WEBVTT - I Claim This Asteroid for Spain! 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.440 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:15.760 Forward Thinking. Welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that looks 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:18.200 at the future and says, some people call me a 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:22.800 space cowboy. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Joe McCormick. Today we're 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:25.639 going to talk about space property. Because you know, space property, 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:30.200 we've talked about like this properties of space maybe you know. 0:00:30.680 --> 0:00:33.680 But we've talked about asteroid mining, right, we talked about 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:37.720 lunar colonies, we talked about a Martian colony, right absolutely so. 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:41.120 Um so, here's the thing. We've got this technology that's 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:44.600 developing at a fairly rapid pace that's making this more 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:47.279 and more, you know, something of a reality. It's not 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:49.800 just the stuff of science fiction we are getting. It's 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:52.840 not fifty years part right now. Right now, it's getting 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:55.600 a tiny bit more concrete. Yeah, like talking about there, 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:57.960 there's one company in particular that plans to have a 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:03.200 colony on Mars in ten years. Whether that happens or people, 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:05.240 I think the more realistic thing is the asteroid mining. 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:07.560 I think that that's going to seriously happen within the 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:11.400 next ten years. Right, So, but that raises another question. 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:15.280 So here on Earth. We've got countries and states. You know, 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:18.399 we've got these sovereign nations. Sovereign nations, right, they have 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:22.720 they have rules to guide them, institutions, they've got borders 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:25.559 that separate them from everybody else, right, only physical ones 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:29.080 made of rivers and oceans. There really weird thing. Okay, 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:31.640 if I want to go like into a field and 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:34.400 build a house there and live in it, for some reason, 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:37.679 I've got to pay people money. Yeah, yeah, unless you 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:40.800 somehow have come into ownership of that land already than 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:43.480 someone else owns that land, and they probably want some 0:01:43.600 --> 0:01:46.160 cash for you to be able to shack up there. Well, 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:48.640 how did they get the right to ask me for 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:51.200 cash to build a house on their field? We developed 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:55.600 something called property laws. Property well we didn't but well 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:58.000 not personally. If we had, then I'd have a lot 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:03.160 more property. But the human beings in general, in a 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:06.560 way of trying to make sense of the fact that 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:09.280 we've got lots of people and there's lots of really 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.480 awesome land out there that wants and there's some less 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:15.600 awesome land that nobody wants, right, and how do we 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:18.160 determine who gets what? And property laws kind of came 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:20.120 out of that, and they've evolved over time. I mean 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:24.720 sometimes they evolve very slowly and sometimes quite rapidly, depending 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:27.760 upon the era we're talking about. But typically what it 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:30.360 amounts to is you have a plot that you say 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:32.560 belongs to me, and I can do what I want 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:35.680 with it, and I have a major degree of control 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:37.560 over it, so that I can like say that other 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:40.119 people can't come on it and stuff like that, right, 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:43.720 and I've asked a government to help me enforce the 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:47.840 fact that it belongs to me. Sure, And generally it goes, 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:50.239 you know, enough into the ground for you to build 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:52.519 a foundation for any buildings that you want, and enough 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:54.679 into the air that you can, you know, build a 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:57.000 good couple of stories out there, depending upon whatever the 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:00.800 regulations are in your area. But then beyond that, it 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:02.880 pretty much doesn't belong to you. It belongs to whatever 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:07.040 country you happen to be in. Okay, But um, let's 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:09.639 say that this house I want to build is not 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:12.280 in a field I found somewhere. But let's say I 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.240 fly a shuttle up to the moon and land and 0:03:15.320 --> 0:03:17.639 want to build a house there. First of all, shuttles 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:20.160 don't go to the moon. But if you were to 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:22.800 play a capsule over you want to build a house? 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:27.080 You're correct, your story is ludicrous. Let's say I land 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:29.600 a landing vehicle on the moon. Can I get out 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:31.959 and I want to build a house to have live 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:35.080 out my my wonderful social life on the surface of 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:37.240 the moon. Yeah, we have no pedantic problem with that, 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.640 however legally, so yeah, here's the who do I pay? 