Planetary Resources To 'Claim' Asteroids With Beacons 221
kkleiner writes "Planetary Resources last year boldly claimed that they would build a futuristic business out of mining space asteroids. To that end, the firm recently completed the Arkyd-100 satellite prototype. The satellite will use its telescope to look for suitable near-Earth asteroids from low-Earth orbit. Later expeditions will rocket out to prospective real estate, do spectral analysis, and if the asteroid contains valuable resources, lay claim with a beacon."
Not legally enforceable (Score:5, Insightful)
Not legally enforceable, which in many ways is a shame. Until money can be made through space travel, it will never "take off"...
Mod informative, flamebait or funny
International traties (Score:5, Interesting)
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Try taking some of NASA's moon rocks and say that because of the outer space treaty they have no property right claim to them and see how long it's until you're locked up in jail. Nation states can't claim it as their territory, but it's entirely unclear how or if anyone can claim mining rights on an asteroid, or if it's a race to see who can gobble up the asteroid first. "Planting the flag" might be good enough or it might not, depending on how deep pockets you have and how many big governments you can get
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Okay, I'm something of a theorist of 'international law'. I'm not a lawyer or anything.
First, my theory on international politics/law: The dealings of nations is a bit like an ancient village, where different nations are 'people' of varying size and ability. There is effectively limited to no 'police', there are no courts, etc...
As such, 'international law' depends on the threat or actual use of force. Any given country is free to do what it wants to until other countries can be motivated to do somethin
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I think it's simply a case of whomever has the bigger gun gets to keep the asteroid/planet/solar system. It's back to the wild-wild west era. Unless we establish a planetary government to establish and enforce legitimate claims.
Re:International traties (Score:5, Interesting)
So just incorporate in e.g. Lithuania, which is not party to the treaty.
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While the US might have issues, one can claim that the federal government can be pretty aggressive in protecting its citizen's interests in the international arena. Register your claim through the US, and it is backed by the US.
"This book must be out of date" (Score:3)
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I'm pretty sure Grand Fenwick isn't a signatory either. IMO, a much more appropriate choice.
Ummm... Principality of Hutt River [wikipedia.org] may not have signed it either.
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"the activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty"
Put the nail into any private exploitation loophole : if youa re american you are under the treaty under US supervision and therefore party of the treaty too.
What part of "shall require authorization and continuing supervision" prohibits private exploitation?
You need authorization and continuing supervision to drill for oil on land or at sea, yet that hasn't impeded private exploitation of the continental shelf or deep-sea drilling. This is an easy hurdle to jump. Just a few dollars in the right campaign donation bucket buys you all the authorization you need.
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How about confiscating your financial resources back on earth, and convincing friendly nations to do the same?
It's not like the US has to send law enforcement officers to every foreign country, either.
Re:International traties (Score:5, Funny)
How about dropping a 1,000,000 tonne rock on the UN building. Orbital bombardment is ten tenths of the law.
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Briefly looking at the treaty, do asteroids count as "Celestial bodies"? I've only ever heard that term used for planets and moons.
Shay-zus...
Merriam Webster must be turning over in his grave.
Re:International traties (Score:5, Funny)
Probably not since there wasn't a person called Merriam Webster name is from the Merriam publishing company's purchase of the Webster dictionary publishing license after the death of Daniel Webster.
A Webster, yes. Two different Merriams, yes. A Merriam Webster, no.
Re:International traties (Score:4, Funny)
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I thought corporations were people.
Damn, AC beat me to it!
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I thought corporations were people. Can't they roll over in their grave, too?
Only if they are dead.
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Soooo... thats a no?
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Who is going to stop a competing firm from taking the claim for themselves? It will be Wild West laws aka no laws at all.
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The same thing could be said of the oceans. No one owns the oceans, but they take resources from them. Of course whoever has the largest military presence effectively controls them, but not in any legal sense.
Treaties may not stop corporations from *controlling* or mining asteroids, but they can definitely stop them from owning them, since ownership is just a legal concept.
