[interurban]

I wonder what (if any) legislation currently regulates extra-terrestrial mineral rights. Is Curiosity squatting on someone's claim or staking its own?

Jokes aside, mineral rights have been a contentious issue for centuries. What kind of regulations are companies like Planetary Resources dealing with?

[cellshade]

Ownership of celestial bodies is covered by the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 which states that celestial bodies (such as Mars) are not subject to national appropriation and are the common heritage of all mankind.

Whether the treaty will mean anything in the future to come, however, is an open question, I guess.

[ChuckMcM]

This is something that, with "luck", will come up in our lifetimes. I expect that if China lands robotic miners on the Moon and starts harvesting helium 3 and sends back canisters of it to China, or if someone figures out how to create permanent presence on the Moon without cooperation from other nation-states, it will bring that issue to the forefront.

It was also an interesting question for me with the asteroid mining startups. If you land on an asteroid and extract its platinum, can you keep it?

[pc86]

It's one thing to say that a celestial body is the common heritage of all mankind.

It's something else entirely to say that if you spend billions of dollars to pull platinum out of an asteroid you can't sell it for profit. I don't think the two things are necessarily mutually exclusive.

[joshuapants]

If they plan on selling the platinum they harvested they'd better plan on cutting dividend checks to every last person on earth.

[eru]

Possession is nine tenths of the law?

[bunkydoo]

I believe there is a loophole in this very treaty due to the fact that it only outlines these rules for nations as opposed to private entities.

[trose]

At some point here we're going to have to stop drawing silly lines on the ground and consider ourselves all humans. We have a finite amount of time to get off the planet or our whole species is doomed.

[kbenson]

It's possible that in some respects those silly lines actually accelerate some aspects for getting off planet. They undoubtedly retard others as well.

For a very simplistic example, I doubt we would have been to the moon yet if not for those silly lines.

[eru]

Though, getting to the moon didn't really give us anything (apart from seeing it as a valuable thing in itself).

[mblakele]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Legacy

  > Apollo stimulated many areas of technology. The flight computer design used in both the lunar and command modules was, along with the Minuteman Missile System, the driving force behind early research into integrated circuits. Computer-controlled machining was first used in the fabrication of Apollo structural components.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

[eru]

Ok. I guess I'd have to make a more nuanced argument that the same amount of money would have gone further in terms of advances somewhere else.

[tterrace]

The lunar laser ranging experiment was used to observe the effects of relativity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment

[JasonFruit]

And, if we get off the planet, we have a finite amount of time before our whole species is doomed. It's possible to have too great a sense of urgency about issues regarding the entire human race.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Where do you propose we go?