Who owns the moon?

[JonXia]

Re: Who owns the moon?

do you know the costs to send a spaceship into space, not to mention building a site, hiring employees who are not only skilled at what their jobs are, but they have to be astronauts (spl). So they have an extremely high hazard pay. Repairs. Who knows what else?

Plus prices are based on supply and demand. More supply meeting the demand means less demand and lower prices.

= not profitable.

[devonin]

Re: Who owns the moon?

People have already shown that they are eager to line up for a chance to go into space. People have -paid- millions of dollars to be brought into space, and the sheer volume of applicants for the Civilians in Space program suggests that finding people willing to take the chance of untimely demise to go to space won't be hard.

If the proposal to start colonizing/mining/using space were accompanyed by the joint international development of a workable Space Elevator then the costs involved would basically pay for themselves immidiately.

[JKPolk]

Re: Who owns the moon?

do you know the costs to send a spaceship into space, not to mention building a site, hiring employees who are not only skilled at what their jobs are, but they have to be astronauts (spl). So they have an extremely high hazard pay. Repairs. Who knows what else?

Plus prices are based on supply and demand. More supply meeting the demand means less demand and lower prices.

= not profitable.

Want me to quote the multiple times I've said "it currently costs $10k/lb" for payload in space? Because I can. What else? Microwaving and glassing portions of the moon to make roads, landing pads and construction materials. Setting up high-powered lasers on mountains to power bases 24/7. Setting up hydroponic farms deep under the lunar surface for any inhabitants. I *do* know what else there is to do and set up on the moon. I have made it abundantly clear that I do know what else there is to do on the moon.
As I said before, read the thread before you make blanket statements, or you look like a fool. Fool.

[Zythus]

Re: Who owns the moon?

The way Wikipedia elaborated on the Space Elevator, it was as if it was already built. But it would be extremely revolutionary for such a reachable-in-our-current-era kind of technology.

While I was on Wikipedia, I did a search for Moon Treaty. Examine the picture below.


Conditions are as followed.

* Bans any military use of celestial bodies, including weapon testing or as military bases.
* Bans all exploration and uses of celestial bodies without the approval or benefit of other states.
* Requires that the Secretary-General must be notified of all celestial activities (and discoveries developed thanks to those activities).
* Declares all states have an equal right to conduct research on celestial bodies.
* Declares for any samples obtained during research activities, the state that obtained them must consider making part of it available to all countries/scientific communities for research.
* Bans altering the environment of celestial bodies and requires states must take measures to prevent accidental contamination.
* Bans any state from claiming sovereignty over any territory of celestial bodies.
* Bans any ownership of any extraterrestrial property by any organization or person, unless that organization is international and governmental.
* Requires all resource extraction and allocation be made by an international regime.

Judging from the picture, the countries with predominance in space exploration, like JKPolk said, USA and Russia, did not sign such a treaty. I guess this treaty was signed too young in our days to be taken seriously, perhaps.

[devonin]

Re: Who owns the moon?

If Wikipedia said that one already existed, someone has been very silly with wikipedia.

The technology doesn't really exist yet to make a workable one, though they've done a lot of work with carbon nanotubes suggesting they'd be up to the task.

I presume the wiki page was like "Here's how it would work if we could make one, so let's pretend we did, and we can look at all the things it would imply"

Edit: Yeah looking back over it, the basic thrust of the message seems to be "We can't make one right now, but we know exactly how we'd make it and how it would work, so we can talk about it that way"

[rzr]

Re: Who owns the moon?

Pretty much seems to me that the Treaty prohibits space activities so much that the only benefit of it now would be simple research. Based on what I read (as long as I interpreted it correctly) using minerals and what not are nearly prohibited completely. Is there any real benefit to it other than research? This is not rhetorical.

[JKPolk]

Re: Who owns the moon?

That's actually a point we'll be making. If the moon was used only for R&D purposes, then there's a good chance we could just implement the rules and laws that govern the Antarctic Research Stations. They're international, there's no land ownership etc etc.
Unfortunately, due to the exceedingly high cost of setting up these facilities on the moon, there has to be some way to pay for them or, really, it's just an enormous money sink.

[JKPolk]

Re: Who owns the moon?

Here's my presentation at Holy Cross!
Part 1
Part 2

About 17 minutes in length. I didn't tape the Q&A session after the presentation, though I should have because some really neat questions were asked.

p.s. i'm joe

[rzr]

Re: Who owns the moon?

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing depending on which nation's economy is the one that blows its money on the project.

[Corbin Wells]

Re: Who owns the moon?

Simply for the stupid reason that we might end up fighting over control of the moon, I hope we never leave the ****ing earth!

[rzr]

Re: Who owns the moon?

To bring new life to this thread, while we're on the subject of space exploration, I'll tell you guys I wrote a letter to George Bush one time when I was littler.

I said to him that I thought NASA should stop exploring space. I say that because I think they will take over the human race. I mean, look at our planet. Everytime one country goes out looking and exploring, it either gets taken over or they do the taking over. There are so many examples of this in our history, if you couldn't think of one I'd personally go slap you. But based on what we know about how exploring works, why would we want to do that?

[devonin]

Re: Who owns the moon?

Everytime one country goes out looking and exploring, it either gets taken over or they do the taking over.

The rest of our solar system looks pretty thoroughly uninhabited. Who exactly are we going to be taking over or be taken over by?

[Rad3n]

Re: Who owns the moon?

well.... another country might follow to invade the americans, it isn't a stretch really. Seeing as the rest of the world has been ahead of them in space technology at various points in time.

Russia could definately hold it's own in "interstellar" combat

[devonin]

Re: Who owns the moon?

So we shoudln't explore space because another country might also decide to try and explore space? And if the russians aren't willing to get into a war with the united states, what makes you think that just because some americans go to space that russia would go to war with the united states in space?

Same united states, and an attack on them in space is the same as an attack on them in general.

[Rad3n]

Re: Who owns the moon?

Because history tells us that it will. (be it in space or otherwise).

Saying that; if we didn't invade Australia I wouldn't be here today