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Quite true, which is why, sort of as a corollary, nobody's going to accept a laser-tagging method of asteroid claims. If you're not sitting right there, in front of your Conestoga, w/ your Winchester loaded and ready, you ain't gonna be able to defend your claim. And no jumping the starting gun, you damn Okies!
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Not legally enforceable, which in many ways is a shame. Until money can be made through space travel, it will never "take off"...
Mod informative, flamebait or funny
Of course, they could just drop the asteroid on the party complaining ... kill two birds with one stone... literally.
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Not legally no, but who cares? At this point their "claim" would easily be enforced by the same gravity well that has stopped everyone else from doing it yet. While its true, if someone else jumped their claim, nobody would likely care to enforce it and step in.... but.... as of right now.... making a symbolic claim is easily every bit as good, if not better, than having it enforced, simply because its harder to actually jump the claim than it is to ignore terrestrial powers..... so legal enforcibility is a
A bit hard to enforce.... (Score:2)
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I always kinda figured it would be like old wild west, where the biggest gun gets you as far as the best of laws.
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I always kinda figured it would be like old wild west, where the biggest gun gets you as far as the best of laws.
Wild West, hell, that's an accurate description of how global politics work now.
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Declare space outside geostationary orbit a zone where private parties are not subject to international law, and let them fight it out. The only way mining will ever turn a profit is if it's automated so there will be no casualties, and it should be fun to watch.
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Really? I think the defining characteristic of space is the mind boggling emptiness of it all. Resources are not abundant, as there is a whole lot of nothing between us and anything else.
If outer space really is the land of milk and honey, we'd be mining already. The reason we don't is because it is more expensive to do it "out there" than it is to do it "down here."
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abundant compared to on the surface of the planet we call home. many of those iron/nickel asteroids have more of each than has been mined in the entirety of human existence.
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abundant compared to on the surface of the planet we call home. many of those iron/nickel asteroids have more of each than has been mined in the entirety of human existence.
Isn't that quite an understatement? Just look at 16 Psyche [wikipedia.org]. I believe that the amount would be sufficient to cover the whole planet with a layer of steel.five meter thick. Can you spell "Trantor"? :-)
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Unless they have Space Police out there.
Dang! And Obama just declined to build that Death Star. What a lack of long term thinking!
Re:A bit hard to enforce.... (Score:4, Funny)
Just because you choose space as the place to do something shitty doesn't mean you won't have to answer for it here.
Mighty big talk from someone sitting at the bottom of a gravity well.
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Just because you choose space as the place to do something shitty doesn't mean you won't have to answer for it here.
Mighty big talk from someone sitting at the bottom of a gravity well.
well, yeah, sure it's possible for them to stay up there.
then they would also need their private army to enforce their "moral" claim rights.
and if they had a private space army - wtf do they need claims signs for?
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To avoid needing to use said private space marine army.
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Wait, since when do they answer for it here?
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Re:A bit hard to enforce.... (Score:5, Informative)
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The USSR tested on aboard one of their military space stations.
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It's only near absolute zero in the shade.
As to vacuum, yes, the propellent in a bullet is self-contained, and will work nicely in a vacuum.
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Yes. Better than on earth, in fact. The gunpowder already contains the oxidizer and there isn't any atmosphere that the bullet has to push out of the way. Muzzle velocities will be higher.
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Actually it has pretty much everywhere to radiate the heat. It is the non-radiative heat transfer which is missing in space.
Since we are talking Western-style revolvers, I would guess that it is unlikely that they will fire enough bullets to make heat a significant problem. How quickly can you reload in space?
Admittedly I have never fired a handgun or travelled in space.
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one shot would not be a problem and thats all it takes to puncture a pressurized spacesuit and kill the opponent. hell in space with no gravity or friction even if the bullet does not puncture it will still send you flying away at high velocity
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aiming is easier too, since all trajectories become much nearer to perfectly flat in space. the only factor that's different is the angle of elevation at the moment of firing (the reason many bullet trajectories on earth dont start at 0deg but actually upward somewhat...the line of force from the recoild isnt directly through the CG but somewhat above it). once you adjust for that, the effective/accurate range of the weapon is much higher than on the surface.
