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Comment by xyzzy123 | Hacker News Reader

What I find interesting about it is new questions of sovereignty versus co-operation among the nations on earth.

None of the space treaties were written with the anticipation of actual profits in mind.

You could make the same argument about Antarctica, but [actually I don't have a good argument why we haven't exploited the resources there and would be interested to hear one. Just political suicide? Too expensive?]

When it's feasible to make money space mining absolutely all of these things will be rewritten, probably with a heavy dose of realpolitik.

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Antarctia is protected because it's the one area of earth that hasn't been irrevocably fucked up by human activity - yet. It's quite likely that when the Antarctic treaty completely expires in '48 we'll see a free-for-all - just as we are right now with UNCLOS (which the US never signed) and deep sea mining - although that's all being kept so quiet and out of the public eye it's not funny.

Antarctica isn't exactly "protected" the treaty is the outcome of countries that didn't want to give up their claims to Antarctica but also weren't in a position or had the slightest will to actually develop their claims.

The treaty doesn't really protect Antarctica from anything other than nuclear tests, in the future if countries want to actually develop claims it can and will be revisited. That said there isn't much interest in this atm mostly because we do not have the technology and we aren't that desperate heck even if the largest oil field in the would would've been found there no one atm would try to develop it as it would most likely be financially non-viable but nothing would really stop anyone from doing so.

Outerspace on the other hand defines the universe as the heritage of all mankind where no one can claim any stake, which will shortly be changed probably to something along the side of what was used to be used in the US during expansion, where claims would be made by private individuals and corporations rather than countries.

Whether or not Antarctica gets exploited (at the very least by some non-democratic countries) depends probably on commodity prices. And most of them are pretty low right now.

Two reasons come to mind:

Penguins are cute.

We ought to leave somewhere untouched, so let's pick the poles, because they're too bloody cold, and all.

Maybe it's just too hard to navigate public opinion and regulation for things involving multiple governments? That would not bode well for space mining...

Also yes if there were space penguins: no chance

Just picturing the uproar over a space polar bear clinging to a tiny asteroid.

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