Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into space

[Sean_McCormick]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

There is this very interesting film, which basically starts with this question: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1849755/

There is a guy in the US who had claimed ownership of the moon using some obscure law from the wild west era, which was written to regulate land claims by gold-diggers, and is now selling it in small portions, and there is a guy in germany, whose ancestor has been given the moon as a present by prussian king Frederick II. The setup of the film is the fact, that the guy in germany seems to have written to the guy in the US contesting his claims, which leads to an american jounalist researching what the germans are up to with the moon and the film shows him meeting nutjob after nutjob with each one being a bigger headcase than the last. It stars harmlessly with people believing in the healing properties of water bottled under a full moon but in the end turns actually scary with neo-nazis who actually believe that nazi-germany colonized the moon and that their flying saucers control the sky.

I don't know if this film is available in english, though.

 

[clint g]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

There is this very interesting film, which basically starts with this question: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1849755/

There is a guy in the US who had claimed ownership of the moon using some obscure law from the wild west era, which was written to regulate land claims by gold-diggers, and is now selling it in small portions, and there is a guy in germany, whose ancestor has been given the moon as a present by prussian king Frederick II. The setup of the film is the fact, that the guy in germany seems to have written to the guy in the US contesting his claims, which leads to an american jounalist researching what the germans are up to with the moon and the film shows him meeting nutjob after nutjob with each one being a bigger headcase than the last. It stars harmlessly with people believing in the healing properties of water bottled under a full moon but in the end turns actually scary with neo-nazis who actually believe that nazi-germany colonized the moon and that their flying saucers control the sky.

I don't know if this film is available in english, though.

This sort of sounds like the greatest movie ever....

 

[Shik]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

Surely we'll have to worry about some bilionaire having a Moonopoly.

sojourner appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season.
"Mr.sojourner, you persist in defying my efforts to provide an amusing death for you."

"Look after Mr. Sojourner. See that some harm comes to him."

 

[chardman]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

What do we need to colonize the Moon for?

For the babes. Why else?

Ooh... isn't one of those hotties Wanda Ventham a/k/a Benedict Cumberbatch's hot mother?

 

[scotpens]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

Ooh... isn't one of those hotties Wanda Ventham a/k/a Benedict Cumberbatch's hot mother?

Yep. Didn't recognize her at first in the purple wig. Does anyone else think she looked like a cross between Honor Blackman and Julie Christie?

The other hottie is Gabrielle Drake.

Speaking of Gerry Anderson's UFO, I always wondered how effective a moonbase would be as a first line of defense against alien invasion. I mean, the aliens would have to be dumb enough to approach Earth on a course that takes them within a few hundred miles of the moon at most.

 

[Starkers]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

I don't beleive Wanda Vantham's character was ever one of the bewigged Moonbase girls. She was based on Earth at SHADO HQ and I'm pretty sure that's where she stayed (can't say for sure).

She was very hot though.

 

[T'Girl]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

Speaking of Gerry Anderson's UFO, I always wondered how effective a moonbase would be as a first line of defense against alien invasion. I mean, the aliens would have to be dumb enough to approach Earth on a course that takes them within a few hundred miles of the moon at most.

As I recall tha show, the moon based interceptors would occasionally travel outwards several million kilometres on their sorties. In one episode at least the ufos' tried coming in from the opposite side of the Earth from the moon, it was still intercepted.

It bothers me when people post quotes, but don't provide links to where the text came from.

Copy and paste the first couple of sentences into google and it probably will give you the origin, or one of them.

But only if you're interested, which most people wouldn't be.

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=617

 

[Marten]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

My best law student guess is that private citizens are not allowed to claim swaths of land on the moon. Only nations are allowed to have soverignity over territory (owning is a different thing), and if they can't claim territory in space their citizens can't either. Legally, at least, since who is supposed to stop them?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

It bothers me when people post quotes, but don't provide links to where the text came from.

Copy and paste the first couple of sentences into google and it probably will give you the origin, or one of them.

But only if you're interested, which most people wouldn't be.

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=617

And this procedure edits the original post to insert the link where they actually got the text how?

