I haven't had time to write much this week but, at least when it comes to space policy, Mark Whittington has some interesting posts up, including a commentary on recent (useful) Congressional resistance to the Orbital Space Plane, and a righteous fisking of usually sensible John Carter McKnight's misconceived rant against space property rights (or to be more precise, some space advocates' advocacy of them), plus some other odds and ends.

Being a blogspotter, his permalinks are FUBAR, so just scroll down two or three days from today's date.

Go check them out while I recombobulate here and finish my Skylab eulogy.

To get an explanation of the real problem see the Smells Like Body Odor. I'm on the board of both the Moon Society and Artemis and we have never issued a release saying any of the stuff John attributes to us. Yes, we endorsed the Space Settlement Initiative but we didn't issue the release or write the Space Daily article (yet another case of Space Daily having poor editorial skills). We have also endorsed the Space Settlement Summit efforts as well.

I'm still struggling to see what he's said that's to any extent _wrong_. The language is a little ripe, but the core of the argument seems plain enough.

Without some framework for the enforcement of property rights, I'm not entirely sure what you propose to do with them. To counter the response, stating The problem with McKnight?s thesis is that the time is never ?quite right? to discuss space property rights. - when there is a credible means of utilising or having a time table for utilisation and enforcement of property rights - then will be a good time to be discussing it.

This all reminds me of the Roman Catholic Church carving up the new world between Spain and Portugal.

John would probably be right if everyone in space activism was capable of working on a rocket project, which most aren't. So those that aren't involved with suborbital flights are simply supposed to sit on their hands until the time is right? "When there is credible means of utilising ... property rights" is when you actually want to have those rights already figured out, not when you want to start figuring them out because no VC in their right mind would be willing to invest in something without knowing what it is they end up owning....

"When there is credible means of utilising ... property rights" is when you actually want to have those rights already figured out, not when you want to start figuring them out because no VC in their right mind would be willing to invest in something without knowing what it is they end up owning....

No VC in their right mind is going to be willing to invest in something when there's no way of protecting that investment. Any decisions made now are probably going to be as irrelvent as the UN Moon Treaty or the Church ceeding chunks of the new world to Spain and Portugal.

If you can't show a VC that their investment is secure they aren't going to give you much money - not if the Chinese could pitch up a year later and nationalise the investment without any legal recourse. Unless, of course, this debate becomes an international one at a national level on the true nature of space - but that is, I suspect, a different Can of Worms.

Actually the treaty that Dave refers to is not really an applicable example. It was an attempt to ratify a process which was already taking place in the mid 16th Century. Of course one benefit of a regime protecting property rights in space would be that Western governments would be compelled to forestall an attempt by China to declare the Moon-say-part of the Celestrial Empire in few years. Certainly such a regime is a prerequisit to any attempt at private development.

Without some framework for the enforcement of property rights, I'm not entirely sure what you propose to do with them.

The framework is legal action here on Earth. What other framework would you propose? For the next 50 years at least, there's not going to be any space activity going on that isn't heavily dependent on Earth-based resources, activities, and investment to keep it operational. Would a space operation risk harm to the Earth-based entities it relies on by violating somebody else's property rights? It seems to me this is exactly the enforcement mechanism we need, until space colonies can themselves become self-governing and self-enforcing, but that has to be a long way off.

And what sort of Earth based enforcement and juristiction do you intend to apply? Sure, if you are dealing with US companies you could have no problems, but what if your "rights" are being violated by the Chinese or French?

> what sort of Earth based enforcement and jurisdiction do you intend to apply?

Same as we do now for violation of intellectual property or "spectrum property" - synchronization of national laws through international regulatory or advisory bodies, with "enforcement" via trading sanctions etc. But the recognition has to start somewhere. Mike Urban had proposed something very similar as a new UN treaty; I think Wayne White also had a similar suggestion. The WTO might be an even better body to work with. But traditionally the US sets an example on these legal issues, and that's what this proposal is intended to do; certainly not be a final be-all and end-all for space property law, but a starting point.

Same as we do now for violation of intellectual property or "spectrum property" - synchronization of national laws through international regulatory or advisory bodies, with "enforcement" via trading sanctions etc.

I really do hate to sound terribly negative, but these aren't particularly effective on Earth when you can control these things. I do a lot of business with Taiwan and existing IPR laws don't hold much sway there.

I really can't see this being a model on which you'll be able to persuade VC's to part with cash.

Uh, how much cash was raised in the spectrum auctions? 10's of billions of dollars, I think. How much money goes into corporate R&D to patent things every year? At least 10's of billions each year! While the process may be a little messy and imperfect, it's good enough for people to make large capital investments. Same applies here.

I don't think the analogy is even remotely similar myself, but this isn't the best forum for the kind of discussion to go over exactly why I don't agree.

If you want to discuss this, please feel free to email.