Well we may just have jumped the gun on this story. As you recall I wrote about a venture capitol group, consisting of people like James Cameron, wanted to start a company to mine near Earth asteroids for their resources. Now according to BY George Dvorsky writing for the IO9 blog -space law expert Frans von der Dunk warned that current space law is seriously out of date and such ventures may turn out to be illegal! The question of who owns the asteroid and what rights do the miners have should someone consider taking any particular mine as their own. Without clear cut laws, this scenario could be a very real possibility.
From the IO9 Article:
- The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which forms the basis of international space law and to which all space-faring nations are a party. The treaty says that outer space constitutes a "global commons." This means that extraterrestrial bodies can never be part of one country such as the United States
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