Congress Says Yes to Space Mining, No to Rocket Regulations | Hacker News Reader

Congress Says Yes to Space Mining, No to Rocket Regulations

wired.com

66 pointswalterbell23 comments

Help me understand, how is The US Congress able to decide what is allowed or not is space?

They're not. They are, however, able to decide what US companies are able to do in space.

But that implies (to me) that congress consider that they are allowed to say that mining in space is ok. They are granting a usage right to resources that is not within their jurisdiction.

As I understood the article, the law merely discusses ownership rights of what gets brought back. If company X does action Y and recovers item Z back to Earth, then the question of whether X's ownership of Z is acknowledged under US law seems to be just the sort of thing Congress would be able to decide.

But that means the congress are implying that resources in space are free for anyone to take in the first place, bring brack and claim ownership of. Not something you normally can do on terra firma. Looting abroad is rarely ok, even if you pay taxes on the value of what you took when you get home.

The question of the ability for private enterprises and persons to claim rights to resources in space is interesting and needs to be regulated (if its not already so) in order to open up opportunities. But at I don't see how the regulators of one nation could do this regulation.p by themselves, it needs to be an international treaty. Imho.

> But that means the congress are implying that resources in space are free for anyone to take in the first place, bring brack and claim ownership of. Not something you normally can do on terra firma

Its not something you can usually do on Earth because most of Earth is subject to sovereignties which have prohibited it, and to whose prohibitions other sovereignties have generally elected to give some effect.

Yeah. I bet they're sending a sternly worded warning to these companies that if they go to space and bring back a trillion dollars worth of metals, there's going to be thousands of dollars of fines to be paid.

hundreds of millions in taxes

*Adds space accountant to the list of acceptable jobs for my son...

Rephrase the question more like: "How is the US Congress able to tax incomes earned by American citizens/companies in France?"

If China (the government) were to go into space and start mining things, the US would likely be limited to diplomatic recourse, or if objectionable enough, perhaps war. Clearly, American government does not directly control Chinese government, but does have influence over it.

If a Chinese mining company (not the government) goes into space and starts mining, the American government's course of action is likely limited to pleading with the Chinese government to restrict their mining companies from being able to do so, using the aforementioned diplomatic measures as bargaining chips in the negotiation.

If however, an American mining company wants to go mine an asteroid, the US government is assuming a total control / responsibility of their actions, even while those actions are not on US soil, or even on any terran soil whatsoever. Because the US government believes it controls all US companies to the extent that they do, they believe that they could forbid an American company from mining resources not in America, or in this case, not even on Earth.

This assertion is them saying that they either don't care if mining companies mine asteroids and other planets, or that they might actually acknowledge that they don't have the power to forbid it. I haven't been following it closely enough to say which kind of concession it is.

What a time to be alive. I for one can't wait until the space race to colonize planets and moons starts. Hopefully NASA's budget will increase as well.

On a lighter note https://twitter.com/startupljackson/status/64852259758018969...

There'll be no 'space race', at least, outside of government propaganda stunts such as Apollo programme, or the new Russian moon mission.

There is nothing in space which can't be had more cheaply on Earth. Except freedom.

This does look like it violates the Outer Space Treaty, so we'll have to withdraw from that.

Also no rocket regulations is eventually going to make Kessler Syndrome a reality.

What would the alternative be? Tell companies that are going to mine trillions of dollars worth of metals that they need to first re-incorporate in Angola or maybe Sudan?

The US doesn't consider it a violation. It grants private entities ownership of extracted resources, not celestial bodies.

Upon reading the text of the treaty, I thought it was clearly a violation. But reading http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/2015/11/18/u-s-space-min... shows that there is a debate with opinions split on whether it violates.

My belief remains that if you set up mining on an asteroid, you've appropriated it "...by means of use or occupation...". And this the USA has agreed to not do, nor to let its nationals do.

From the looks of the article, "Estes" is going to be making the launch vehicles :-)

(the clip art look like the old "Sky Hook" cardboard & balsa rocket)

The best first use of space mining is - building more space mining infrastructure. Its going to be moot to us here on Earth.

For now, perhaps. But to not look further is a serious lack of foresight.

Success!

With this we can also conclude that the US has now made a claim to the rights of "Space", in general.

Very much in line with the Guano Islands Act of 1865.

I wonder why we can conclude that? It seems to just be a ruling stating that American companies that go into space and mine celestial bodies are allowed to return those extracted resources to Earth. It doesn't seem to say anything about other countries or companies based in other countries.

I'm not exactly keen on unfettered exploitation of these resources or the unforeseen consequences of unregulated extraction but I'm not sure how you can draw your conclusion?

"Sure, outer space is infinite" - ugh.

Right. I get everything within 20 AU's, you can have the next 12 billion light years, and they get anything left over.

Only if the universe can be "inflated" as much as the US Dollar, I guess.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com