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:42.640 I guess I've got to pay somebody, right Well, you 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:45.080 wouldn't pay anybody because there's no one to pay right now. See, 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:49.440 here's the thing. How do we determine who gets access, 0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:52.000 who gets the rights to property and outer space? Because 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:56.240 who does outer space belong to? I mean humankind? As 0:03:56.240 --> 0:04:00.560 it turns out, well, based upon some some some old 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:03.800 laws that were written, but well knows some real laws. Okay, 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:07.200 So here's the problem we've imagined. Um. So, let's say 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:09.200 I go and I and I land on the moon, 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:11.760 and I build my house there in the middle of 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:19.279 a big you know field on the moon on the moon. Uh, 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:21.480 and somebody else comes along and said, no, I want 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:23.120 to live there, And they knocked my house down and 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.000 they build their own. What's to stop them? We'll see, 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:29.280 that's the thing. Is that. You know, normally, if we 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:32.360 were talking about a person from a specific country going 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:36.719 and claiming something because you particularly are a citizen of 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:40.280 that country, it would be seen as something called national appropriation. 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:44.159 Like it's the idea that it's not you claiming that spot, 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:47.000 it's the United States. And that's where we get into 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:50.080 a problem. You see, when the space race was kicking 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.919 off in the fifties and sixties, there was something called 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:58.520 the Cold War. You guys remember the Cold War personally? Well, 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:01.320 I mean, I mean a I have maps in my 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:04.880 house that say Soviet Union, Eastern East and West East 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:08.000 and West Germany. So during the Cold War, you had 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:13.160 two major superpowers that were ramping up their space exploration 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.400 UH industries and as the United States and the former 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:19.960 Soviet Union. So those two superpowers were on a race. 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:22.279 Really it was it was almost for bragging rights, but moreover, 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.200 it was also to prove that they had the capability 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:28.920 of doing something like a long range nuclear strike exactly. 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:31.880 So it's all about if I'm able to fire a 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:34.680 rocket that can get all the way into outer space, 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:36.520 and I can also fire a rocket that has a 0:05:36.520 --> 0:05:38.720 bomb on it all the way to your country. Yeah, 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:41.200 So that that's where the space race came from. Well, 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:44.919 that that meant that you had this mounting escalation of 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:48.360 competitiveness between the United States and the Soviet Union, and 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:50.839 as it became closer and closer to a reality that 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:53.320 one of these two nations was going to make a 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:56.760 landing on the Moon, began to make the rest of 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.080 the world say, hey, you know what, maybe we should 0:05:59.120 --> 0:06:02.640 set up some rules here. So, in a very what 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.800 I would say, a remarkable act of coming togetherness, yea 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:09.440 um of Really it's kind of a more of an 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:12.920 act of we're all scared out of our pants nous um. 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:16.200 We actually came up with something. Not we as a 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:19.040 share but humans came up with something you've been y 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:22.400 now known as the Outer Space Treaty. That the official 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:26.640 full name, as adopted by the UN General Assembly was 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:30.960 the Treaty on Principles Governing Governing the Activities of States 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:34.479 in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:37.520 Moon and other celestial bodies. Yes, that was in nineteen 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:40.839 sixty seven. It was actually partly based on an earlier 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:43.760 piece of legislation that was drafted in nineteen fifty nine 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:48.200 called the Antarctic Treaty. Now, the Antarctic Treaty was designed 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:52.839 to prevent the militarization of the Antarctic, saying that no 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:55.960 governments could build military facilities on the Narctic. It could 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:59.359 be used just for scientific research. But it was meant 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:02.080 so that what and go and claim an Arctic as 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:04.240 part of their nation to give them some sort of 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:09.520 military superiority or advantage. And so they used that as 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:14.280 sort of the the guideline for drafting this nineteen seven treaty. Yeah. Um, 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:18.880 And so the treaty includes a bunch of different articles 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:25.840 that established things like freedom of exploration, freedom of scientific experimentation. Right, 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:29.000 it's it's basically like spaces for humankind. It's free for 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:33.040 everyone to explore. Um. It's not subject to national appropriation. Uh. 