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The shooter or the target?
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Probably. Salyut 3 had an autocannon on it and it reportedly fired just fine.
You'd need to make sure you're securely attached to something though, lest the recoil send you drifting.
Re:A bit hard to enforce.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The first shot will be even better than the one you'd get on Earth. The power already contains the oxidants the combustion needs, and there will be no air resistance.
The rest of the shot are trickier. If the gun is an automatic, and has not been modified, you may need to chamber the rounds manually, because the lack of air resistance may mess up the automatic action.
If the gun is a revolver, you will be able to fire all chambers as usual, but the gun will be only cooling by radiating heat AND through the contact with your gloves. That may become uncomfortable rather quickly.
And of course, you may have problems with recoil. Unless you have anchored yourself rather well, you will start moving in very complex way, especially if you do not fire the bullet along a line passing through your center of mass and the end of the barrel.
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there will wars on earth over rocks in space
There might even be wars on rocks over earth in space (dirt'll could be hard to come by, out there). :p
Manifest Destiny/ (Score:2)
Manifest Destiny... iiiiinnnnn spaaaaaaaaaace!
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Luckily, this time there aren't any natives to genocide.
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got proof of that?
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You're really a "doomed to repeat it" kinda person, aren't you?
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Nope. I have a very low opinion of people in general. When I can listen to the news without wanting to revoke my membership in the human race, perhaps I will begin to change my mind.
Mandate Black Boxes (Score:4, Funny)
International Asteroid Registry (Score:3)
This Valentine's day, give your mistress the gift that's out of this world. Claim an asteroid for her...
Back it up (Score:2)
Absent international treaty or a national law (assuming their competition can be assailed in the court system), anyone with a plan like this will be forced to defend their claims the old fashioned way: by force. Will the beacons have probe-disabling lasers on board? The article doesn't say. But my guess is that the cost of getting a defense system on the rock is the same as the cost of getting mining equipment on it.
A better defense plan is to scan 10 times as many rocks as you normally would and leave b
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You won't need space defense for your asteroid claims. If this process is held up by international treaty, you can simply control it that way. Space travel (at least at this time) isn't Firefly. You don't just hop in a grungy cargo ship and go where ever you want. It will be trivially easy for anyone who cares to track a mining ship launch to its destination asteroid. Smuggling space ore will be virtually impossible. When the poached ore is returned to Earth, the people who mined it are held accountab
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It will be trivially easy for anyone who cares to track a mining ship launch to its destination asteroid. Smuggling space ore will be virtually impossible.
I don't know, I've heard from a guy in Chelyabinsk that he can smuggle in significant amounts of asteroid ore right under the authorities' noses.
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As I read the Outer Space Treaty [state.gov], they would have no legal recourse to usurpers, as long as they weren't actually using the asteroid. The reason is that countries cannot claim property in outer space (Article II), therefore claims recognized by one country need have no weight in another. Now, it is a no-no to interfere with the work of astronauts (Article IX), but this is worded in a very weak and ambiguous fashion, which I think is sure to lead to troubles in the future. Since countries are responsible for
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why return it to earth at all? sure some, particularly iron and the like which are actually relatively rare in teh crust, might make it surface side to supplement what we have. but the whole point to keep it up there; mine it in space, refine it space, use it space. avoid the energy sink of sending it down to the surface, at least until we get the space elevators going.
as for treaties...they are only enforced as long as its convenient. already the antarctica treaty has come under scrutiny due to possible oi
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It fascinates me how the moment property and industrial extraction are mentioned as an imminent possibility, all the hallowed posturing about peace in space goes flying our the window and one of the first sub-threads is a discussion about whether guns w/bullets will work in space.
If it comes to that then the escalation likely won't stop until eventually asteroids are directed against targets on the Earth.
