Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that looks
Speaker 1: at the future and says, some people call me a
Speaker 1: space cowboy. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Joe McCormick. Today we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about space property. Because you know, space property,
Speaker 1: we've talked about like this properties of space maybe you know.
Speaker 1: But we've talked about asteroid mining, right, we talked about
Speaker 1: lunar colonies, we talked about a Martian colony, right absolutely so.
Speaker 1: Um so, here's the thing. We've got this technology that's
Speaker 1: developing at a fairly rapid pace that's making this more
Speaker 1: and more, you know, something of a reality. It's not
Speaker 1: just the stuff of science fiction we are getting. It's
Speaker 1: not fifty years part right now. Right now, it's getting
Speaker 1: a tiny bit more concrete. Yeah, like talking about there,
Speaker 1: there's one company in particular that plans to have a
Speaker 1: colony on Mars in ten years. Whether that happens or people,
Speaker 1: I think the more realistic thing is the asteroid mining.
Speaker 1: I think that that's going to seriously happen within the
Speaker 1: next ten years. Right, So, but that raises another question.
Speaker 1: So here on Earth. We've got countries and states. You know,
Speaker 1: we've got these sovereign nations. Sovereign nations, right, they have
Speaker 1: they have rules to guide them, institutions, they've got borders
Speaker 1: that separate them from everybody else, right, only physical ones
Speaker 1: made of rivers and oceans. There really weird thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: if I want to go like into a field and
Speaker 1: build a house there and live in it, for some reason,
Speaker 1: I've got to pay people money. Yeah, yeah, unless you
Speaker 1: somehow have come into ownership of that land already than
Speaker 1: someone else owns that land, and they probably want some
Speaker 1: cash for you to be able to shack up there. Well,
Speaker 1: how did they get the right to ask me for
Speaker 1: cash to build a house on their field? We developed
Speaker 1: something called property laws. Property well we didn't but well
Speaker 1: not personally. If we had, then I'd have a lot
Speaker 1: more property. But the human beings in general, in a
Speaker 1: way of trying to make sense of the fact that
Speaker 1: we've got lots of people and there's lots of really
Speaker 1: awesome land out there that wants and there's some less
Speaker 1: awesome land that nobody wants, right, and how do we
Speaker 1: determine who gets what? And property laws kind of came
Speaker 1: out of that, and they've evolved over time. I mean
Speaker 1: sometimes they evolve very slowly and sometimes quite rapidly, depending
Speaker 1: upon the era we're talking about. But typically what it
Speaker 1: amounts to is you have a plot that you say
Speaker 1: belongs to me, and I can do what I want
Speaker 1: with it, and I have a major degree of control
Speaker 1: over it, so that I can like say that other
Speaker 1: people can't come on it and stuff like that, right,
Speaker 1: and I've asked a government to help me enforce the
Speaker 1: fact that it belongs to me. Sure, And generally it goes,
Speaker 1: you know, enough into the ground for you to build
Speaker 1: a foundation for any buildings that you want, and enough
Speaker 1: into the air that you can, you know, build a
Speaker 1: good couple of stories out there, depending upon whatever the
Speaker 1: regulations are in your area. But then beyond that, it
Speaker 1: pretty much doesn't belong to you. It belongs to whatever
Speaker 1: country you happen to be in. Okay, But um, let's
Speaker 1: say that this house I want to build is not
Speaker 1: in a field I found somewhere. But let's say I
Speaker 1: fly a shuttle up to the moon and land and
Speaker 1: want to build a house there. First of all, shuttles
Speaker 1: don't go to the moon. But if you were to
Speaker 1: play a capsule over you want to build a house?
Speaker 1: You're correct, your story is ludicrous. Let's say I land
Speaker 1: a landing vehicle on the moon. Can I get out
Speaker 1: and I want to build a house to have live
Speaker 1: out my my wonderful social life on the surface of
Speaker 1: the moon. Yeah, we have no pedantic problem with that,
Speaker 1: however legally, so yeah, here's the who do I pay?
Speaker 1: I guess I've got to pay somebody, right Well, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't pay anybody because there's no one to pay right now. See,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. How do we determine who gets access,
Speaker 1: who gets the rights to property and outer space? Because
Speaker 1: who does outer space belong to? I mean humankind? As
Speaker 1: it turns out, well, based upon some some some old
Speaker 1: laws that were written, but well knows some real laws. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's the problem we've imagined. Um. So, let's say
Speaker 1: I go and I and I land on the moon,
Speaker 1: and I build my house there in the middle of
Speaker 1: a big you know field on the moon on the moon. Uh,
Speaker 1: and somebody else comes along and said, no, I want
Speaker 1: to live there, And they knocked my house down and
Speaker 1: they build their own. What's to stop them? We'll see,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. Is that. You know, normally, if we
Speaker 1: were talking about a person from a specific country going
Speaker 1: and claiming something because you particularly are a citizen of
Speaker 1: that country, it would be seen as something called national appropriation.
