Sooner
or later, someone's going to kick some serious asteroid1. Within a
decade or two, a commercial space venture is most likely going to start mining
'Near-Earth Objects' and will bring back increasing amounts of very high-value
metals as well as extracting water-ice for life support and propulsion purposes.
So who owns these asteroids? Is it 'Finders-Keepers?'
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| From http://www.wired.com/ - Is this what the future looks like? |
Until
recently, the main piece of International Law on this subject treats space
similarly to Antarctica:
Outer space…
is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of
use or occupation, or by any other means;2
This
is an extract from The Outer Space Treaty, which came into force in 1967. It
also says:
Outer
space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for
exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind…2
There are five other international treaties dealing with relations between
space-faring states, but not all have been ratified by the major space powers. They
were written in the era of Mercury, Soyuz and Apollo, when only the most
powerful governments could hope to launch even two or three astronauts or
cosmonauts into orbit. It doesn't actually talk about private business
activities in space.
Attitudes
to the use of space resources and the existing law seemed to vary all the way
between outright capitalism to a more one-world feeling of sharing it all for
the good of all humanity. It didn't really matter until now, because since 1972
and the last Apollo mission, the human race has been no further than low Earth
orbit.
Now
we're looking at a New Space Race, when a few billionaires such as Elon Musk and a growing number
of aerospace corporations are determined to bring the cost of space access down
low3, with some government assistance it should be said4,
as well as a sudden rush of big investment money5, perhaps ushering
in a new period of exploration and exploitation. Commercial space operations plan to lay claim to asteroids - and then it could be portions of
the surface of Mars and the Moon. That could set a precedent: whoever gets
there first and plants their corporate flag could start strip-mining these
pristine worlds and set up their own feudal kingdom. So I was going to write that governments need to pay attention to this area before it all goes bad.
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Remote camera photo from "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship
of SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage landing. Credit: SpaceX |
But
of course the lawyers got there first.
The
International Institute of Space Law was
founded all the way back in 1960. Citing the recent legislation passed by Obama's government
that deals with the economic rights of US citizens in space, the IISL says, in a
position paper on Space Mining:
The Act determines in § 51303
that United States citizens engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid
resource or a space resource under this chapter “shall be entitled to any
asteroid resource or space resource obtained, including to possess, own,
transport, use and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in
accordance with applicable law, including the international obligations of the
United States.6
That
changes things not a little. Possessing an asteroid and selling it doesn't
sound too much like the good old Outer Space Treaty. So what about the rest of
the world? Will anyone object? And can they do anything about it?
Of
course any nation is free to pass laws similar to this – it's in their own interests that the USA takes the
lead – but is it just up to the other space-faring powers to follow suit or
lose out on the bounty? And who will arbitrate between competing claims? Who
owns ores that aren't located under any Earthly nation's territory? And will
any policing force be on hand to maintain an approximation of law and order
when business giants butt heads? It sounds more like the Wild West.
It
sounds like a promising background for a new science fiction novel I'd like to
write one day.
Stepping
back a moment from questions of what-if, let's ask if there's any solid ground
to build this new future that so recently used to be the realm of fiction and
imagination. On what basis will laws be written? From whose ideology will the
lawmakers be reading? Pragmatically, realistically, many would expect powerful
business interests to have the strongest hand in building the fences and
writing the rules of the New Space world. Will human life on other planets and
in space become a corporate plutocracy? Or a playground for the ridiculously
rich? Let us be at least slightly cynical about the
we-love-SpaceX-and-Star-Trek feeling that everything will be shiny and nice
when we're all living in space. Won't humans, left to themselves, just carry on
doing what they've always done? Misery and degradation appear to be two of the
main exports of the human race when we move outwards and settle in new lands.
So
at the very least we need some laws to throttle back on the bad stuff and give
the good stuff a chance. How will new laws be written and enforced?
