Good Day Humboldt County!
Mankind will never get tired of exploring. It’s in our DNA. What’s beyond that far planet? Or galaxy? Or universe?
What roads lie ahead? While America is cutting back nationally on the space budget, private companies are yearning to to fill the void and to venture out and claim new worlds.
Dreams of otherworldly profits are motivating space settlement activists with a mind to explore, to claim foreign real estate. Who knows? Maybe Newt Gingrich is right and we’ll be colonizing the mood to mine it’s resources someday soon. Moon dust anyone? (Above) Moon Colony Concept NASA/JSC -
And in the news…
“Getting to the moon is a noble and ambitious goal for any country, and other nations will probably follow in our footsteps here pretty soon. But private companies won’t go without the promise of profit, and until they do, space will be left unsettled, advocates say. The latest in a drumbeat of pro-colonization comes from the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is advocating the recognition of property rights on the moon or other celestial bodies. Space settlement activist Rand Simberg says in a new white paper that the U.S. should recognize land claims off-planet, which would allow for legal land titles sort of like the former Homestead Act. Moon land titles could be used as collateral for loans, or sold to raise money to develop the lunar landscape, he argues.
“It would have great potential to kick the development of extraterrestrial resources—and perhaps even the human settlement of space—into high gear,” Simberg writes.Other experts have weighed in on this before, noting that corporations have settled new worlds in the past. Recognizing property rights in space would fly in the face of the Moon Treaty, established in 1979, which outlaws private property claims. But the U.S. is not a signatory to that treaty.
It is a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which prevents establishment of colonies on celestial bodies. But Simberg and others, including Alan Wasser, chairman of the Space Settlement Institute, argue that it prevents nations from doing the colonizing — not private corporations.”
Time for me to walk on down the road…
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