US and Chinese landers could be operating in close proximity on the Moon later this year.
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The race to Shackleton Crater is on—will Jeff Bezos or China get there first?
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What about private individuals, or corporations? Could Blue Origin or SpaceX/Musk claim sovereign territory on the moon or Mars and have a claim that would stand up in a court?
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Pretty sure it's a safe bet that no one even considered that a private individual would be able to amass enough wealth to start a rocket company, much less fund a mission to go to the moon.
So, this is a pretty amazing question.
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There's a much more fundamental issue. Who is actually going to enforce the treaty--and what court has jurisdiction to even get involved in the issue? Words on a 70/80 year old piece of paper are just that--unless someone enforces them.
The last 25 years has ripped off the bandaids of the 'rules based international order"--and basically all major world powers don't care about the UN or its opinions any more. And, taking the lead from the Trumpster Fire, going forward most countries will quit caring about international treaty honor and obligation--since the USA is now knowingly and willfully tearing up any agreements it doesn't like.
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All of the manufactured drama about who will be first etc seems pretty ridiculous. Just getting a small outpost set up will be a lengthy and costly endeavor, and unless the alleged patch of ice at Shackelton is extremely small, there should be plenty of room for everyone who has the wherewithal to land something,and more importantly to keep a human presence there. I don't imagine any significant interference would happen until I'm long dead.
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Ars Legatus Legionis
No. They can't even do that on Earth. Even if new land appeared in the ocean it becomes the territory of the closest country.
That being said the OST will need to be improved to "fill in the blanks" or eventually one or more space power will leave the OST. The OST was a great document for its time but it pushed off the more complicated questions because nobody really had the capability to make them real issues. 60 years later at least two countries do.
However even if the US (or China or both) leave the OST nobody is going to let SpaceX or BO claim territory. Claiming territory makes you a nation, it makes you sovereign. Nations are an existing members only club. Changes to that club usually involve bloody conflicts. The extreme few that don't involved internal splits by mutual consent. The US courts have no ability to form two new nations outside the sovereign control of the US. There is no desire to make that happen even if the court could.
Now if you are talking about property rights instead that is a bit more tricky. Under the OST the US has no territory in space so it can't grant property rights to something it doesn't control. If the US were to leave the OST and claim some territory on the moon then under US law yeah they could grant exclusive property rights to a portion of that territory to individual land owners. If other countries disagree then enforcement of that territory becomes the challenge. In that situation SpaceX might have property on the moon but that isn't territory anymore than owning property in Florida makes them a nation.
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What makes a sailboat race? Two sailboats going the same direction.
If US and China are doing interesting stuff on the moon in roughly the same place at roughly the same timeline then comparisons will be made. The outcome of individual events will leads to speculation on what it means for future events. In short, it is a race or competition.
As for the ice in south pole we don't really know its composition or difficulty to access. There may be small parts of the south pole that are the Saudi Arabia of lunar ice.
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As an aside https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil is for both complicated and simple reasons the only long-term unclaimed land on Earth. People occasionally go and claim it for kicks and giggles then leave when they discover that there is basically nothing there and that it's a very long way from anywhere where there is anything useful to human life beyond air.
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Given that landing engine plumes will kick up dust, regolith and rocks moving at up to a couple of km/s 
, it might be far preferable to land second …
, it might be far preferable to land second …
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I'm not saying I'm hoping for Lunar Robot Wars, but I'm not not hoping for it...
Considering that the US and China have steadfastly avoided any kind of military action on earth, I think it would take a lot for them to start conflict on the moon - where there is so little to gain and so much to lose. But who knows where things will be in 30 years, could be interesting.
Considering that the US and China have steadfastly avoided any kind of military action on earth, I think it would take a lot for them to start conflict on the moon - where there is so little to gain and so much to lose. But who knows where things will be in 30 years, could be interesting.
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I'm less and less sure about that. Just acting in a rational, predictable and reliable way may easily lead to others flocking to you instead of a state that one day pampers you and the next day stabs you in the back.
I really don't see most countries quit caring about laws and treaties. In the contrary actually. It's basically just the US administration (following Russia of course).
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I often have a car stop next to me at a red light. When the lights turn green and we drive off I’m not racing him.
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The Outer Space Treaty always felt to me like a modern day Treaty of Tordesillas - it's going to fall apart the moment that countries can feasibly consider violating it in name or spirit. The Artemis accord's "safety zones" could easily be de facto used as territorial claims.
For another historical example of treaty lawyering, consider the king Odoacer. Even though he clearly destroyed the Western Roman Empire, he was on paper a vassal of the Eastern Roman Empire, so no harm done!
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You could be right. OTOH the UN and Security Council was built and codified to work for the US and USSR and not much of anyone else. Which, those countries ignore it when it doesn't suit them--or just throw a spanner in the work as they have veto power. And the US and Russian Federation and China and Israel are the major power brokers, and have shown they just don't care anymore.