Do
we have any philosophical basis for deciding all this, other than a default sense
of doing what seems to work at the time? See what a mess it's getting us into –
ask slave children
harvesting the cocoa beans in Ivory Coast if globalisation is
working for them. Greed is also leading some to do what seems best in their own
eyes, and large numbers of easily-exploited people are suffering – think of Qatar
building its World Cup arenas on the trampled rights of guest workers who are
just trying to provide for their families.7
Investors
will follow the money. That's the altar at which they worship. Explorers will go
because it's out there; scientists will follow the trail of their latest
hypothesis, the next new discovery. Engineers want to build bigger and better
toys for the rest of them.
As
one who follows Jesus above all else, I think I've found a firm foundation for
an ethical approach to this. If that statement generates a strong reaction of
distaste in some readers, wait a moment and hold tight to your open-mindedness:
much of the fragile stability, elusive justice and two-edged scientific
progress we now benefit from was constructed from a worldview owing much to the
wisdom of the Bible. To date, as far as I can tell, there's no ideology or way
of thinking that's got a better track record. The scientific method itself was
pieced together by thinkers, writers and scientists such as ibn al-Haytham, Roger
Bacon, Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton, who mostly based their works on
their strong belief that there is a personal, trustworthy Creator responsible
for making the Universe the way it is.
Regrettably,
many over the centuries have taken up the Bible (or other religious texts) and
used its words for political or personal gain. Some people just seem to like
making more rules for the rest of us. Even today there are claims that the
Bible says this or that about the rightness or wrongness of space travel. For
example, here
is an online debate that includes a quote from Psalm 115 v6:
"The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s: but the earth hath he given to the children of men." A clear distinction is set: Earth has been given to men, but the heavens have not.
The
trouble is that the original writer was almost certainly not thinking about the
possibility of living in space, because at that time, about 3000
years ago, the Jews had something like a three-tiered cosmology of an airy
heaven (the atmosphere), with above that the starry heaven, and beyond that the
highest heaven where God himself dwells; nobody at that time is recorded as
proposing that anyone could live beyond the airy heaven. Very often the Hebrew
words translated 'heaven' and 'the heavens' either mean the sky and clouds, or
the place where God and the angels dwell, or a place so far away that it's
obviously used as an exaggeration. A more even-handed reading of the Bible as a
whole uncovers many references to God owning both Earth and heaven and
appointing humankind as tenants and stewards of all of it. For a good
discussion of this, see
this page.
When
I read Psalm 8, it's plain to see how the Creator set humankind as rulers over
all of the creation, accountable to him. Even then, long before the telescope,
the writer could be overcome with awe at the vast extent of the heavens above,
and be humbly glad that God cares so much for our little race, amazed that he's
given us such a huge mandate:
When I consider your heavens, the work of your
fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in
place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human
beings that you care for them?
You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,
the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea,
all that
swim the paths of the seas. (Psalm 8 v.3-8, New International Version)
In
fact, if I was an marstronaut, travelling for five months through the great
empty spaces, or sitting in a habitat in a desolate rust-coloured desert, Psalm
8 would probably be a favourite to read through.
What
makes sense to me, and to the faith community of which I'm part, is this
non-literalistic way of reading the Bible. It's not that the words aren't true
– of course they are – it's more that you need to see the forest as well, not just the
twigs and branches on each tree. The Bible helps us to interpret itself – so read
the themes, look at verses in the context of the paragraphs, books, and canon
in which they're set; listen to what the writers & readers would have
understood, then draw principles, understand a little more of God's mind – then
apply this to today's and tomorrow's world. And still try to get on with people
who come to a different interpretation.
So
there's a theme of stewardship, of governing the creation for the Creator who
provided all things for us all.
Deuteronomy
chapter 4 fascinates me: here is a people about to enter a new land, and Moses
is laying out God's revolutionary culture of order, kindness and
God-centredness – a culture that they have to construct and live out so that
the other nations will watch and learn. In particular, over and over, they're
told not to worship that which is not God:
And also carefully guard yourselves so that you don’t look up into the skies and see the sun and moon and stars, all the constellations of the skies, and be seduced into worshiping and serving them. God set them out for everybody’s benefit, everywhere. (Deuteronomy 4 v.19, The Message version)
Interesting,
that last thought. Again, I'm pretty sure that Moses wasn't thinking of
asteroid mining when he first said this, but it contributes to a simple principle:
God made it all for everyone's benefit. The whole book – Deuteronomy as well as
the Bible as a whole – is full of concern for the poor, the orphan, the widow,
the stranger, who can be so easily marginalised or abused.
