Posted on 09/24/2007 5:27:45 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
This year is the 40th anniversary of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration of Outer Space Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, more commonly known as the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Born out of anxiety about the Cold War and excitement about the Space Age, the agreement is a tribute to the ability of diplomats to draft international law that is simultaneously effective but bad. Successful in preventing states from claiming sovereign territory in outer space the treaty also hobbled space exploration and development. Today, human activity in outer space is confined to low Earth orbit and unmanned space exploration of the solar system proceeds at a leisurely pace. The Space Age has sputtered to a crawl and the 1967 Outer Space Treaty deserves a large measure of the blame.
Anti-commons and arrogance
Fear gave birth to the international legal regime for outer space: the ever-present fear of a nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union, the fear that either superpower would achieve a decisive military technological advantage over the other in outer space, the fear that competition for the best “real estate” on celestial bodies might itself result in war between the superpowers, and the fear that the superpowers might cooperate in a duopoly over all of outer space. That space exploration and development had much to offer humanity was largely a rhetorical rather than a practical imperative in drafting the agreement establishing the international legal regime. Instead the practical imperative was to prevent by denial.
The core legal principle of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty declared that everywhere beyond the atmosphere to be res communis, an international commons rather akin to the “international waters” of the open oceans on Earth, rather than terra nullius,
(Excerpt) Read more at thespacereview.com ...
Yet another example of the nation paying for the election of Lyndon Johnson, the worst President in American history.
PING!!
Well if the treaty is off then the moon is ours.
A ping to you, sir.
My Senator agrees that the Treaty has stymied private investment in space development. It wa s mentioned in the President’s report on Moon, Mars and Beyond, Section 3, as strangling space development in the cradle.
The Dawn spacecraft to be launched Thursday to Vesta and Ceres is of interest, but it should be private industry doing this.
The USA does not own the moon even though the Forest Service has a park there already.
Plenty of He3 to be found in exterrestrial fullerenes in the Carolina Bays. No need to go to the moon.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.