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Comment by erellsworth | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: What is the difference between telling people what they can and can't do on the moon vs telling people what they can and can't do on vacant land here on earth? If I go out to some remote area in the United States and start building houses, I'll almost certainly get into legal trouble, especially if I don't have any permits and definitely if I don't own the land.

Who gets to own the moon? Is it just whoever has the resources to travel there and build stuff? Imagine if Space X decides to carve a portrait of Elon Musk into the face of the moon at a scale large enough it can be seen from the naked eye on earth. Would that be OK just because he had the money to do it?

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I echo the sentiments of that famous tweet, that if I ever go outside one night and find an ad on the moon, I'm becoming a terrorist.

Probably because the moon doesn't have property lines and nation-state borders (For now). Vacant lots down here on earth are usually privately owned or by local or national governments.

> Who gets to own the moon?

The United States of America currently owns the moon as they are the only country to put a flag into it.

(In case anyone can't detect the joke - theres a treaty from 1967 that says every nation hsa equal access to the moon)

(In Eddie Izzard voice): "Do you have a flag?"

The Age of Exploration has ended so long ago that we have all collectively forgotten how it works. Almost every square meter of land on Earth is covered by one group or another of People with Guns. The only ones that aren't are ones so deeply undesirable that nobody cares.

But it actually works in a fairly intuitive manner. People who get to the Moon can do as they like there. Anyone who wants to stop them is invited to go to the Moon and try. This does not mean immediately by shooting them. Talking is a classic option for many good reasons that won't be going anywhere. But if you can't get there at all, you have no stake. If you can't get to the moon, you will have no say.

On Earth it is easy to forget that enforcement of laws requires enforcers to be able to get to the location where it will be enforced, because humanity conquered the task of getting from anywhere people are to anywhere people are at a reasonable speed a while ago. But this is still a base requirement. It hasn't gone anywhere. It has just been a long time since it was in question and people forget about it.

Space exploration will modify this for some period of time because in the Age of Exploration, people could live on the land. While people living in space require an Earth footprint to maintain themselves, that will give people on Earth a mechanism for enforcing power over the moon based on that footprint. But science fiction is full unto overflowing of space colonies going to war with Earth once they are capable of being independent for a reason; it's not so much a "trope" as a plainly obvious consequence of independence. Better treatments observe that Earth will know this and take it into account as it tries to hamstring its colonies from being independent, but A: this will eventually take the form of overtly hostile acts if space colonization continues on that will provide abundant casus belli for the colonies and B: there's a huge economic incentive to make them as independent as possible because it will always be more expensive to supply space colonies from Earth than to supply them from space resources.

Getting back to the original question, what will happen is this: Anyone who can get to the moon and stay there will have a say. Anyone who can't won't. Wringing hands, abtruse philosophical arguments, having hissy fits, screaming really loudly about "rights", complaining, none of it will matter. "Power comes from the barrel of a gun" is actually downstream of "power comes from being there". If you can't be there, you will have no power.

Also, I'm not particularly celebrating or condemning this in this post. This is just how it is.

That unavoidable independence that comes with long-term human settlements (especially in places further than the Moon) is interesting to me, if only because historically interesting things happen when significant numbers of people establish a system outside of currently established systems, something that’s not been practically possible on Earth for quite some time.

I wonder where the first space based pirate enclave will be found? Maybe even the moon.

Presumably those who get to own the Moon will have people here on Earth who they love or care about. Following the "this is just how it is" logic, what's stopping a barrel of gun from being pointed at those people?

That doesn't come up until space is truly independent of Earth, resource wise.

That will be long enough that by the time it happens, they may not have any connections to Earth.

Plus, back on Earth, you have all the normal limitations of the gun barrel. If Nigeria doesn't like what Brazil is doing in space, Nigeria is still going to find it challenging to threaten the Brazilians doing space work with guns.

And to the point being made here, protesters protesting out in front of SpaceX are going to find it challenging to successfully deploy gun-power against them, because the local dominant People with Guns take a very dim view of violating their monopoly... and, likely, SpaceX (here really just any space company) is already acting with their approval.

The net of the complicated web of People with Guns here on Earth still pretty much boils down to the situation I described. Space exploration isn't going to be done by voting or polling, and the Veto of the Merely Loud (among the other vetos) that is so easy on Earth is going to prove quite difficult to project into space. In space, nobody can read your Earth protest sign.

There are countries today that are still very much dependent on global trade who have still gotten or fought for their independence.

There's multiple levels of "dependent".

I won't say there's never been a country that has fought for independence while simultaneously needing global trade for 100% of their food and water[0], but there definitely hasn't been a case of a country needing global trade for the literal oxygen they breathe.

Two moons colonies, one that has farms and one that doesn't, I would expect to have very different prospects.

[0] Though I've never heard of such a case, my history isn't good enough to make that claim. And no, mere famine isn't a strong enough example for this, those can be monstrously catastrophic without being existential.

Yes, a space colony would be very unlikely to ever be "fully" independent of Earth. Why would they cut off trade? Surely cutting off relations to Earth would always come with some price.

But, there's prices, and there's prices. Earth history can tell you all about that.

I mean, we're witnessing how this is a continuum and not a binary thing right now, as East and West are decoupling. Will they decouple fully? Doubt it. Will they perhaps recouple someday? Perhaps. Is there a price to this decoupling? Yes, on both sides, but apparently the sides consider it worth it, because it's happening.

Eventually lunar entities might decide they don’t want to just offshore all resources to subsidize earth based companies, and seek or fight for independence from their colonial overlord on earth. There’s plenty of precedent for that on earth, even in the modern era.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Threaten the loonies too much, and they can throw big rocks at Earth.

They'd have plenty of brute mass up there.

I tend to agree. All private land ownership, on the moon or anywhere else, essentially boils down to an age old-principle: might makes right.

> carve a portrait of Elon Musk into the face of the moon

I don't think the moon rabbit would let that happen.

>> Who gets to own the moon?

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first to the moon and they planted the US flag on it in 1969, so that technically made it US territory. But then when they took off in the lander, the blast blew the flag over. I don't know if that affected the legal status or not.

> they planted the US flag on it in 1969, so that technically made it US territory

Can you point me to which international law that backs this?

Laws only matter within a state. In the international realm, there is no common judge and no binding law. Nations exist in a state of nature.

In other words, ownership of the moon won't be determined by technical legal questions about Armstrong's flag, but rather by a stick-measuring contest among the interested nations.

Ha, there was a treaty signed in 1967 or thereabout that made the moon property of "mankind" and that every nation has equal access to it. Now, if anything of value is found there I'm guessing this treaty is dropped immediately.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 states there is no claim to sovereignty.

https://www.unoosa.org/res/oosadoc/data/documents/2017/stspa...

Not signed or ratified by at least 59 countries.

But it is by the US, which is the discussion point here

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