Speaker 1: Like it's the idea that it's not you claiming that spot,
Speaker 1: it's the United States. And that's where we get into
Speaker 1: a problem. You see, when the space race was kicking
Speaker 1: off in the fifties and sixties, there was something called
Speaker 1: the Cold War. You guys remember the Cold War personally? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean a I have maps in my
Speaker 1: house that say Soviet Union, Eastern East and West East
Speaker 1: and West Germany. So during the Cold War, you had
Speaker 1: two major superpowers that were ramping up their space exploration
Speaker 1: UH industries and as the United States and the former
Speaker 1: Soviet Union. So those two superpowers were on a race.
Speaker 1: Really it was it was almost for bragging rights, but moreover,
Speaker 1: it was also to prove that they had the capability
Speaker 1: of doing something like a long range nuclear strike exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's all about if I'm able to fire a
Speaker 1: rocket that can get all the way into outer space,
Speaker 1: and I can also fire a rocket that has a
Speaker 1: bomb on it all the way to your country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that that's where the space race came from. Well,
Speaker 1: that that meant that you had this mounting escalation of
Speaker 1: competitiveness between the United States and the Soviet Union, and
Speaker 1: as it became closer and closer to a reality that
Speaker 1: one of these two nations was going to make a
Speaker 1: landing on the Moon, began to make the rest of
Speaker 1: the world say, hey, you know what, maybe we should
Speaker 1: set up some rules here. So, in a very what
Speaker 1: I would say, a remarkable act of coming togetherness, yea
Speaker 1: um of Really it's kind of a more of an
Speaker 1: act of we're all scared out of our pants nous um.
Speaker 1: We actually came up with something. Not we as a
Speaker 1: share but humans came up with something you've been y
Speaker 1: now known as the Outer Space Treaty. That the official
Speaker 1: full name, as adopted by the UN General Assembly was
Speaker 1: the Treaty on Principles Governing Governing the Activities of States
Speaker 1: in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the
Speaker 1: Moon and other celestial bodies. Yes, that was in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven. It was actually partly based on an earlier
Speaker 1: piece of legislation that was drafted in nineteen fifty nine
Speaker 1: called the Antarctic Treaty. Now, the Antarctic Treaty was designed
Speaker 1: to prevent the militarization of the Antarctic, saying that no
Speaker 1: governments could build military facilities on the Narctic. It could
Speaker 1: be used just for scientific research. But it was meant
Speaker 1: so that what and go and claim an Arctic as
Speaker 1: part of their nation to give them some sort of
Speaker 1: military superiority or advantage. And so they used that as
Speaker 1: sort of the the guideline for drafting this nineteen seven treaty. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And so the treaty includes a bunch of different articles
Speaker 1: that established things like freedom of exploration, freedom of scientific experimentation. Right,
Speaker 1: it's it's basically like spaces for humankind. It's free for
Speaker 1: everyone to explore. Um. It's not subject to national appropriation. Uh.
Speaker 1: No nukes, y'all forbids, weapons of mass destruction mounted on
Speaker 1: the moon, celestial bodies or in orbit. Um, celestial bodies
Speaker 1: should be us for peaceful purposes. It also comes up
Speaker 1: with some sort of rules of etiquette for international cooperation.
Speaker 1: So it's a it has like uh, it says like, oh,
Speaker 1: if foreign astronauts crash land in your country, you're supposed
Speaker 1: to return them safely to their their own country. Of origin. Um.
Speaker 1: It says that I think astronaut shall not attack each other,
Speaker 1: something like that, that the astronauts are are envoys of
Speaker 1: all humankind. Yeah. Um. However, that countries are responsible for
Speaker 1: their citizens in space, um, and also liable for damage,
Speaker 1: and also that they should generally avoid doing that damage. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: But so when it comes to space property and my
Speaker 1: question about building a house on the Moon, they actually
Speaker 1: have something that seems somewhat relevant. Article two of the
Speaker 1: Outer Space Treaty specifically says outer space, including the Moon
Speaker 1: and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation
Speaker 1: by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation,
Speaker 1: or by any other means. So another that means like,
Speaker 1: the United States can't go up and say the Moon
Speaker 1: is ours. I claim this for Spain. You can't. You
Speaker 1: can't do that. You can't. They can't even claim part
Speaker 1: of the Moon as there right. Essentially, the argument here
Speaker 1: is that you cannot have any nation laying claim to
Speaker 1: any sort of celestial object, not just the Moon, asteroids,
Speaker 1: other planets. Right. Duck duck Duck Dodgers of the twenty
Speaker 1: four and a half century had no right to be
Speaker 1: he claimed it for Earth, so that that might be
Speaker 1: all right, but but yeah, you can't. You can't lay
Speaker 1: claim to to anything on a national level. Now that
Speaker 1: has opened up some debate about the spirit and the
Speaker 1: letter of the law as it comes to private ownership. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I would say that since it's got that other proposition
Speaker 1: in there that says that countries are responsible for the
Speaker 1: actions of their citizens, that that anyone who does anything
Speaker 1: in space is a representation of their country, and that therefore, well,
Speaker 1: there there are those arguments. Yeah, well, okay, so this
Speaker 1: is interesting. Generally people have interpreted this treaty to mean,
Speaker 1: oh and by the way, I mean, so it was
Speaker 1: ratified by pretty much everybody. Yeah, we we gave it
Speaker 1: the thumbs up. It is a law we abide by. Now,
Speaker 1: because there's another one we're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: minute where we did not do that. Right, So, lots
Speaker 1: of people interpreted this Article two of the Outer Space
Speaker 1: Treaty to say, okay, nobody can claim property rights to
Speaker 1: anything in space. But as we established before, that article
Speaker 1: to the language could be interpreted as ambiguous because what
Speaker 1: it specifically says is that it's not subject to national
Speaker 1: appropriation by claim of sovereignty, and it doesn't specifically say
Speaker 1: that no person or company could claim the land um.
