237 - ​​Is the Outer Space Treaty Built for Today's Space Race?​

But before we talk about T-shirts, let's jump into some of these basic fundamentals.

When we talk about the non-appropriation principle in the Outer Space Treaty, what does that principle really mean in practice when states and companies are preparing to extract resources that could enable long-term human presence on the moon?

Despite it being so vast, there are actually quite few laws that govern the space domain.

The most important was negotiated in the height of the Cold War and in the midst of the first space race, principally by the United States, Soviet Union and the UK.

And it's called the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.

And now more than 100 countries have signed on to that treaty, John.

including China.

And it really is considered the Magna Carta of the space world.

Wow, it's been that long and nothing in between.

That's quite a gap in the world of technology, isn't it?

I think it's really that that's the most important law, even though it's 60 years old, that there are other treaties that have occurred.

The Liability Convention is important, some acts and statutes and the like.

But the outer space law is really the Magna Carta.

Peter, you spent a career navigating the space between legal theory and real-world behavior.

What helps the distinction between using resources and claiming them hold up once people have equipment and infrastructure on the lunar surface?

Yeah, and so just to take a step back on it about the way that the Outer Space Treaty still impacts so many activities going on currently – You know, a key provision, as you've said, is the non-appropriation provision.

And what that basically says is that no country can assert ownership over the moon or any other celestial body on the basis of a claim of sovereignty by occupying it or by any other means.

So neither the United States nor China nor any other country can claim the moon as theirs.

Peter, based on your experience with compliance and oversight, what kinds of operational patterns or organizational incentives might cause resource activity to start drifting toward de facto control, even unintentionally?

And first, just to think about, well, what are the resources that are of interest on the moon? It is a potential treasure trove of crucial resources.

Water, ice is right up there.

Elemental oxygen, helium-3 gas.

And those resources can support two crucial activities.

One is the desire to really have a sustained human presence on the face of the moon, and so water being critical to that, but also rocket propellant, that if you can take oxygen and hydrogen and separate them through a process of electrolysis, you can effectively create a gas station on the face of the moon.

My, my, my.