Скачать или смотреть Can we own Lunar RESOURCES?

A few years ago, according to Space.com, Ian Crawford, a professor of planetary science and astrobiology at Birkbeck College in the UK, suggested that an economic case could be made for prospecting and mining lunar resources as a way to enable a near-Earth industrial infrastructure. He was skeptical about helium-3, which he regarded as a kind of “fossil fuel.” However, he concluded that in aggregate, the variety of resources on the moon could be exploited in an economical manner.

The other question is, who can own space resources? The Outer Space Treaty prohibits any assertion of sovereignty on the moon or any other celestial body. However, Congress passed a law a few years ago called the U.S. Space Launch Competitiveness Act that asserts that American citizens who mine space resources, including on the moon, own those resources. The fact that the United States owns the moon rocks that the Apollo astronauts gathered is seen as a precedent. On the other hand, some suggest that since the act can be seen as an assertion of sovereignty, it violates the spirit of the Outer Space Treaty. The governments of China and Russia might be expected to support the latter view.

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