Speaker 1: And this brings us to a dude who calls himself
Speaker 1: a head cheese of the company Lunar Embassy. His name
Speaker 1: is Dennis Hope, uh and Dennis Springs. This is a
Speaker 1: fun dude. So, so, around nineteen eighty or so, from
Speaker 1: what I understand, he filed a claim for ownership with
Speaker 1: the U N for for the moon. Yeah, let me
Speaker 1: read a little bit from the Frequently Asked Questions page
Speaker 1: of his company's website. He says, in nineteen a very bright,
Speaker 1: young and handsome Mr Dennis Hope went to his local
Speaker 1: US governmental office that's capitalized, don't know what that means
Speaker 1: for claim registries, the San Francisco County seat and made
Speaker 1: a claim for the entire lunar surface, as well as
Speaker 1: the surface of all other eight planets in our solar
Speaker 1: system and their moons except the Earth and the Sun. Obviously,
Speaker 1: he was first taken for a crackpot until three supervisors,
Speaker 1: two floors and five hours later, the main supervisor accepted
Speaker 1: and registered his claim. After this, he he claims that
Speaker 1: so there he staked his claim with his local government
Speaker 1: Office for the Moon uh, and afterwards mailed letters to
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union and to the United Nations announcing to
Speaker 1: them that the moon was now his uh and to
Speaker 1: see if they had any problem with that. Right. He
Speaker 1: basically said, Um, if this isn't cool, guys, write me back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and no one bothered to do it. They didn't write
Speaker 1: him back, which he argues is the essentially the them
Speaker 1: saying signing off on it. Yeah, that they gave the
Speaker 1: sort of silent consent. It's like saying, like, universe, if
Speaker 1: you don't want me to eat this doughnut annihilated before
Speaker 1: I can touch in my mouth and ab So I
Speaker 1: like the idea of him going to the San Francisco
Speaker 1: County because that would be kind of like going to
Speaker 1: the mayor of your city and saying, like, I'm claiming Antarctica,
Speaker 1: and San Francisco has a long history of kind of
Speaker 1: you know, and like, yeah, that's hilarious. Emperor, the Emperor Norton.
Speaker 1: By the way, another thing, now, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say we know this to be false, but also this
Speaker 1: is his story as he tells it. I'm not even
Speaker 1: sure the extent to which this should be considered. Um,
Speaker 1: but so, yeah, so he sent those letters off after this,
Speaker 1: he claims that and I don't know what to make
Speaker 1: of this either, but he claims that he he added
Speaker 1: a cop be right to his work by the U. S.
Speaker 1: Copyright Registry Office. Um so, with his claim to claim
Speaker 1: and copyright registration certificate from the U. S. Government in hand,
Speaker 1: Mr Hope became what is probably the largest landowner around
Speaker 1: the planet today. I don't know what copyright has to
Speaker 1: do with the moon. Yeah, that that seems to be.
Speaker 1: That seems to be this fallacy that somehow getting one
Speaker 1: thing ratified in one way by a government agency ends
Speaker 1: up legitimizing the claim. That's not the case, right, Like
Speaker 1: if I write a book where I end up conquering
Speaker 1: the entire world and I get it published and it's
Speaker 1: under copyright, that doesn't mean I actually then have the
Speaker 1: right to tell everybody what to do, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that I keep trying. He may be confused about what
Speaker 1: government office he contacted or something I would be. I
Speaker 1: think he's confused about governments in general. I he he
Speaker 1: did go on to set up a democratic republic nation
Speaker 1: called the Galactic Government. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right,
Speaker 1: and or something like that. Yeah, I wrote a constitution
Speaker 1: and put it up online in and claims to have
Speaker 1: diplomacy with thirty nations. So it would sound like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're just dealing with somebody who's got a funny website
Speaker 1: or something. But he's making money on this, y'all. Well,
Speaker 1: so supposedly he set this up because he had just
Speaker 1: gotten divorced, was really strapped for cash, and thought, you know,
Speaker 1: no one's selling the moon right now, how can I
Speaker 1: sell the moon? That's what that That is an interview
Speaker 1: that I've read with him. Yeah, yeah, oh that that.