I'm not so naive to imagine that many space colonists are going to suddenly acknowledge that they are morally responsible to their Creator and will act accordingly. But some of those involved in policy-making and colony-building will discover, I hope, that a modernised 'theistic' worldview is the foundation they have been seeking on which to build new worlds. And for others, if they're pragmatic enough to seek a tried and tested ethic, and open-minded enough to reject the popular chorus that 'all problems are caused by religion so ditch all references to that kind of God', exploring the ancient wisdom of the monotheistic faiths will yield treasures more lasting than the kind you might find in a space rock.
So
the fruits of creation are to be shared with all people. How would that work
for asteroid mining companies? The same as it ought to work for all other
businesses – fair play for all. Treat workers, suppliers and customers with
dignity, as you would like to be treated. If a company does well, it can afford
to be generous. How about setting up a voluntary system for channeling a
percentage of the profits of outer space industries into proven, grass-roots
development projects such as providing clean drinking water and eliminating
malaria? Sounds like Bill and Melinda Gates already? Well, there are
precedents.
And
how to handle the rights and obligations of employers and employees when there
are no unions, arbitrators or human rights watchers for fifty million miles? In
my humble, very inexpert opinion it's probably of little use passing laws 'down
here' and expecting everything to work out alright 'up there'. There has to be
a consensus among the New Space corporations and space-faring nations that
there are minimum standards of employment, and that transparency is a given.
Sooner
or later there could be clusters of settlers on (say) Mars, each cluster with
its own character and mix of peculiar characters. They will very soon feel like
making their own rules, I imagine, or will strike out for full political
independence from Earth as soon as it's practical. Maybe if they feel they've
been downtrodden, they'll claim the planet, or parts of it, for themselves, and
come into conflict with the 'Old World'
powers. So from right now there must be a common mindset of peaceful
coexistence and cooperation. See this
article from The Guardian cheekily entitled 'How to Colonize Mars', which sketches
some possible ways of doing that.
(postscript: I just found this detailed paper entitled 'A Pragmatic Approach to Sovereignty on Mars' by Sara Bruhns and Jacob Haqq-Misra of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. It seems I'm not the only one thinking on this topic - in fact they have a much better grasp of it all. - July 11th, 2016 - JP)
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| Image credit: Getty images / Huffington Post |
Should
there be private ownership on Mars? I don't see how there can be much
development and prosperity without it. Yet it's a clean slate, and I think I
speak for many when I express a hope that colonists can leave behind the
excesses and tyrannies we see around us, the ugly disparities of wealth. We all
carry the seeds of paradise and of poverty around in our pockets, and we can
choose which type of seed we are going to sow.
The
closest real-life example I've seen that informs me on how to live as a
community on Mars is when I and my family were living on an island in the Indian Ocean among people whose descendants had survived
there for centuries. Wherever we went, we could see that many people were
actually related to each other in some way, or were friends, and they generally
helped each other out as a natural part of living. They took each day
unhurriedly, enjoying the land they lived in and the people they were with. We
were made so welcome, generously so, even though many of the islanders had
little to share with us and lived hard lives. I could romanticise their way of
life very easily, but the overall sense of sharing a land and treating each
other with respect will always stay with me. That's an ethos that I very much
hope will take root wherever the human race goes next.
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References:
1:
'kick some asteroid': from the 2016 animated movie 'Ratchet and Clank', which
this writer has not seen.
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Other sources:
Space Law:
A brief history of the space launch industry and how SpaceX's
plummeting prices are shaking up the world space business:
A
quote from that Wikipedia article:
According to one Arianespace managing director, "'It's quite clear there's a very significant challenge coming from SpaceX,' he said. 'Therefore, things have to change … and the whole European industry is being restructured, consolidated, rationalised and streamlined.' "
Jean Botti, Chief technology officer for Airbus Group (which makes the Ariane 5) warned that "those who don't take Elon Musk seriously will have a lot to worry about"
Asteroid mining companies:
