The commercial space industry is heating up
but right now, Outter Space is about as lawless
as the Wild West
The question is not just who owns space,
but whether anyone actually can
The closest thing we have to a law governing Space
is the Outter Space Treaty,
an agreement first drawn up by the United Nations in 1967
and ratified now by 102 countries.
The treaty was written during the heat of the Space Race
It sought to prevent territorial disputes
by making it illegal for any nation
to claim ownership over Outerspace or any celestial body
But the treaty makes no mention of private companies
and the issue could come to a head now that several firms
are planning ventures in Space
For example, the american company Planetary Resources
aims to mine asteroids for precious metals,
and water for rocket fuel
But it's not clear the firm can claim to own any part of an asteroid
including the resources they mine
Of course this hasn't stopped some people
from staking claims in Space
Nevada entrepreneur Danis Hope has sold millions of acres of property
on the Moon, Mars and other planetary bodies
despite his dubious right to do so
Hope's been charging $19.99, plus shipping and handling
for an acre on the Moon,
and $22.49 for an acre on Mars
So far, he claims to have sold 7% of the Moon
The law also gets thorny in another arena: space debris
According to the Outer Space Treaty, all space objects,
including defunct satellites,
belong to the country that launched them...
for ever
But what if a company refuses to take responsability for it's own debris cleanup?
Under current law,
no other country has the right to try to salvage or dispose of dead sattellites,
even if they pose a collision risk to everyone else's space craft
All of this uncertainty means one thing:
There might soon be a booming market for space lawyers
For Scientific American's Instant Egghead
I'm Clara Moskowitz