Space adventurism leads to a different outcome than the ones shown in popular science fantasy (and most
Why not mine what we already have? (Score:3)
Re:Why not mine what we already have? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The second is that each of these different types of space junk would require (potentially) different processing techniques,
I've actually looked at some of this.
Property issues: Go by litter rules - they abandoned the materials in space; they're cluttering up the orbitals and thus you're just cleaning up and recycling the trash
Volume: It's tiny in proportion to even a smaller asteroid, yes, but they're already refined materials. That helps. Plus the whole 'clean up the orbitals' thing. You don't actually need that much material to help the ISS or it's replacement on quite a bit.
Different processing techniques: Initially I'd
Hydraulic empire (Score:2)
...water is good for other reasons...
If you had a [near-]monopoly on the ready-to-use water supply in space, or even be one of several competing suppliers, you wouldn't even have to bother stripping the metals from the asteroids.
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That would actually make a lot of sense except for the international ownership issues. It would only work if we all got along and shared our resources... ... ... onto the space asteroids!
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Why bother mining asteroids when there is a bunch of pre-refined materials floating in LEO. Re-refine the materials in Proton boosters, non-functional satellites and such. Stop throwing used up stuff back into the atmosphere to burn up. Build a refinery at the Space Station.
Oh, this.
What I can't fathom is how governments and private industry can't seem to get their heads around an idea that sci-fi book and game writers have been expounding for decades.
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Pretty small for a refinery.
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whoops,read that wrong... (Score:2)
I bet in teh futuar, bacon will be a highly sought after luxury in space.
Just imagine the immense wealth for the daring astro-prospector that finds a whole asteroid of bacon.
Bets on what comes first, the maternity station (confinement asteroid for you belters...) or the bacon astro-farm?
(just as long as it's not this type [kowabunga.org]...)
Prospecting tool? (Score:2)
I am not sure how this fits in the Outer Space Treaty, and thus what recourse they would have if (say) the Chinese used their beacons as a prospecting tool.
On the other hand, such beacons would probably make good VLBI targets.
Beacons are unnecessary. (Score:2, Funny)
Been done before (Score:3)
People have been camping things in MMOs for years.
Niven or Cherryh? (Score:2)
The Belt or ASTEX ?
Will this be like patent trolling? (Score:3, Interesting)
On the one hand, mineral claims have a long history and seem to have worked decently.
On the other hand, how do we prevent an unscrupulous company from doing just enough work to *claim* these asteroids, with no intention of actually following through and mining them. Then, acting as a rent-seeker when another company actually does try to mine the resources?
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Many past historical claim systems require active *working* of the staked claim within some time period after initial filing --- e.g. you actually have to be digging some amount of gold out of the ground and bringing it to the government refiner/inspector to maintain the claim. The same type of mechanism could work here to prevent claim trolls --- if you don't return the material to earth, or move the asteroid into a designated earth-centered parking orbit, within 6 months of the claim, it's up for grabs ag
Hey Thanks ! (Score:2)
We'll let you know what we found. Maybe you'll get a finders fee, who knows ?
That may work against them (Score:2)
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Lame (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I don't care if you plant a flag or a beacon on some asteroid, if I can actually build a spaceship that can go and grab it and mine it before you do, your shit out of luck. I'll just kick your little beacon off, or move it to something else that has no value. What are you going to do about it?
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Send a Space Hitman after you?
Eddie Izzard reference (Score:3)
The UN will need to discussion claim rights (Score:2)
You can lay claim to anything you desire but it doesn't mean others will respect your claim. There has to be a consensus on what is needed to make a claim first and even that is blurry and will chance over time.
The main basis of a claim is having the resources and will to defend it and publicly declaring it.
You got your asteroid in my peanut butter! (Score:2)
If you can claim without ability to mine (Score:2)
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sure.
nobody is going to respect that registry though. anymore than these beacons.
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It's well known in any frontier location that you own only as much as you can successfully defend against other prospectors. That beacon is only useful if it can successfully repel an antagonistic party.
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