Speaker 1: I read that interview too, So, yeah, what he's been
Speaker 1: doing for since about nineteen eighty apparently is selling parcels
Speaker 1: on the surface of the Moon that are each about
Speaker 1: the size of a football field, and he prices them
Speaker 1: for about twenty bucks each um. And so if you
Speaker 1: want to send him your your shiny new twenty dollar bill,
Speaker 1: you can get a football field sized parcel on the moon.
Speaker 1: The largest piece of property he sells is continent sized um,
Speaker 1: which costs some million dollars. Yeah. Um. The question I
Speaker 1: have is how many people have actually bought this? And
Speaker 1: I have to be totally honest and say the numbers
Speaker 1: I've seen are pretty high, but I am very skeptical
Speaker 1: about them, especially because of the strange increase and decrease
Speaker 1: I've seen I've seen across chronology, Like for example, there
Speaker 1: was a National Geographic article about Dennis Hope in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine. They reported he claimed to have sold parcels
Speaker 1: on the Moon and other planets to at least three
Speaker 1: point seven million people. Uh. Two years earlier, short article
Speaker 1: on Discover magazine online two thousand seven claimed that Hope
Speaker 1: had sold four point to five million to four point
Speaker 1: to five million. Maybe he had just bought back point
Speaker 1: and those are by no means. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: look all I see weirdly vast ranges of different numbers
Speaker 1: of claimed customers and amounts of property sold, you would
Speaker 1: think that you have to keep pretty good records of that,
Speaker 1: because I would imagine the I R. S Has something
Speaker 1: to say about its well. Funny on his frequently asked questions,
Speaker 1: He's got a little question there about how should I, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, claim this on my taxes, and the answers
Speaker 1: like I don't know. Yeah. He claims that his government
Speaker 1: is trying to join the International Monetary Fund UM and
Speaker 1: that you know, their their their currency is the reserve
Speaker 1: of helium three on the Moon, which is some six
Speaker 1: quadrillion dollar reserve. So yeah, so it's based on the
Speaker 1: helium standard. Okay, but here's the question we have to
Speaker 1: start wondering, like, Okay, on one hand, this seems so funny,
Speaker 1: but like, well, wait a minute, I mean, is this
Speaker 1: legit in any way? So there there's been people have
Speaker 1: tried to address that. Right, there's a there's another treaty
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine. Right, okay, so we should discuss that,
Speaker 1: often known as the Moon Treaty. Right, that's the shortened version,
Speaker 1: although to be fair, it involved not just the Moon
Speaker 1: but all celestial objects. Right, And I do you know
Speaker 1: this was back in nineteen seventy nine. I do want
Speaker 1: to point out that that Mr Hope is not the
Speaker 1: first person who was attempted to do this. I read.
Speaker 1: I read a nineteen nine Science Illustrated article in which
Speaker 1: one James Team mangan Uh formed a nation of celestial
Speaker 1: space and contacted the secretaries of state of seventy four
Speaker 1: nations plus the u N about gaining recognition because he
Speaker 1: intended to sell um earth sized chunks of space off
Speaker 1: at about a dollar a lot um, which he called
Speaker 1: a new, bold and modest idea um um. Since that,
Speaker 1: since he hasn't become a household name, I'm going to
Speaker 1: assume that that did not ultimately go very far. Well,
Speaker 1: they created this treaty, okay, So in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: the commonly known as the Moon Treaty. It was called
Speaker 1: officially the Agreement Governing Governing the activities of States on
Speaker 1: the Moon and other celestial bodies. Specifically, the part that's
Speaker 1: really relevant is an Article leven, Section three. It says,
Speaker 1: neither the surface nor the subsurface of the Moon, nor
Speaker 1: any other part thereof, or natural resources in place, shall
Speaker 1: become the property of any state, international, inner governmental or
Speaker 1: non governmental organization, national organization or non governmental entity, or
Speaker 1: of any natural persons. So in that, in that sense,
Speaker 1: they're saying the space belongs to everyone, and no one
Speaker 1: nobody can own anything whatsoever, right unless we get sentient
Speaker 1: cats who can argue the letter of that law. But
Speaker 1: the problem is the Moon Treaty failed. It was ratified
Speaker 1: only by some small number of nations, none of them
Speaker 1: are space for major space faring nations at the time.
