Media observers respond enthusiastically to new industry-and-commerce law for space
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.8154
Media observers believe that science and technology would be extensively boosted if even some of the hopes embraced in the Commercial Space Launch Act of 2015 are realized. President Obama signed it into law on 25 November.
A commentary in the Washington political publication The Hill opens by quoting what it calls the law’s crucial statement:
A United States citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid resource or a space resource under this chapter shall be entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained, including to possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law, including the international obligations of the United States.
The Hill explains that just as Neil Armstrong didn’t claim the Moon as US territory but did claim as US property the rocks and soil samples that the Apollo 11 mission returned to Earth, the new law grants to American citizens the right to own what they extract from celestial bodies. Within the commercial realm, the Washington Post offered the analogy of fishing in international waters—you own what you catch, but you don’t own the water.
A Wall Street Journal op-ed took that analysis deeper, observing that previously, the heavens had been defined as inherently public, but that “with this new law Congress has taken a Lockean approach.” The op-ed continued:
In his “Second Treatise of Government,” John Locke argued that God gave the world to humanity in common, but that each person owns himself and his labor. Therefore, when he puts labor into an object through work, he can develop a property right in the object. Similarly, the U.S. recognizes that the cosmos belongs to everyone. But under the new law resources can be retrieved from their location in space and subsequently developed. It is the work of doing this that creates the property right.
Dramatic language abounds concerning the possible implications. Under the heading “Mining the sky,” a webpage at Deep Space Industries predicts that “the harvest of space resources will be the biggest industrial transformation in human history.” That organization’s leader, Rick Tumlinson, proclaims : “In the long view of history, it is this sort of positive action that changes civilization, and while much else will not be remembered, the time when we began to unlock the wealth of the solar system for the people of Earth will be seen as a turning point.”
In headlining that Wall Street Journal op-ed, the WSJ‘s editors alluded to the first landing on the Moon, adapting Armstrong’s famous line: “One small step for man, one giant leap for law.” The subhead said, “The U.S. extends property rights to the cosmos—and mankind is off to mine platinum from an asteroid.” The op-ed’s author—identified as Paul Stimers, “public policy counsel to Planetary Resources, as well as the Commercial Spaceflight Federation"—called one part of the new law “the most sweeping legislative recognition of property rights in human history.”
Wired declared that the law opens the door “to everything from asteroid-based gold mines to comet-collected rocket fuel.” The Washington Post recognized “a sea change in how we think about outer space.”
In the UK, the Telegraph reported that “asteroid mining is predicted to become a trillion-dollar industry.” A blogger at Scientific American elevated that by noting “considerable speculation that space mining could eventually become a multi-trillion dollar industry.” A headline at the Times of London predicted “Asteroid mining law to create world’s first trillionaires.” A headline at the UK’s Daily Mail advised “Get ready for an interplanetary GOLD RUSH.”
Scientific American discussed the technical and commercial possibilities. The article pointed out that “platinum-group elements (including palladium and rhodium),” known to be abundant on asteroids, “are expensive due to their scarcity on Earth and their utility in electronics and fuel cells.” Scientific American also explained:
The hunt for useful materials in space is integral to many private space exploration companies’ plans. “There are resources that support operation and human activity in space, there are resources that support manufacturing in space and then maybe there are resources that are important enough and valuable enough to bring those resources back to Earth,” says Chris Lewicki, president and chief engineer of Planetary Resources, a private space company focused on asteroid mining.
One of the reasons space launches, especially crewed missions, are expensive is the cost of transporting materials. Water and rocket fuel, the latter of which can be derived from the hydrogen and oxygen in water molecules, are two particular resources that people like Lewicki have an eye on. “There’s an abundance of water in space, and if we don’t have to spend $50 million to transport every ton of water or $50 million for rocket fuel, it’s like building gas stations along an interstate highway,” Lewicki says.
Stimers in his WSJ op-ed reported that Planetary Resources “has already launched the first in a series of technology demonstration satellites and plans to send its first prospecting probe to an asteroid by the end of the decade.” He added a pitch: “Private investors can now back it and other ventures, secure that they will own whatever metals and minerals they can extract and bring home. Property rights spur hard work and innovation—in Locke’s day, in ours and in the age of commercial spaceflight to come.”
Not everyone is happy. WSJ law blogger Jacob Gershman noted that the legal questions “aren’t abstract.” He linked to the Motherboard posting “The US says asteroid mining is legal for Americans. What about everyone else?” That piece in turn linked back to the May 2015 Motherboard posting “The US mulls breaking an international treaty so Americans can mine asteroids.”
The more recent Motherboard posting quotes Sa’id Mosteshar, director of the London Institute of Space Policy and Law: “It is my opinion that any US entity obtaining asteroid resources would be in contravention of international law, as would the government for permitting it. The treaties governing space activities do not give the US that right, and the US government cannot assign to its citizens rights that it does not have.”
How much of the media coverage is mere hype? That’s beyond the scope of this media report, but it should be mentioned that the Guardian‘s news article stipulated that the logistics are daunting. It cited the mention in a Guardian article from nearly three years ago that “scientists and engineers ... said that mining asteroids was feasible but unlikely to make commercial sense for several decades, when the cost of launches came down, and prices of resources on Earth rose.” The commentary at The Hill ends by noting, “Ironically, NASA, whose greatest glory was the original moon landings, is looking upon these developments with passivity. The space agency is fixed on the Road to Mars.”
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Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.