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:37.560 No nukes, y'all forbids, weapons of mass destruction mounted on 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:41.480 the moon, celestial bodies or in orbit. Um, celestial bodies 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:44.400 should be us for peaceful purposes. It also comes up 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:47.800 with some sort of rules of etiquette for international cooperation. 0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:51.160 So it's a it has like uh, it says like, oh, 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:54.720 if foreign astronauts crash land in your country, you're supposed 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:58.400 to return them safely to their their own country. Of origin. Um. 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:01.440 It says that I think astronaut shall not attack each other, 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:04.400 something like that, that the astronauts are are envoys of 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:08.880 all humankind. Yeah. Um. However, that countries are responsible for 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:13.440 their citizens in space, um, and also liable for damage, 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:18.000 and also that they should generally avoid doing that damage. Right. Okay, 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:20.680 But so when it comes to space property and my 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:23.960 question about building a house on the Moon, they actually 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:28.640 have something that seems somewhat relevant. Article two of the 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:32.520 Outer Space Treaty specifically says outer space, including the Moon 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:36.439 and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:39.960 by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:43.240 or by any other means. So another that means like, 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:45.600 the United States can't go up and say the Moon 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:48.560 is ours. I claim this for Spain. You can't. You 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:50.880 can't do that. You can't. They can't even claim part 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:54.480 of the Moon as there right. Essentially, the argument here 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:57.640 is that you cannot have any nation laying claim to 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:01.160 any sort of celestial object, not just the Moon, asteroids, 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:04.840 other planets. Right. Duck duck Duck Dodgers of the twenty 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:06.839 four and a half century had no right to be 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:10.760 he claimed it for Earth, so that that might be 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:15.120 all right, but but yeah, you can't. You can't lay 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:20.120 claim to to anything on a national level. Now that 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:24.200 has opened up some debate about the spirit and the 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:28.000 letter of the law as it comes to private ownership. Right, Well, 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.320 I would say that since it's got that other proposition 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:33.760 in there that says that countries are responsible for the 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:36.880 actions of their citizens, that that anyone who does anything 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:40.720 in space is a representation of their country, and that therefore, well, 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:43.679 there there are those arguments. Yeah, well, okay, so this 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:47.560 is interesting. Generally people have interpreted this treaty to mean, 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:49.480 oh and by the way, I mean, so it was 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:53.840 ratified by pretty much everybody. Yeah, we we gave it 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:56.400 the thumbs up. It is a law we abide by. Now, 0:09:56.440 --> 0:09:58.079 because there's another one we're going to talk about a 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:01.040 minute where we did not do that. Right, So, lots 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:05.319 of people interpreted this Article two of the Outer Space 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:08.760 Treaty to say, okay, nobody can claim property rights to 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:13.280 anything in space. But as we established before, that article 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:16.760 to the language could be interpreted as ambiguous because what 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:21.280 it specifically says is that it's not subject to national 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:26.839 appropriation by claim of sovereignty, and it doesn't specifically say 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:31.920 that no person or company could claim the land um. 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:36.560 And this brings us to a dude who calls himself 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:42.640 a head cheese of the company Lunar Embassy. His name 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:47.560 is Dennis Hope, uh and Dennis Springs. This is a 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:50.560 fun dude. So, so, around nineteen eighty or so, from 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:53.160 what I understand, he filed a claim for ownership with 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:56.400 the U N for for the moon. Yeah, let me 0:10:56.440 --> 0:11:00.000 read a little bit from the Frequently Asked Questions page 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:05.000 of his company's website. He says, in nineteen a very bright, 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:07.640 young and handsome Mr Dennis Hope went to his local 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:11.640 US governmental office that's capitalized, don't know what that means 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:16.840 for claim registries, the San Francisco County seat and made 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:19.160 a claim for the entire lunar surface, as well as 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:21.560 