Speaker 1: Uh And in fact, I don't think any any country
Speaker 1: that has launched a manned space mission at all has
Speaker 1: ratified it. I don't know if I would say that,
Speaker 1: but definitely it wasn't the United States, Russia, China, any
Speaker 1: of those. Um but um okay. So here's the question.
Speaker 1: Why why didn't anybody ratify it when everybody was down
Speaker 1: with the Outer Space Treaty. Well, well, for one thing,
Speaker 1: the United States big and a big argument l the
Speaker 1: US was that this means that we would not be
Speaker 1: able to take advantage of things like no one would
Speaker 1: be able to take advantage of things like asteroid mining
Speaker 1: or or lunar mining or anything along those lines. Are
Speaker 1: mining in this specific case, in this specific section of
Speaker 1: this article. But that if but that if this got ratified,
Speaker 1: then what other laws fallout? See, it was based upon
Speaker 1: something else called the Law of the c Treaty, which
Speaker 1: was also about things like deep sea mining, and the
Speaker 1: Law of the C Treaty had suggested that there be
Speaker 1: a new agency that would be an international agency that
Speaker 1: would oversee this kind of stuff, and that in fact,
Speaker 1: all of much of the benefit of any mining operation
Speaker 1: would go towards this agency and not necessarily to whomever
Speaker 1: actually operated the mining process. So that means that miners
Speaker 1: would be taking that enormous risk of mining and getting
Speaker 1: only a portion of the profits from that, the rest
Speaker 1: going to this other agency that has just been made
Speaker 1: to oversee it. And that's the big argument that most
Speaker 1: of the nations that refused to ratify it, we're saying,
Speaker 1: they were said, wait, why would we say to the
Speaker 1: people who are taking a uh, you know, a threatening
Speaker 1: risk to mind stuff just a government employees get a
Speaker 1: government salary, right, You're not actually going to get to
Speaker 1: benefit from all this hard work you're doing. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think one major problem is that essentially the Moon Treaty,
Speaker 1: it would dictate establishing international control of a regime to
Speaker 1: sort of create resource extraction policies in the future. And
Speaker 1: there was another fellow. Since we're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: people who have laid claims. You guys have heard of
Speaker 1: Gregory Nimitts. I know you heard about him. So there's
Speaker 1: an asteroid called four three three eros. All right, So
Speaker 1: this asteroid was one that NASA planned on visiting with
Speaker 1: a spacecraft, and in fact they did do that back
Speaker 1: in two thousand one. They had a spacecraft land on
Speaker 1: the asteroid. A year prior to the spacecraft landing on
Speaker 1: the asteroid, Mr Nimitts laid claim to four three three
Speaker 1: arrows and then suit NASA in the US government for
Speaker 1: landing on his asteroid. Now, the reason he did this
Speaker 1: was not because he was trying to get money from
Speaker 1: the government. He actually wanted to generate a conversation about
Speaker 1: space property because in what he was saying was that traditionally,
Speaker 1: if you look over the history of the human race ownership,
Speaker 1: you might have heard that possession is nine tenths of
Speaker 1: the law when it comes to ownership. That other one
Speaker 1: tenth is a claim. So he's saying that by claiming
Speaker 1: he's already got one tenth, he just has to take
Speaker 1: possession to have full ownership. But the claim has been
Speaker 1: realized in times past as a valid means of expressing
Speaker 1: ownership over something, and that once you take possession of it,
Speaker 1: then you have full ownership of it. So he says,
Speaker 1: look in history, this is what we've always said that
Speaker 1: if you lay a claim to something and then you
Speaker 1: take possession of it, you own it. So I've laid
Speaker 1: my claim on that. Are you telling me that that's
Speaker 1: not valid? Because if you are, that's going against all
Speaker 1: the tradition of property law that we've established so far,
Speaker 1: and we need to establish something new. For example, when
Speaker 1: Europeans showed up on the American continents and said this
Speaker 1: is ours, we have a flag. Yeah, and the Native
Speaker 1: Americans didn't speak Europeans, so they didn't count. So also
Speaker 1: they had very poor immunity to smallpox. Um, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: let do most of us the U. So the moon
Speaker 1: would be kind of different in that it's not inhabited
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't be taking it from anybody except from
Speaker 1: all the other people who have just as much right
Speaker 1: to it as we do according to this international treaty.
Speaker 1: So it did lead to another discussion about a different approach.
