Posted on 05/13/2007 10:53:50 AM PDT by Shuttle Shucker
An OST treaty decision in one country binds all other member nations to abide by it, even in the absence of an appeal to an international tribunal?
It doesn't. That's just RightWhale's mistaken interpretation. Smarter people than him, who actually understand space law, know that the OST doesn't ban it, and you're entitled to keep and sell resources that you acquire off planet. All the OST does is not allow declarations of national sovereignty.
The Moon Treaty is more problematic, but the US didn't sign on to it, so we're not bound by it.
I’ve not seen a posting in this thread by anyone who is against expanding into space, or reforming flagrantly wasteful programs like the Social Security Dept., the Dept. of Education or Health & Human Services. But this doesn’t change the fact that NASA gets $16 billion of our tax dollars each year with which to play. It puts well under 1/2 of 1% of that into its prizes program, which increasingly appear to be designed so that the prizes can’t be won (thereby perpetuating our dependence upon the NASA bureaucrats). Do you favor that?
Somewhere around a dozen nations (most of them tiny or 3rd World at the time of entry) signed on to the Moon Treaty. There are hundreds of countries on Earth. That says a lot about the Moon Treaty.
Bush may have wanted to withdraw from the OST, but sacrifices were involved:
1) too much of a space focus hurt Jerry Brown in California, winning him the belittling nickname of “Governor Moonbeam”.
2) Withdrawing from the OST could have fueled others’ complaints that Bush was an imperialistic invader who wanted the USA to control everything. The Iraqi coalition was fragile enough as it is.
3) Like companies would do much with the reforms he could have brought about?
On the flip side though, we paid that guy to be a LEADER and we renewed his contract to lead even more. Has he let us down?
Your attacking a tiny percentage of how NASA spends it’s money, challenging people with difficult tasks is NOT wasteful if in the end it produces new better ways to accomplish a task. Even if they do not meet the final goal, they still will push themselves and come up with new solutions that would not have existed before otherwise.
Risk, challenge, attempting difficult tasks.
Have you ever failed?
Did you learn from it?
Do better next time?
Falling on your ass persuing tough goals is often more valuable in the long run then attempting easy things without fail.
NASA is in that game, remember?
I am wondering though whether the terms of the competition spelled out that the weight of the dirt would be in terms of Earth gravity or Moon gravity.
Coulda been a big loophole to exploit, as in: "You had to mean the mass of 330 pounds on Earth; well, that really weighs only 55 pounds on the moon, so that's what we built our scooper to do."
What would that be?
That is incorrect and insufficient and that is proven by the absence of development of space mineral resources.
I’m certainly not against NASA’s spending money on offering competitive prizes, but I believe the money would be better spent on them if offered by an independent prize-offering authority like that described at http://www.ProSpace.org . NASA has an inherent conflict of interest to preserve its MONOPOLY so it makes prizes that can’t be won in hopes of continuing with the miniscule amount that it offers for these prizes from its exorbitant budget. NASA is no more risk-taking than my granny was. We’ve been going around in circles on the Shuttle for decades while the Russians can do space stations and launches 30 times more cheaply, and without casualties off the ground in nearly 4 decades (whereas NASA keeps having them). We won’t be able to repay our national debt and finance the wasteful social security and other programs imposed on us if we don’t start pushing the envelope in space. NASA bureaucrats do not deserve our trust any longer.
That’s an interesting loophole that you suggested :-)
See what I mean? China has spoken with regards to CHINA. What evidence is there that China has the authority to bind other countries’ interpretations of the treaty which those countries independently joined?
Just because the 5th Circuit (including Texas) ruled against racial quotas in admissions a few years ago doesn’t mean the Southern District of New York danced to the beat of that drummer. Can you imagine how many treaties we’d withdraw from if they allowed China to definitively tell us how to interpret them?
It was done under the Treaty. It would be next to impossible to beat that. The easiest way out is for the Pres to simply withdraw the USA from the Treaty. My Senator says ‘. . . withdrawing from the Space Treaty may eventually prove a necessary step . . .’ However, if no one seems to be getting the necessary cash together to do space mining, it won’t be necessary. Catch 22, sort of.
My opinion is that your making a very poor argument and are factually off base in several major areas.
Let’s see some adequately substantiated examples, then...
I agree with you that it’s a Catch 22: without the property rights, getting funding together is tough, and without the funding, prompting property rights’ emergence is tough.
Bush will likely remain dormant r/e the OST for the reasons that I somewhat unforgivingly mentioned above specifically regarding the OST.
It would help if we could lower the cost of launching though, as that makes it easier to get out into space and make the property rights in space more of a live issue. NASA should be offering prizes for space launches. It has been given the authority (back in Dec. of ‘05). Why isn’t it? Can you spell >monopolistic corruption<? Sigh...
“NASA is no more risk-taking than my granny was”
Let’s start there.
That’s a bit personal but frankly I would dare to suggest that she took far more risks, dollar-for-dollar than NASA. And she didn’t monopolistically get in the way of as many other peoples’ progress like NASA does, either. But my granny example was obviously hyperbole, in case you couldn’t tell. Presumably you can come up with something better to justify your assertion?
The technical and logical term for this argument is "palpable nonsense."
The current absence of development of space mineral resources has many causes, and it is not necessarily to invoke the OST to explain it.
330 pounds of lunar soil in less than 30 minutes...[in order to win a $250,000 NASA prize]. The strict parameters -- machines also could use only 30 watts of power and had to weigh less than 88 pounds.Hmm. Sounds like a job for a twelve year old kid in a space suit.
When you ride the shuttle.
Then you can lecture others on wether NASA takes enough risk.
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.