the surface of all other eight planets in our solar 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:25.520 system and their moons except the Earth and the Sun. Obviously, 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:28.559 he was first taken for a crackpot until three supervisors, 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:31.959 two floors and five hours later, the main supervisor accepted 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:36.600 and registered his claim. After this, he he claims that 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:40.080 so there he staked his claim with his local government 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:44.840 Office for the Moon uh, and afterwards mailed letters to 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:48.880 the Soviet Union and to the United Nations announcing to 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:51.280 them that the moon was now his uh and to 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:53.480 see if they had any problem with that. Right. He 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:57.160 basically said, Um, if this isn't cool, guys, write me back. Yeah, 0:11:57.360 --> 0:11:59.319 and no one bothered to do it. They didn't write 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:04.880 him back, which he argues is the essentially the them 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:07.640 saying signing off on it. Yeah, that they gave the 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:11.760 sort of silent consent. It's like saying, like, universe, if 0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:15.040 you don't want me to eat this doughnut annihilated before 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:18.920 I can touch in my mouth and ab So I 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:21.360 like the idea of him going to the San Francisco 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:24.560 County because that would be kind of like going to 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:28.319 the mayor of your city and saying, like, I'm claiming Antarctica, 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:32.440 and San Francisco has a long history of kind of 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:37.520 you know, and like, yeah, that's hilarious. Emperor, the Emperor Norton. 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:40.280 By the way, another thing, now, I don't want to 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:42.400 say we know this to be false, but also this 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:44.680 is his story as he tells it. I'm not even 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:49.360 sure the extent to which this should be considered. Um, 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:52.640 but so, yeah, so he sent those letters off after this, 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:54.959 he claims that and I don't know what to make 0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:59.520 of this either, but he claims that he he added 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.200 a cop be right to his work by the U. S. 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:07.120 Copyright Registry Office. Um so, with his claim to claim 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:10.520 and copyright registration certificate from the U. S. Government in hand, 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:13.360 Mr Hope became what is probably the largest landowner around 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:16.240 the planet today. I don't know what copyright has to 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:19.360 do with the moon. Yeah, that that seems to be. 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:22.840 That seems to be this fallacy that somehow getting one 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:26.560 thing ratified in one way by a government agency ends 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:29.840 up legitimizing the claim. That's not the case, right, Like 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:32.440 if I write a book where I end up conquering 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:34.760 the entire world and I get it published and it's 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:36.960 under copyright, that doesn't mean I actually then have the 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:39.200 right to tell everybody what to do, despite the fact 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:41.640 that I keep trying. He may be confused about what 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.600 government office he contacted or something I would be. I 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:47.600 think he's confused about governments in general. I he he 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:51.320 did go on to set up a democratic republic nation 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.719 called the Galactic Government. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right, 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:59.119 and or something like that. Yeah, I wrote a constitution 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:01.360 and put it up online in and claims to have 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:04.960 diplomacy with thirty nations. So it would sound like, Okay, 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:07.960 we're just dealing with somebody who's got a funny website 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:10.719 or something. But he's making money on this, y'all. Well, 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:12.880 so supposedly he set this up because he had just 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:15.720 gotten divorced, was really strapped for cash, and thought, you know, 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:17.800 no one's selling the moon right now, how can I 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:20.600 sell the moon? That's what that That is an interview 0:14:20.640 --> 0:14:22.800 that I've read with him. Yeah, yeah, oh that that. 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:25.200 I read that interview too, So, yeah, what he's been 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:29.760 doing for since about nineteen eighty apparently is selling parcels 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:31.680 on the surface of the Moon that are each about 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:34.760 the size of a football field, and he prices them 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:37.720 for about twenty bucks each um. And so if you 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:40.800 want to send him your your shiny new twenty dollar bill, 0:14:40.880 --> 0:14:43.120 you can get a football field sized parcel on the moon. 