Who Owns the Asteroids?

Am I missing something here, or is the answer painfully obvious.....

Well according to a recent article in Popular Science, it is a bit more complicated than first blush would have us believe.     According to the PopSci article -  the House is holding hearings to discuss a new law to manage resource mining in space.  

In the early days of the "Space Race" an accord or "Treaty" was signed that said, in simple terms, no country or person could assume to own any celestial body.   But now the focus is on mineral rights.   There is some credence  given to having a legal framework  in place which may at the very least spur more entrepreneurial interest in the sector.   The proposed legislation, working in tandem with the earlier Outer Space Treaty, formulated in 1967,  would give U.S. companies ownership of any materials they mine from asteroids, but not ownership of the asteroid itself. 

Read the complete Popsci article HERE

NASA Wants Commercial Robotic Luna Landers

That's right!  NASA is looking at private industry to develop a robotic Luna lander for the purpose of delivering cargo to the Moon's surface. 

In an excerpt from their announcement NASA said that the lander

• "could support commercial activities on the moon while enabling new science and exploration missions of interest to the larger scientific and academic communities."

NASA isn't being to clear on what these companies are supposed to do once they get there, but it has rekindled the debate of who "owns" the Moon.  Back at the beginning of spaceflight, the thought was due to the exorbitant cost, only governments would ever go to the Moon.  Now that commercial is a reality, the question once again is who owns the Moon, can anyone "own" even a piece of it.  Should the be allowed to?

My caveat would be that we would have to live with the decision every time we look up.  That is stretching it a lot but I do make at least a valid point.   Think about it.

New Scientist online has a good piece on this HERE

Who Wants to be an Asteroid Miner?

Yes sir, git yer kit together and maybe on of them Big Dawgs fir yer pac mule and git yerselves out to them asteroid fields!

So what the hell am I mumbling about this morning? Well in truth, I AM talking about asteroid mining.

Wired is reporting on a company called Deep Space Industries (wow I just got a wicked MOON flashback!) with the help of robotic crafts to mine what may turn out to be, valuable amounts of nickel, silicon, platinum group metals such as platinum and palladium, and water. The water alone can be broken down into Oxygen and Hydrogen which can be used as rocket fuel. 

Of course this is hardly a new idea, we saw plenty of space mining start-ups in 2012, DSI just happens to be the first for 2013. But it can be said that these guys have some pretty inventive ideas on how to retrieve, mine and make useful products.

DSI plans to field prospecting spacecraft (which they are calling of all things FIREFLIES) which will travel out to near Earth asteroids. What makes theses "fireflies" economically feasible is the way they will be constructed of inexpensive cubesats. The fireflies will then "prospect" nearby asteroids for the best candidates for mining. 

Once DSI determines the best candidates, they will send out "Dragonflies" to make the round trip bringing back samples. The goal here initially is to amass enough material to extract the valuable minerals which they claim can be used to manufacture products with the use of 3D printers. Eventually, according to the article:

• DSI wants to supply products, fuel and parts for deeper space ventures, such as orbiting hotels and manned Mars missions

Read the complete Wired article Here

Asteroid Mining May Be Against the Law?

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

The complete IO9 article can be read here

Image via Gunnar Assmy/Shutterstock

Company Wants to Mine Asteroids!

A Seattle Washington company wants to develop a business that would be centered around asteroid mining.

Planetary Resources, Inc. in a recent press conference stated that they are interested in the long term to "expand Earth's natural resource base" by developing and deploying the technologies for asteroid mining. Although the company's long term is mining asteroids, its initial plans will be the development of a market for small cost-reduced space telescopes for both Earth observation and astronomy.

Of note, James Cameron is listed as an adviser to the project. Cameron as you will remember recently made the historic second only dive on the Challenger deep on which he was the first to do the dive solo.





wikipedia on Planetary Resources

Chinese want to Capture Asteroid?

In a complete reversal, it would seem that Chinese scientists are studying ways to capture an asteroid and bring it into Earth orbit! Why?!!! Well their initial argument is for mining purposes.

I can think of a million reasons why this sounds like a really bad idea, the Chinese scientists feel:

• they could tweak the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid by just enough to get it to temporarily enter Earth orbit at about twice the distance as the Moon. The orbit would be unstable, and eventually the asteroid would drift out of near Earth Orbit - but it would be in proximity long enough for research and mining.

Initially the Chinese would start small...a hundred foot or so but there is every indication that asteroids in the mile wide metallic asteroids are being considered - with an estimated worth in the trillions.

Read the complete article for more details.

Complete Dvice Article Here
Wiki article on asteroid mining

There's Gold in Them There......Depths....

Gold perhaps, but more importantly metals like gadolinium, lutetium, terbium and dysprosium. Metals essential to the manufacture of high tech electronics.

China accounts for 97% of the worlds production. In 2009 China decided to reduce its level of export of these rare earth metals and in 2010 it reduced them again by 35%.

Japan on the other hand uses one third of the world's demand. This move by China put Japan in a difficult position. So looking for alternative sources Japan began exploring the ocean floor and what they found there was astounding! In international waters around Tahiti and Hawaii they found that more than a third of the samples brought up were testing positive for large amounts of the needful metals.

From the article:

• The deposits have a heavy concentration of rare earths. Just (slightly under 1/2 square miles) of deposits will be able to provide one-fifth of the current global annual consumption.
  

It has been estimated that the amount of rare earths contained in the deposits amounts to upwards of 100 billion tons! Extracting the rare elements from bottom mud would be a fairly simple acid leaching process that would only take a few hours.

Read more in the Dvice article here

pic is the GSF Explorer, formerly USNS Glomar Explorer wiki info here

Who Owns the Moon?

Making a mint out of the Moon - Dennis Hope says he owns the moon and he will sell you some!

From his office in Nevada, entrepreneur Dennis Hope has spawned a multi-million-dollar property business selling plots of lunar real estate at $20 (£10) an acre. Mr Hope exploited a loophole in the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and he has been claiming ownership of the Earth's Moon - and seven planets and their moons - for more than 20 years. Hope says he has so far sold more than 400 million acres (1.6 million sq km). These are "truly unowned lands", he says. "We're doing exactly what our forefathers did when they came to the New World from the European continent." Buyers include Hollywood stars, large corporations - including the Hilton and Marriot hotel chains - and even former US presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. George W Bush is also said to be a stake holder.

This of course is all in good humor....however it's no mystery that China and Russia are making major pushes to gain a manned foothold on Earth's neighbor. Also one of the biggest is US space contractor Lockheed Martin, which is currently developing technologies that will enable future lunar residents to exploit the lunar surface. In particular, it is working on a process which will convert Moon dust into oxygen and water. It may even be able to turn it into rocket fuel. However one of the biggest paydays might come from what is just laying around on the Moon. Data collected from the Apollo Moon landings have indicated that large deposits of an extremely rare gas called helium 3 are trapped in the lunar soil. Scientists believe that this helium 3 could be used to create a new source of almost inexhaustible, clean, pollution-free energy on Earth. A metric ton of helium 3 would supply about one-sixth of the energy needs today of the British Isles. Plans are already afoot in the US and Russia to strip-mine lunar helium 3 and transport it the 240,000 miles (385,000km) back to Earth. To get an idea of how valuable H3 is, if gold were mined on the moon (there is ample evidence that the mineral is in plentiful supply there) it would be too expensive to transport it to Earth, however Helium Three is worth several billion dollars a ton!