 

[scotpens]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

And this procedure edits the original post to insert the link where they actually got the text how?

Uh, it doesn't. You have to go back and edit your post yourself, if you didn't include the link originally. You have a 24-hour window in which to do that, you know.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

And this procedure edits the original post to insert the link where they actually got the text how?

Uh, it doesn't. You have to go back and edit your post yourself, if you didn't include the link originally. You have a 24-hour window in which to do that, you know.

And what sort of window do I have, if it wasn't my post to begin with?

Anyway, Darth Tom did provide a link, and for that, I thank him.

My self-described rant was also intended as a general remark, that people who quote things should cite their source. That is all.

 

[gturner]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

It would be extremely difficult for a government to successfully assault and seize a lunar installation that's defended with firearms, cameras, and crude explosives.

From simple ballistic equations, a rifle with a muzzle velocity of 2,700 feet per second would have a maximum lunar range of about 260 miles. And the bullet would strike the ground with the same velocity as it had at the muzzle, so long shots would penetrate a target the same as if the bullet was fired at point blank range.

However, the rifle's accuracy is a factor. If it can shoot groups of 1 minute of angle (MOA), which is very typical of a good hunting rifle, the spread at 260 miles would be about 400 feet. The spread at 10 miles would be about 15 feet.

Lunar landers are very fragile vehicles because they have to keep the weight down, so two or three hits would either puncture the cabin, rupture one or both fuel tanks, or hit a vital piece of the engine or electronic systems, rendering the lander inoperable - if not destroying it completely in a hypergolic fuel explosion.

Landers are also fairly large (the Apollo lunar lander was 18 feet by 14 feet), making them pretty big targets. At 10 miles every bullet fired with 1 MOA accuracy could be expected to hit an Apollo-sized lander. At 260 miles about one out of every 630 bullets at 1 MOA would hit an Apollo lander, whereas a good 0.25 MOA rifle (benchrest quality) would hit the lander once out of every 40 shots at 260 miles. But since an "assault" lander would have to be much bigger than an Apollo (unless you intend to send just two guys), the benchrest rifle would probably hit with about 1 shot in 10.

So the lander can't safely land within range of the base or it will get destroyed during or shortly after landing, stranding the crew. So the lander needs to carry a vehicle that can travel 250 to 350 miles (the base might use a rifle with a higher muzzle velocity, say 3,200 fps, extending the size of the exclusion zone) and back (since the assault might fail). But the vehicle could be under fire during the entire transit, so it needs to be armored at least as well as a APC, and that adds a tremendous amount of weight to the lander, vastly increasing the cost and complexity of the mission. If the assaulting astronauts tried to advance on foot, they'd get shot before they make it within 5 or 10 miles of the base, and probably much further out than that, assuming the base and its defensive guns and cameras were well positioned.

The base doesn't suffer from the same vulnerability because as an established position, it would be buried under rock and dirt to protect against radiation, which would also handily protect against bullets. An assault force could of course just blow it up with a missile strike from orbit, but that wouldn't be "seizing" the base, it would be destroying it.

So assuming a government has spent perhaps a 100 billion dollars and 10 years building the massive launch rocket, lander, and lunar assault tank, and the vehicle makes it to the base, there's still the problem of seizing a defended base. The assault vehicle won't fit through an airlock, so the astronauts would have to go in on foot, in suits.

The people in a base can vent the entrance sections to space, so the assault personnel would be dependent on their suits while inside the base - which could have little explosive charges planted anywhere, which would shred any spacesuit made. They could even plant little mines and remotely triggered IED's (pipe bombs to claymores) around the base, so the assault force would get shredded shortly after exiting their armored vehicle.

Given the probably 10-year lead time and high profile of a government's "lunar assault" program, the defenders would've had years to make booby traps and prepared positions, so at some point early in the government's planning phase, someone would realize the futility of the task and cancel the program, leaving the lunar base alone.

The only viable government options would be cutting the base off from Earth supplies, seizing the occupants' bank accounts, and insulting them on Twitter.

