ASTEROID MINING: US CONGRESS CONSIDERS BILLS, AND SOME HIGH OCTANE SPECULATION
Recently I had a fascinating conversation with former Assistant Secretary of HUD Catherine Austin Fitts, and the subject of our conversation was – as it often is – space, and global finance, and the links between the two. We’ll get back to that, but I wanted to mention it in connection to today’s article, which was shared by Mr. S.D.:
The companies vying to turn asteroids into filling stations
As noted, the 1966 UN Space Treaty ” already prohibits national appropriation of space resources. Basically, mining the moon is legally off limits,” but asteroids are that wonderful “gray area” that’s now being looked at for commercial exploitation. But really, folks, with the recent Chinese announcement about their willingness to mine the Moon, it would appear that the 1966 treaty is a dead letter, simply because financial exigencies and technological developments are once again proceeding faster than international jurisprudence can adapt.
Hence the need for “legislation” protecting investors, a necessary component to the minimization of risk in space commerce:
“As the commercial space industry grows, with billions of dollars already invested, entrepreneurs argue they should be able to own what they find. The costs are simply too great to risk having their discoveries taken from them by governments or competitors.
“Lewicki says the lack of legal certainty over ownership is already giving potential investors pause and hurting his company’s growth.
“Other private companies aren’t the only competition, either. Lewicki says China has launched unmanned exploratory missions to asteroids as well as the moon, and Nasa is working on a manned mission to collect samples from a near-Earth asteroid in the 2020s.
“If the US wants its private space industry to jump into the fray, argues Lopez-Alegria, legislators must create a more “predictable environment” in which companies can “enjoy the rights of their extraction or to extract without interference” in space.”
In other words, like it or not, we are
entering the age of space commercialization. Over the next 2-3
generations, this will dramatically transform the culture we live in. So
how to minimize risk and protect investment?
There are basically two routes here,
and here’s where Secretary Fitts’ insight comes in, and as we worked our
way through the conversation and her charts and graphs, we both became
rather speechless and breathless at what might be possibly going on. One
way would be the way of international treaty and negotiation, a long
and tiresome process, as the principal problem to be encountered is what
standard of law would be the ultimate arbiter of such commercial
ventures? The other way, would be the creation of a global
government, brought about, perhaps, by a tender for the global
population… which would be the “Chancellor Kohl” scheme for the
reunification of Germany writ large, and on a global scale. You’ll
recall that this scheme was both cunning and shrewd in its simplicity:
as the former Democratic Republic of Germany, East Germany, began to
fall apart, Chancellor Kohl allowed a one-for-one currency tender of
East German marks for the much stronger West German D-Mark. As East
Germans began to use the D-Mark, the economies elided together, and the Wiedervereinigung was all but a done deal.
Now… how might one go about doing this on a global basis?
Think Chancellor Kohl + smart phones, Apple pay, and other virtual currencies… global tender.
Voila.
No comments:
Post a Comment