Which, yes there are 180 or so other countries in the world...but their fractional-military and political power at the UN gets vetoed every single time by the Security Council veto powers.
The OST is very similar to the Anarctic IMO. The reason there are dozens of overlapping competing claims/bases in the Antarctic--is because no one is really sure if the ban on mineral extraction will be renewed or not. Under current management of the USA I would strongly presume it won't. Now, the current admin won't be in charge forever--but the USA has shown from Reagan->Bush2->Trump1->Trump2 that, in spite of dividing by zero, the USA keeps finding bigger and more corrupt jerks to run the country.
If the USA dumps the antarctic mineral extraction ban--no one else at the UN has the leverage to carry the water to get it renewed..
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I've never heard of this place, but why was I unsurprised to see the UK in there as a founder member of another colonial fuck up.
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In a world where "Jeff Bezos" or "China" are the only options, the only logical choice is "I'll have the chicken then...".
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Insomnomaniac
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
I'm not actually hoping for it either, but I don't mind a bit of silly fun here & there.
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Well, given the example of the United States of America, who would expect anything else?
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It is also a weird comparison. It is the US or China. At the very least Blue Origin. Can we please stop with the oligarch worship? In 1969 nobody was saying "Who is going to land a human on the moon first, Llewellyn Evans or the Soviets?"
Llewellyn J. Evans was the President of Grumman in 1969. Grumman manufactured the Apollo LM which put the first human on the moon.
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Marginally related question – Do they actually carry the payload on a barge to cross the Gulf of (MEXICO ffs), and up to the Cape? That seems risky, though I suppose if you're in no hurry, you could adjust course and speed as you go to avoid facing heavy seas.
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Look no further than China's ongoing efforts to claim the entirety of the South China Sea as sovereign territory through militarization of man made islands, to see if they intend to follow any 80 year old agreements.
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I guess Moonshark is going to have neighbours. Hopefully they are nice ones and that Moonshark doesn't need to eat them.
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Remind me which country invented the Monroe Doctrine and is currently engaged in trying to starve out Cuba?
Yes it's whataboutery but what do you expect? Japan went to war with the USA because the USA (along with the British Empire) thought it owned the entire Pacific. China is not happy about the enormous hypocrisy of the USA effectively claiming ownership of China's own backyard along with the Strait of Hormuz.
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Article said:
How do you "fly" on the moon without air?
EDIT: I'm not trying to be snarky or pedantic, I'm genuinely curious since it CANNOT be something like Ingenuity on Mars. Will it use compressed air to hop around? a mini rocket? a spring to jump away? how will it change direction inflight? can it even? "Flying" usually implies pushing against the air around somehow, with rotor or wings.
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Watching this just makes me realize how much time and resource the US has wasted over the last 50 years in space. Canceling Apollo was a mistake, and you have Nixon and the military to thank for that. They saddled NASA with STS, which consumed all of the focus and budget of human spaceflight for NASA for the better part of 40 years. I think that good science has happened in spite of that (ISS largely exists as a destination for the space shuttle), but if the US had just continued on the path already set by NASA and Apollo, it seems very likely a permanent human presence on the Moon would have been reached long ago.
Anyway, water under the bridge at this point. Good luck to all parties, hopefully should be fun to watch.
Anyway, water under the bridge at this point. Good luck to all parties, hopefully should be fun to watch.
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Came here for space news, refreshed knowledge on arbitrary lines drawn by colonial powers in the comment section. Love it.
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The hypothetical SpaceX IPO is targeting a >1Tn valuation, that is absolutely not even close to the same thing as the total value of economic production for a country(or even a company).
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Anton Longshot
Ars Praetorian
I think the people on both sides who profit from the carefully nurtured atmosphere of animosity and fear also work to prevent actual military conflict. War between the big boys would likely destroy the immense stream of money these people's trickery yields, without a way to reset. Not to mention the fact that after an apocalypse all money would only be ordinary paper, at best.
Hahaha paper money could at least be used as "wipes" - good luck doing something useful with money in a bank account.
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Ars Legatus Legionis
Nixon is an easy fall guy but it wasn't just Nixon. Congress controls the money. The Executive branch only controls the execution. Congress had defunded Apollo after Apollo 20 prior to Nixon taking office.. NASA under Johnson had already decided to turn Apollo 20 into skylab as it was clear Saturn V production would end and that ultra heavy lift capability would give the US a headstart on LEO habitation. The once in a decade chance for something like Skylab was seen more valuable than the 20th Apollo mission. Nixon killed Apollo 18 & 19 so the program ended a year earlier but the die was already cast by then. It was going to end just a question of when.
Now I agree we shouldn't have left the moon. Apollo however was staggeringly expensive. In today's dollars Apollo 17 alone (excluding all development) cost about $3.5B. NASA had some proposed ideas to use a second LM as a long duration (14 days) hab but that would require two Saturn V, two CSM, and two LM so projected cost for just one mission a year would be $8B+, two would be $16B+. Part of the challenge is that Apollo was so narrowly constructed it would be difficult to do anything else. Had Saturn V never worked and the US built distributed launch to get to the moon things might have been different.