 

[PhoenixClass]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

Marten is right, ownership is different from political sovereignty. Furthermore, ownership is a legal concept, so if a nation can't extend it's laws to the moon, then there is no legal basis on which an individual can base a claim.

Plus, the Nazis are already up there, as we learned in Iron Sky.

 

[gturner]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

Individual land holdings often precede national sovereignty, as happened all across the US as the frontiersmen went West far ahead of any government. Their holdings were later documented and simply grandfathered in. The only reason governments got involved in documenting land holdings (making copies of deeds) was to prevent real-estate fraud. Prior to that, land transfers were purely a personal affair and the only copies of deeds and titles were held privately by the land owner.

 

[AnAlien]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbgz4yY-xX0

 

[USS Triumphant]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

I own the moon, since one of My people planted My nation's flag there first, and the usurper "president" Kennedy had no legal authority to sign the moon treaty. (All "presidents of the United States" and "congresses of the United States" have been illegal usurpers since My Predecessor, Emperor Norton-1, dismissed the sitting president and the congress at the time of His rule.)

I have previously issued no clarifying decree on this matter, so let it be known here that all of humanity is welcome to visit the moon so long as they bring no weapons, and any individual is welcome to claim a homestead of no more than 40 acres on the moon and live there, provided they recognize My Sovereignty over them, and if they do so in a formal letter sent to My personal secretary, I may see fit to bestow titles of minor nobility onto them. (These titles, as with most others I have bestowed, come with nothing more than the right to pass them on to others, and to expect their use by members of My Government in official matters.)

- Emperor Norton-2

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

My best law student guess is that private citizens are not allowed to claim swaths of land on the moon. Only nations are allowed to have soverignity over territory (owning is a different thing), and if they can't claim territory in space their citizens can't either. Legally, at least, since who is supposed to stop them?

That strikes me as about right. However, this just means that there's a tragedy of the commons because, even absent sovereignty, it's still possible to assert ownership and control.

 

[gturner]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

I've been in some long debates about the particulars of the Outer Space Treaty and pointed out all sorts of nonsense that could occur if anyone actually took it as law (it's basically something you could scribble on a napkin, and probably got about that much serious thought regarding the way property really works).

For example, anything you launch into space is now and forever the property of the nation that launches it, and cannot be interfered with in any way without express permission, nor can anyone interfere with any experiments in progress, etc. Technically, you could launch a probe to the moon that would release a bunch of white chalk or perhaps some odd isotope and say you're conducting a soil experiment on the entire moon. Then no other party would ever be allowed to disturb the lunar soil, which of course would interfere with your experiment.

Also under the OST, all parties are required to immediately inform the UN Secretary General and all signatory governments of any activities taking place in space, such as bonking the daughter of the UN Secretary General in zero-G, along with provided video of the act. Not providing the video, if available, would be a violation of international law. Thus my observation that not a lot of deep thought went into drafting the OST.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

My best law student guess is that private citizens are not allowed to claim swaths of land on the moon. Only nations are allowed to have soverignity over territory (owning is a different thing), and if they can't claim territory in space their citizens can't either. Legally, at least, since who is supposed to stop them?

That strikes me as about right. However, this just means that there's a tragedy of the commons because, even absent sovereignty, it's still possible to assert ownership and control.

Sorry, I can't quote a written source - I heard that ages ago when the Amis first landed on the moon. Back then it was decided that the moon ought to remain neutral territory and belong to all of mankind together. Rather like Antarctica.

The question remains, though, whether future generations will stick to this agreement. In my experience there are only 2 completely unlimited items in this universe: human stupidity and greed.

 

[gturner]

Re: Who owns the Moon? Legal question as billionaires launch into spa

As I mentioned above, anything you take into space can't be interfered with by any other party, under the terms of the OST. So if you landed on the moon and set up a base, you could just spread chalk, flour, or sand on the area you wanted to claim, call it a reflectivity/albedo experiment, and nobody else would ever be allowed to disturb it, thus making it impossible for them to remove you without violating international (space) law.

That's not how property ownership is supposed to work, but that's what the lawyers came up with to keep the US and USSR from claiming the moon as a missile base.