Speaker 1: There's another group called the the Space Settlement Institute SON
Speaker 1: based out of New York, and they wanted They've proposed
Speaker 1: the Space Settlement Prize Act, and this would require the
Speaker 1: United States to recognize and legally support landownership claims for
Speaker 1: any private entity that has established a permanently inhabited settlement
Speaker 1: in space. The idea being that if they have managed
Speaker 1: to do that, if they have managed to actually create
Speaker 1: a permanent settlement, the US would recognize that as such,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't be a United States property. It would
Speaker 1: just be a property that these people own that the
Speaker 1: United States recognizes their ownership. So the idea is that
Speaker 1: this would be working around that national appropriation restriction that
Speaker 1: was in the nineteen seven treaties saying we're not saying
Speaker 1: the U. S should be able to go out and
Speaker 1: claim the moon. We're saying that if a private organization
Speaker 1: creates the technology that makes it possible and and funds
Speaker 1: this and then goes and builds a settlement, that that
Speaker 1: will become something official. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't belong to
Speaker 1: the US. Yeah. This seems to relate to something that
Speaker 1: I think is a part of earth property law, which
Speaker 1: is this idea of sort of intent to occupy. Like
Speaker 1: if you want to claim a piece of land that's unowned, you, um,
Speaker 1: you can't just like say it's mine. You also have
Speaker 1: to like make an investment pretty much in like getting there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if we were to apply that kind of
Speaker 1: thing to space, I can see how that might make sense.
Speaker 1: So so basically you'd be sort of agree with Mr
Speaker 1: Hope here on the sixty seven treaty, not applying to
Speaker 1: private entities, but also saying that what he's doing won't
Speaker 1: work because you're not actually going and setting up presidents there.
Speaker 1: You're just sort of I mean, anybody can say, oh
Speaker 1: I own the Moon, right exactly. You have to be
Speaker 1: you have to demonstrate that you're actually building something there.
Speaker 1: In fact, they went on the group went on to
Speaker 1: propose some more guidelines that would actually uh fill out
Speaker 1: some more rules. For example, whatever the thing was built
Speaker 1: there would operate under its own rules and laws. It
Speaker 1: would not necessarily it wouldn't be seen as US law
Speaker 1: because then it would be again an argument about national appropriation.
Speaker 1: What happens on the moon stays on the moon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they make casinos on the moon, like Space wild West, Yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of. And they had suggested that the way it
Speaker 1: would work is the first claim on the Moon could
Speaker 1: be no larger than six hundred thousand square miles, which
Speaker 1: amounts to about four percent of the or surface, but
Speaker 1: every subsequent claim would end up being fifteen percent less
Speaker 1: land mass. So in other words, every time the next
Speaker 1: claim is made, you subtract that's the maximum that could
Speaker 1: be claimed, and uh, that way you end up. You know,
Speaker 1: the companies that are really motivated to truly because they
Speaker 1: imagine that this will be a company thing obviously not
Speaker 1: an individual thing. But the companies that are truly motivated
Speaker 1: to go and do this sort of stuff will have
Speaker 1: an incentive to do it, not just from the fact
Speaker 1: that there is stuff out there, like the helium three
Speaker 1: that's out there that could be really valuable, but that
Speaker 1: they'll have the legal, uh basis to do this without
Speaker 1: fear of someone um counter countermanding that saying no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that someone who brings more you know why you're fencing
Speaker 1: up with. Right on top of that, they would be
Speaker 1: able to seek recognition from the u N under this act.
Speaker 1: And also, oh so the moon be six hundred thousand
Speaker 1: square miles for the first claim, Mars is three point
Speaker 1: six million square miles, which is, you know about like
Speaker 1: the United States, that's six percent of Mars' service area.
Speaker 1: And then um, you don't have oceans to deal with,
Speaker 1: you've gotten and a lot bigger than the moon. So
Speaker 1: one other thing that's interesting. This also applies to asteroids,
Speaker 1: which goes back to Mr. Nimets who had claimed that
Speaker 1: that one asteroid. They said that if it's a large asteroid,
Speaker 1: it's going to be the same rules as the moon.
Speaker 1: Six hundred thousand square miles is the initial claim. If
Speaker 1: it's less than one million square miles in surface area,
Speaker 1: then you can claim the entire asteroid. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: essentially it's first come, first served, really uh. And the
Speaker 1: other part of the argument is that even without this
Speaker 1: this um, this specific language being ratified, even if it's
Speaker 1: not ratified, there's already precedent for at least being able
Speaker 1: to sell the stuff from space on Earth. And the
Speaker 1: reason why I say that is because both the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union and the United States had trips to the Moon
Speaker 1: and brought stuff back. The Soviet Union ended up selling
Speaker 1: some of that stuff, so they sold property that was
Speaker 1: from not not like property, but they sold stuff that
Speaker 1: was gathered from the Moon and brought back to Earth
Speaker 1: and then sold that. So there's some that that's at
Speaker 1: least enough of a precedent so that companies that are
Speaker 1: looking at asteroid mining can feel reasonably confident that they
Speaker 1: can go out and get this stuff without having too
Speaker 1: much hassle because there's already they can always say no. Wait,
Speaker 1: so the world did not object when the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: sold those moon rocks. Therefore we can go to this
Speaker 1: asteroid and mind it we're not playing on staying there.
