(Newswire.net — February 3, 2015) — Cape Canaveral, Fla. – The promised land of the first one who sticks a flag into it sounds like a ‘wild west’ territory claim. According to document obtained by Reuters, US government proposes the same thing to US companies, to encourage commercial development of the moon.
Now, United States indeed planted a flag on the Moon, but is it ours to give?
The Federal Aviation Administration, in a previously undisclosed late-December letter to Bigelow Aerospace, said the agency intends to “leverage the FAA’s existing launch licensing authority to encourage private sector investments in space systems by ensuring that commercial activities can be conducted on a non-interference basis,” Reuters reported. This basically means Bigelow could set up one of its proposed inflatable habitats on the moon. Furthermore, with this license, Bigelow expects to have exclusive rights to that territory – as well as related areas that might be tapped for mining, mineral rights, exploration, and other activities.
That, however, may not be legal. The moon is currently governed only by the nearly 50-year old UN space treaty.
A 1967 United Nations treaty, which governs activities on the moon, states that countries have to authorize and supervise activities of non-government entities that are operating in space, including the moon. It also bans nuclear weapons in space, prohibits national claims to celestial bodies and stipulates that space exploration and development should benefit all countries.
FAA, however, disputes the direct licensing of colonization of the moon.
“We didn’t give (Bigelow Aerospace) a license to land on the moon. We’re talking about a payload review that would potentially be part of a future launch license request. But it served a purpose of documenting a serious proposal for a US company to engage in this activity that has high-level policy implications,” said the FAA letter’s author, George Nield, associate administrator for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Transportation.
Bigelow requested the policy statement from the FAA, which oversees commercial space transportation in the US. According to Reuters, FAA wrote in the December letter to Bigelow Aerospace that says, “We recognize the private sector’s need to protect its assets and personnel on the moon or on other celestial bodies.”
According to the documents obtained by Reuters, the letter was coordinated with US Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, as well as NASA and other agencies involved in space operations. The letter actually expands the FAA’s jurisdiction to licensing US companies’ planned activities on the moon.
The FAA’s decision “doesn’t mean that there’s ownership of the moon,” Bigelow told Reuters. “It just means that somebody else isn’t licensed to land on top of you or land on top of where exploration and prospecting activities are going on, which may be quite a distance from the lunar station.”
Some other US companies interested in Moon’s territory also don’t feel the UN space treaty applies to them as they have FAA license.
“The company does not see anything, including the Outer Space Treaty, as being a barrier to our initial operations on the moon,” said Moon Express co-founder and president Bob Richards. That includes “the right to bring stuff off the moon and call it ours,” he said.
There are, however, some US space exploring companies that doesn’t feel it is legal or moral to land on a Moon and claim the territory ownership.
“It’s very much a wild west kind of mentality and approach right now,” said John Thornton, chief executive of private owned Astrobotic, a startup lunar transportation and services firm competing in a $30 million Google-backed moon exploration XPrize contest.
Lunar property and mineral rights was discussed and tabled in the 1970s in a sister UN proposal called the Moon Treaty. Among ten countries invited to sign this treaty, US are the only one that refused to sign.