploration in the outer reaches of our solar system and beyond is often the subject of science fiction. Space exploration is a common theme in the genre, and millions of readers flock to new titles in this space on a regular basis - SFWA noted that those who say they read science fiction amounted to about 21% of the U.S. population.
[...] The first roadblock facing humans as we seek to expand our presence in the solar system lies in technology. NASA reports that it takes about seven months (measured in Earth days) to travel from our planet's surface to Mars. Thrillist notes that travel to the Moon only requires a three-day journey, while exploration of Jupiter or Saturn (the next bodies out from Mars) would require a lengthy, six- or seven-year voyage, respectively. On a technical level, our current means of launching satellites and humans at these distant bodies is exactly that, a launch (via NASA). In order to make space travel more feasible for human explorers, we would need to develop a propulsion system that could continually deliver powered flight to a spacecraft, or at least the ability to continually augment flight speed, rather than simply relying on initial launch velocity to carry the craft along to its final destination.
[...] A secondary roadblock stands in the way of human exploitation in regard to these extraterrestrial resources. During the Cold War, great efforts were undertaken by the United States and the Soviet Union to explore distant planets and the Moon. The politics of space exploration are complicated, but suffice to say, world leaders across the globe quickly became worried about the potential for conflict expanding beyond the boundaries of our world. For one thing, warfare in outer space would place human lives in grave jeopardy. But one natural extent of this conflict would be the ability to simply drop ordnance directly over combatant nations (via U.S. Naval War College), threatening to eviscerate the planet in the process. As a result, more than 100 countries including the United States and Russia have signed an agreement barring claims of sovereignty beyond the physical territory of the planet Earth, according to the United Nations.
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