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:46.840 The largest piece of property he sells is continent sized um, 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:52.840 which costs some million dollars. Yeah. Um. The question I 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:56.200 have is how many people have actually bought this? And 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:58.680 I have to be totally honest and say the numbers 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:01.880 I've seen are pretty high, but I am very skeptical 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:05.960 about them, especially because of the strange increase and decrease 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:09.640 I've seen I've seen across chronology, Like for example, there 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.600 was a National Geographic article about Dennis Hope in two 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:15.880 thousand nine. They reported he claimed to have sold parcels 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:18.320 on the Moon and other planets to at least three 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:23.120 point seven million people. Uh. Two years earlier, short article 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:27.160 on Discover magazine online two thousand seven claimed that Hope 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.360 had sold four point to five million to four point 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:32.880 to five million. Maybe he had just bought back point 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:36.280 and those are by no means. I mean, if you 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:41.080 look all I see weirdly vast ranges of different numbers 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:44.320 of claimed customers and amounts of property sold, you would 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:46.120 think that you have to keep pretty good records of that, 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:48.120 because I would imagine the I R. S Has something 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:51.240 to say about its well. Funny on his frequently asked questions, 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:54.240 He's got a little question there about how should I, uh, 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:57.560 you know, claim this on my taxes, and the answers 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:02.480 like I don't know. Yeah. He claims that his government 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:05.480 is trying to join the International Monetary Fund UM and 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:07.800 that you know, their their their currency is the reserve 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:10.480 of helium three on the Moon, which is some six 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:14.920 quadrillion dollar reserve. So yeah, so it's based on the 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:19.720 helium standard. Okay, but here's the question we have to 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:22.640 start wondering, like, Okay, on one hand, this seems so funny, 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:26.160 but like, well, wait a minute, I mean, is this 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:29.880 legit in any way? So there there's been people have 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:33.080 tried to address that. Right, there's a there's another treaty 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:37.000 in nineteen seventy nine. Right, okay, so we should discuss that, 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:40.400 often known as the Moon Treaty. Right, that's the shortened version, 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:43.400 although to be fair, it involved not just the Moon 0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:46.240 but all celestial objects. Right, And I do you know 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:47.840 this was back in nineteen seventy nine. I do want 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:49.880 to point out that that Mr Hope is not the 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:52.040 first person who was attempted to do this. I read. 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:55.400 I read a nineteen nine Science Illustrated article in which 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:59.960 one James Team mangan Uh formed a nation of celestial 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:03.000 space and contacted the secretaries of state of seventy four 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:06.119 nations plus the u N about gaining recognition because he 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:09.520 intended to sell um earth sized chunks of space off 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:12.920 at about a dollar a lot um, which he called 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:18.399 a new, bold and modest idea um um. Since that, 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:20.439 since he hasn't become a household name, I'm going to 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:23.960 assume that that did not ultimately go very far. Well, 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:28.000 they created this treaty, okay, So in nineteen seventy nine, 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:30.960 the commonly known as the Moon Treaty. It was called 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:35.359 officially the Agreement Governing Governing the activities of States on 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:38.600 the Moon and other celestial bodies. Specifically, the part that's 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:42.000 really relevant is an Article leven, Section three. It says, 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:44.919 neither the surface nor the subsurface of the Moon, nor 0:17:45.040 --> 0:17:48.960 any other part thereof, or natural resources in place, shall 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:52.639 become the property of any state, international, inner governmental or 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:58.080 non governmental organization, national organization or non governmental entity, or 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.280 of any natural persons. So in that, in that sense, 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:04.280 they're saying the space belongs to everyone, and no one 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:08.280 nobody can own anything whatsoever, right unless we get sentient 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:11.199 cats who can argue the letter of that law. But 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:16.000 the problem is the Moon Treaty failed. It was ratified 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:19.080 only by some small number of nations, none of them 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:21.879 are space for major space faring nations at the time. 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:26.000 Uh And in fact, I don't think any any country 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:30.679 that has launched a manned space mission at all has 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:33.080 ratified it. I don't know if I would say that, 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:36.840 but definitely it wasn't the United States, Russia, China, any 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:40.440 of those. Um but um okay. So here's the question. 