It didn't help that the Soviets were likely years if not a decade from a moon landing. So once they lost they saw it an easy out to axe their entire program. If hey had been closer there would have been a risk they could leapfrog us and that may have added political support for future lunar missions but by Apollo 14 it was clear we were in a one man race.
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Apollo was never that popular, in spite of the rose-colored glasses and video footage of people huddled around TVs. There were massive issues at home--and after we beat the Russkies, and planted flags, and brought back a couple hundred pounds of moon rocks...then what? Apollo and the Saturn V program (Skylab was launched on Saturn V) cost somewhere around $260,000,000,000 in 2020 inflation adjusted dollars.
BTW--there were not one but two oil-shocks in the 1970s, right around the time the Saturn V stopped being launched....those oil shocks completely screwed up the American economy--and laid the groundwork for our 21st century problems. Manufacturing and heavy-industry was reliant on fossil fuels for energy which tripled and then doubled again in price. Smelting iron into steel or ore into aluminum is massively energy intensive...whereas a service economy wasn't as reliant on fossil fuels--you just need to keep lights on in office buildings. And of course--instead of becoming less reliant on those fossil fuels, once the shocks stabilized (a thing Reagan was in place to claim credit for, with Vockler as the willing fall guy) our country went back to burning gasoline like it would never end, as usual.
The reasons to keep going to the moon evaporated--and reasons to allocate scarce societal resources at home were plentiful. That is why we stopped going to the Moon. I'm all for science--but spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Apollo needs to ROI, to keep bothering doing it. That is just how economics and politics works.
Contrast that with colonialism in the 16th-18th century. You build a Tall Ship and go sailing. You find valuable stuff and return it. Or heck, you could live off the new land. There's no air or food on the Moon--only what you take with you. BTW a massively important economics lesson from colonialism era...The reason for the transatlantic slave trade was that Chris Columbus found gold in the New World. Bringing it back crashed Old World precious metal markets...but the slaves were valuable.
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"Immense" reserves of ice? "City on Mars" put the best estimates at around a 'small municpal resiviour' levels. We aren't really talking about an heavy industry sustaining amount of water here, even assuming its relativily pure, which is quite the leap of faith to make.
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Apollo was budgeted to end by Congress before Nixon was even elected, let alone assumed office. The military also had nothing to do with Apollo's termination, and I'm not sure why you would even claim that.
The military, in fact, did not want the STS but were nonetheless able to dictate performance requirements because the shuttles had to literally launch all government payloads to function as intended. Moreover, Nixon funded the shuttles in lieu of the previously canned Apollo because it was his way of curtailing manned spaceflight in favor of something that was still potentially useful without cancelling it outright (keeping in mind he and Eisenhower had always been skeptics of manned spaceflight). Nixon, however, also did not want to give NASA enough money to develop what his advisors noted would be a staggeringly expensive, fully reusable system that stood little chance of breaking even.
Apollo was simply never intended to lead up to a sustained manned presence on the Moon.
Lunar missions were already getting more expensive as the program matured and more capabilities were added. Higher endurance, higher capacity vehicles would've required a significant level of investment and likely total change in mission architecture, and Congress had already lost what little enthusiasm they had for Apollo before the first landing.
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In the context of space exploration a small municipal reservoir is immense. It isn't support a population of thousands in some cities on the moon nonsense but tens of thousands of tons of water that doesn't need to be shipped from Earth would be valuable. Water excluding that used for rocket propellant (or breathing oxygen) doesn't go away. It can be recycled. You could crack water for oxygen to support crew but given lunar regolith is 40% oxygen that would be a waste. Likewise for propellant it may make more sense to just produce oxygen on the surface and ship in the fuel. Hydrolox by mass is 80% to 85% oxygen.
The ice however is not distributed evenly and yes it isn't pure. It is ice mixed with regolith. Like mixing sand and water in a bucket and then freezing it. Purifying it would be one of the tasks. We can't see down more than about 1 to 2 meters so we can only estimate the surface composition. It might be pure ice underneath that it might be nothing but rock. However if the early estimates of 5% to 20% water ice mass in the first 2 meters of the floor of Shackleton crater hold true that is 150M to 600M tons in one crater. Shackleton is interesting because it is a relatively small place with substantially higher than average water ice density.
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Its actually very much not at least in theory.
There is one and only source of sovereignty on Earth ; countries.
And Musk may be a megalomaniacal billionaire, he's still launching from the US, with a US company. Therefore, anything he launches and everything that comes after belongs to the US.
The one rather big exception is basically if you can force and keep your independence by strength (military usually) and manage to ultimately have your independence de facto accepted de jure.
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Who will win the race? Well I admit I don't understand the 4-d chess (12-d chess?) of cutting the NASA budget but don't see how that can help win the race, and poor taste to do it while astronauts still up there
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM8CQHb7lRU
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM8CQHb7lRU
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