Speaker 1: We're not claiming the asteroid. We just want the stuff
Speaker 1: honest or in it. I think there's also some question
Speaker 1: about whether an asteroid of certain size at least should
Speaker 1: be considered a celestial body at all, Like because okay,
Speaker 1: so you'd probably say, like series, Uh, that's pretty big.
Speaker 1: You know that that's a celestial body. It's like a
Speaker 1: moon or something. But if you have if you have
Speaker 1: an asteroid, it's about the size of like a house,
Speaker 1: is that really a celestial body? Well? See that. Now
Speaker 1: we're getting into arguments about the semantics, like when do
Speaker 1: you call a hill a mountain? And wind is on
Speaker 1: the hill. But but this matters because the Space Treaty
Speaker 1: is about it's about celestial bodies and stuff, and and
Speaker 1: so it doesn't prevent us from returning with resources. Would
Speaker 1: a small enough asteroid just on the whole be considered
Speaker 1: a resource? I don't know that if a small enough
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know that most companies would look
Speaker 1: at a small asteroid and think of that as a
Speaker 1: viable option, to mind, because you might not get enough
Speaker 1: out of it for it to make operation worth. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it would have to depend on the asteroid. Okay,
Speaker 1: so maybe not house size, but what about the size
Speaker 1: of a very large building? Yeah, an that a celestial body?
Speaker 1: It all, it all depends upon how some of these
Speaker 1: definitions are going to happen after, after we've already done stuff.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's what a lot of experts are saying,
Speaker 1: is that while when someone actually does it, we'll go,
Speaker 1: let's get a lot for that. Well, and and they
Speaker 1: point out a lot of people will point out that
Speaker 1: a lot of laws follow behind technological and scientific discoveries. Right,
Speaker 1: So we discover stuff, we start putting it into use.
Speaker 1: Then governments start to catch up, and then they end
Speaker 1: up putting in whatever restrictions or regulations they deem are
Speaker 1: necessary to make sure that it's a fair and safe process.
Speaker 1: And sometimes there's a lot of growing pains. You know,
Speaker 1: we've we've talked I can't recall if we've talked on
Speaker 1: here or not about you know, copyright law and the
Speaker 1: digital age and whether or not you know what what
Speaker 1: sharing accounts for when you don't have a physical copy
Speaker 1: of the media. Sure, I mean, you know we've seen
Speaker 1: the same thing hold true and multiple industries. The Internet
Speaker 1: has obviously made a huge impact on society and culture
Speaker 1: and law, and a lot of the laws had to
Speaker 1: catch up. In fact, some would argue are still catching
Speaker 1: up to what the Internet is capable of doing. I
Speaker 1: assume we're going to see the same sort of thing
Speaker 1: once we start seeing asteroid mining go from this is
Speaker 1: what we're planning on doing too, this is what we did.
Speaker 1: You know. Once we get to that point, that's when
Speaker 1: we're going to see this actually be addressed. And I
Speaker 1: also think that it's not not the case where any
Speaker 1: treaty that's been signed in the past will not eventually
Speaker 1: be overturned by something else, or be clarified in some
Speaker 1: way so that it ends up allowing for certain cases,
Speaker 1: or you know, under specific guidelines allow for things like
Speaker 1: claiming property in space. It's just one of those things
Speaker 1: that until someone has gone out to actually do it,
Speaker 1: we're not really going to be able to, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think a lot of governments are
Speaker 1: going to dedicate the time to think about it. For
Speaker 1: one thing, there are a lot of other problems that
Speaker 1: people have to focus on first, and and thinking about
Speaker 1: who owns that one section of the moon is not
Speaker 1: chief among them. At this moment, and it should be
Speaker 1: because Transformers three. Dark of the Moon tells us that
Speaker 1: on the far side of the moon there are robots, y'all,
Speaker 1: and we need to get over there. I just watched
Speaker 1: that movie. I also wanted to put in not related
Speaker 1: to Transformers at all. That's good, because a terrible film.
Speaker 1: I missed it somehow. I didn't miss it. You just
Speaker 1: didn't see it. That that all that all of those
Speaker 1: um name a star, those are not legit, y'all. They
Speaker 1: they were using y'all a lot this podcast episode. Um.
Speaker 1: But so, um, yeah, you cannot You cannot name a star. Um.
Speaker 1: You cannot pay someone to name a star for you,
Speaker 1: in any kind of scientifically official manner. Right, that's unless
Speaker 1: you discover it, in which case you might be able
Speaker 1: to maybe. Usually stars at this point are named by
Speaker 1: a sort of a coordinate system, which is right, Which
Speaker 1: is really useful to researchers and astronomers because that tells
Speaker 1: them where in the sky it is, which is great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you just say, look for I claimed that star
Speaker 1: and I called it Frank, look for Frank, that's not
Speaker 1: going to help. Yeah. So, so having the data built
Speaker 1: into the name is great. So the companies that do this.