0:18:41.080 --> 0:18:44.120 Why why didn't anybody ratify it when everybody was down 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:47.080 with the Outer Space Treaty. Well, well, for one thing, 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:50.040 the United States big and a big argument l the 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:52.439 US was that this means that we would not be 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:54.880 able to take advantage of things like no one would 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:57.560 be able to take advantage of things like asteroid mining 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:00.760 or or lunar mining or anything along those lines. Are 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:04.000 mining in this specific case, in this specific section of 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:07.080 this article. But that if but that if this got ratified, 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:10.360 then what other laws fallout? See, it was based upon 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:13.200 something else called the Law of the c Treaty, which 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:17.719 was also about things like deep sea mining, and the 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:20.159 Law of the C Treaty had suggested that there be 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:23.760 a new agency that would be an international agency that 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:26.240 would oversee this kind of stuff, and that in fact, 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:30.520 all of much of the benefit of any mining operation 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:34.320 would go towards this agency and not necessarily to whomever 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:38.760 actually operated the mining process. So that means that miners 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:42.480 would be taking that enormous risk of mining and getting 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:46.000 only a portion of the profits from that, the rest 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:48.200 going to this other agency that has just been made 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:50.920 to oversee it. And that's the big argument that most 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:53.320 of the nations that refused to ratify it, we're saying, 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:56.159 they were said, wait, why would we say to the 0:19:56.160 --> 0:20:00.760 people who are taking a uh, you know, a threatening 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:04.439 risk to mind stuff just a government employees get a 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:07.080 government salary, right, You're not actually going to get to 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:09.439 benefit from all this hard work you're doing. Yeah. I 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:12.840 think one major problem is that essentially the Moon Treaty, 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:17.520 it would dictate establishing international control of a regime to 0:20:17.760 --> 0:20:22.320 sort of create resource extraction policies in the future. And 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:25.119 there was another fellow. Since we're talking about, you know, 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:28.000 people who have laid claims. You guys have heard of 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:32.919 Gregory Nimitts. I know you heard about him. So there's 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:37.119 an asteroid called four three three eros. All right, So 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:41.000 this asteroid was one that NASA planned on visiting with 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:42.960 a spacecraft, and in fact they did do that back 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:45.040 in two thousand one. They had a spacecraft land on 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:48.919 the asteroid. A year prior to the spacecraft landing on 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:53.080 the asteroid, Mr Nimitts laid claim to four three three 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:55.800 arrows and then suit NASA in the US government for 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:57.960 landing on his asteroid. Now, the reason he did this 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:01.080 was not because he was trying to get money from 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:04.879 the government. He actually wanted to generate a conversation about 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:08.600 space property because in what he was saying was that traditionally, 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:12.840 if you look over the history of the human race ownership, 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:15.560 you might have heard that possession is nine tenths of 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:17.760 the law when it comes to ownership. That other one 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:21.240 tenth is a claim. So he's saying that by claiming 0:21:21.680 --> 0:21:24.320 he's already got one tenth, he just has to take 0:21:24.320 --> 0:21:27.240 possession to have full ownership. But the claim has been 0:21:27.280 --> 0:21:31.520 realized in times past as a valid means of expressing 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:34.639 ownership over something, and that once you take possession of it, 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:36.800 then you have full ownership of it. So he says, 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:39.960 look in history, this is what we've always said that 0:21:40.000 --> 0:21:41.800 if you lay a claim to something and then you 0:21:41.840 --> 0:21:44.520 take possession of it, you own it. So I've laid 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:46.440 my claim on that. Are you telling me that that's 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:48.800 not valid? Because if you are, that's going against all 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:51.040 the tradition of property law that we've established so far, 0:21:51.080 --> 0:21:53.760 and we need to establish something new. For example, when 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:56.480 Europeans showed up on the American continents and said this 0:21:56.600 --> 0:21:59.359 is ours, we have a flag. Yeah, and the Native 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:03.080 Americans didn't speak Europeans, so they didn't count. So also 0:22:03.119 --> 0:22:07.920 they had very poor immunity to smallpox. Um, yeah, yeah, 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:11.840 let do most of us the U. So the moon 0:22:11.880 --> 0:22:14.360 would be kind of different in that it's not inhabited 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:17.120 and we wouldn't be taking it from anybody except from 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:19.280