When Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong hoisted the Stars and Stripes on the
moon, the act was purely symbolic. Two years earlier, mindful of Cold War
animosity, the 1967 Outer Space
Treaty (OST) had decreed that outer
space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, “is not subject to
national appropriation by claim of sovereignty”.
In other words no country, not even the US, could own the moon or any other
part of space, regardless of how many flags they erected there. Half a century
on, though, the OST could prove the biggest obstacle to one of the most
exciting new frontiers of space exploration: asteroid mining.
The reason lawyers could soon be poring over that 48-year-old document is
that space mining could become a reality within a couple of decades.
In what is being seen as a major breakthrough for this embryonic
technology, the government of
Luxembourg has thrown its financial muscle behind plans to extract resources
from asteroids, some of which are rich in
platinum and other valuable metals. It plans to team up with private companies
to help speed the progress of the industry and draw up a regulatory framework
for it.
One such firm, Deep Space Industries, wants to send small satellites, called Fireflies,
into space from 2017 to prospect for minerals and ice. The satellites would
hitch a ride on a rocket, and larger craft would then be used to harvest,
transport and store raw materials.
Metals such as nickel and iron, which are plentiful on Earth, could be
processed while in orbit and used to build equipment or spacecraft. And it may
eventually be possible to extract valuable minerals from asteroids cheaply
enough for it to be worth bringing them back to Earth.
Rival Planetary Resources has a slightly different plan, in which
telescopes would be used to analyse asteroids before craft were sent to mine
them. Its backers include Google co-founder Larry Page and billionaire
businessman Ross Perot, and it thinks it could be operating in space by 2025.
One of the difficulties facing these would-be space miners is cost, which
is fittingly astronomical. Nasa’s Osiris-Rex
expedition, which aims to bring just two
kilos of asteroid material back to Earth by 2023, is set to cost $1bn. But Deep
Space Industries thinks it can get the ball rolling by putting three of its
Fireflies in space for just $20m.
The other obvious barrier is the technological progress that is still
required if commercial asteroid mining is to become practically possible and
economically viable.
However, considerable as these hurdles are, experts believe the legal
component is the most pressing. Late last year, the US government made an
attempt to update the law on space mining, producing a bill that allows companies to “possess, own,
transport, use, and sell” extra-terrestrial resources without violating US law.
The problem is that putting this into practice violates the OST.
“The way a private company would enforce their right to mine is through a
national court,” says space law expert Dr Chris Newman of the University of
Sunderland. “In making a ruling, that court would exercise sovereign rights,
contravening the OST. We will only know how this would play out if it is tested
in court.”
US lawyer Michael Listner, who founded thinktank Space Law and Policy Solutions, says the US law is
incompatible with the OST and risks souring international relations: “China and
Russia will want in. If you have conflicts of law, things start getting dicey
and that could lead to legal and political conflict.”
Newman believes that one reason why Luxembourg has included plans for
drawing up a regulatory framework is to show the world that work is under way
on untangling such legal knots. “This is something for investors to hang their
hat on,” he says, “to give them confidence and say that there is a nascent
legal framework.”
But Dr Gbenga Oduntan, a space law expert at the University of Kent, warns
that the international community needs to get its act together quickly. “What
we don’t want is a free-for-all over asteroids,” he says. “We need to come
together and do that thinking, because the law we have right now does not allow
us to repatriate resources for commercial purposes.”
One way to do this, he suggests, is to draw on existing legislation such as
the UN Convention on the
Law of the Sea, which governs how nations
use the ocean. Another option might be to revive the Moon Treaty of 1979, which deemed space to be the “common heritage of
mankind” but failed to win support from any space-faring nation.
Such complex legal wrangles could indeed prove harder to overcome than
other difficulties, such as the huge costs involved. But some experts believe
that investing large amounts early on could create a space economy in which
costs are forced down by collaboration.
Ian Crawford, professor of planetary science at Birkbeck, London, says
asteroid miners would most probably start off by mining water-ice, which can be
broken down into hydrogen (for fuel) and oxygen (for supporting life).
It is much cheaper to produce water in space than to take it there, and
this process could generate revenue and technical support from other players in
the space game. Once companies had that revenue stream under their belts, they
could start thinking more seriously about the more costly business of
extracting minerals and bringing them back to Earth.
“Eventually you can imagine the
whole process supporting itself,” says Crawford. “The main hurdle is the
initial investment, and it seems these companies think they can get started and
jump over that hurdle.” But he agrees that the more pressing concern is the
legal picture, which “badly needs to be updated”.
Christopher Barnatt, professional futurist and author of The Next Big Thing:
From 3D Printing to Mining the Moon, says history shows us that if governments such as Luxembourg’s get behind
asteroid mining, the space industry will deliver on its promise.
“With the moon landings, the aspiration was way ahead of the technology.
[President] Kennedy had spoken to Nasa and they’d said it couldn’t be done. He thought
it could. We’ve got evidence from throughout history that when we commit
ourselves to a broad goal, we can achieve it.”
The ramifications could be huge, he believes, as progress in one technology
spurs breakthroughs in another.
“If you can use asteroids to make fuel, a lot of space exploration becomes
cheaper. Then there’s progress in robotics and artificial intelligence... it
all starts to make things possible.”
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