Speaker 1: What they do is they have a massive database of
Speaker 1: all the stars and assuming that quote unquote, they are legit,
Speaker 1: and I put legit another I don't know, I guess yeah,
Speaker 1: because because no matter what, you're not really renaming the star.
Speaker 1: But if you've ever seen those like, you know, for
Speaker 1: fifty bucks, you can name a star for you know,
Speaker 1: give your sweetheart the gift of a star. Um. What
Speaker 1: they do is they have this database and if you
Speaker 1: pay them the fifty dollars, then you know, they end
Speaker 1: up put an entry in their Excel file and next
Speaker 1: to whatever star, and then you name it Frank. So
Speaker 1: then they'll say that this star is now named Frank
Speaker 1: in our database. That, by the way, is the only
Speaker 1: place where it is renamed in that company's database. It
Speaker 1: has no official capacity whatsoever, right because anytime that a
Speaker 1: star is given an actual name, that is not a
Speaker 1: set of coordinates, that is up to and even I
Speaker 1: think even the sets of coordinates are up to the
Speaker 1: International Astronomical Union, i a you UM, which which has
Speaker 1: a lot of very snarky things to say about this
Speaker 1: entire subject. There's a there's a whole fact where they
Speaker 1: actually talk about the guys, this is not this is
Speaker 1: not a legit thing. In fact, there are competing services
Speaker 1: out there right that are selling the same star to
Speaker 1: multip well. In fact, you might even have one service.
Speaker 1: Just how do you know if if the star you
Speaker 1: got is truly unique in their database, they might be like, hey,
Speaker 1: we can sell this one star and tell people that
Speaker 1: they've renamed it and it's the same one. Why do
Speaker 1: we we just make one up if we want, we
Speaker 1: just make up coordinates, and that's the star you've got,
Speaker 1: right right, What you're really paying for with your fifty
Speaker 1: dollars is a line in a database and a pretty
Speaker 1: piece of paper that they send you. And if that
Speaker 1: seems to you like a really good, you know, expenditure
Speaker 1: of money, then by all means do it. Just just
Speaker 1: be aware, take a quick course in basic power point,
Speaker 1: presentation or word, and then you can make your own
Speaker 1: certificate and have it say whatever you want. Because, as
Speaker 1: the I A U states, like true love and many
Speaker 1: other of the best things in human life, the beauty
Speaker 1: of the night sky is not for sale, but it's
Speaker 1: free for all to enjoy. And and furthermore that that
Speaker 1: letting people name their own stars would generate a system
Speaker 1: of mounting confusion for no factual reason, which is the
Speaker 1: opposite of what taxpayers pay scientists to do. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so that's so if you ever have seen those
Speaker 1: ads about buying a star to name it whatever you want,
Speaker 1: just know that that's that's not official in any in
Speaker 1: any capacity. Um, although I will say that I disagree
Speaker 1: with that you cannot sell true love because well that's
Speaker 1: a different podcast. We we'll talk about that some other time, huh,
Speaker 1: okay whatever. I also would not recommend that you buy
Speaker 1: property on the Moon from lunar lunar embassy or anyone else.
Speaker 1: I you know, I can't say for sure, but I'm
Speaker 1: just extremely skeptical that that will ever pay out for
Speaker 1: you see, And what's fun is that we're talking about
Speaker 1: something that's still oft in the future. Obviously, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about something where anyone, no one has been able
Speaker 1: to make a lunar colony yet, right, So so this
Speaker 1: is all hypothetical anyway. But the thing is this is
Speaker 1: going to happen, and I I I hold that same
Speaker 1: skepticism Joe. I do not think that one man's very
Speaker 1: possibly spurious claim on on on owning the Moon is
Speaker 1: going to hold up that sort of that sort of development.
Speaker 1: But it will be interesting to see how the world
Speaker 1: reacts to that kind of thing, because I imagine that
Speaker 1: if a new treaty is drawn up, we are going
Speaker 1: to see some of the same language come up, things
Speaker 1: like avoiding the weaponization of space, that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: but other things, you know, talking about being able to
Speaker 1: uh leverage the resources that we can find out in
Speaker 1: space for the benefit of people here on Earth. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's hard to argue against that, certainly. Yeah, no argument here,
Speaker 1: all right, So, um, we're going to wrap this up.
Speaker 1: We've got this, We've got our own colony that we're planning. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know why we selled on Neptune. That sounds
Speaker 1: like it's going to be really difficult, but well but
Speaker 1: we won't need eyes to see where we're going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we also don't need roads. So yeah, we're gonna write
Speaker 1: this up because we gotta we gotta build our our
Speaker 1: our column on Neptune so we can really claim it. Um, guys,
Speaker 1: make sure that you go visit fw thinking dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the website where we have all our podcasts, are
Speaker 1: blog posts, are articles, are videos, are all there. You
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Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. The handle
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Speaker 1: we will talk to you again really soon. For more
Speaker 1: on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward
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