Luxembourg passes first EU space mining law. One can possess the Spice Luxembourg's parliament has passed a law that makes it the first European Union country to offer legal certainty that asteroid mining companies get to keep what they find in space. Take Article 1: "Space resources are capable of being appropriated". "It's a great law," Amara Graps, a planetary scientist, asteroid mining …
There would need to be some form of laws which apply in space, otherwise what stops me from letting you do all the hard work of mining an asteroid, then coming along and simply taking what you mined? Are the laws of Luxembourg going to help you now? Thought not.
I find it hard to believe anyone is going to invest billions in this until there is some assurance they won't have their hard earned gains simply stolen from them.
It would be very expensive to build and operate the hardware required for mining in space. Where do you think funds are coming from for hardware for pirates? I can see it now: "Here's $5BN to build ships and armaments. Try to break even in the first year." All sarcasm aside, I look forward to the day when space travel is so common and inexpensive that piracy is a problem. I think the concern is a bit premature though.
You wait for one of the miners to go bankrupt before they ever make it to the mining stage, and buy their ships for pennies on the dollar.
Though really, if there are no laws against piracy in space, it wouldn't be illegal, so nothing would stop someone from forming a company called "Space Pirates, Inc." that specifically says it will launch ships to go steal someone else's loot when they try and bring it back from the asteroid belt!
The large majority of the expense of space mining would be in either developing robots that can do the mining unassisted (they can't be remote controlled from Earth due to being dozens of light minutes from Earth) or in sending men out there to do it. Compared to those costs, the cost of simply launching a ship out of Earth's gravity well is a pittance. You don't need to go to the belt to pirate, just hang out at L2 and wait for someone to send their stuff back. Your ship "grabs" theirs and redirects it from its original destination to wherever you want. You can afford to have a larger ship and a lot more fuel since you are close to Earth, and the return mission ship probably taking the 'long slow journey' to save cost, so you can always overpower the rockets on it.
It's a law about companies on Earth dealing with mining in space, in particular property and taxation aspects.
This is just standard.
Unfortunately we are very far away from having viable space mining tech.
The way things are going, maybe infinitely away. Well, I have confidence the Chinese can pull something off eventually.
"Space resources are capable of being appropriated."
There does not appear to be any mention of what is meant by either "space" or "resources". As it stands, this law allows people to appropriate* things such as communications satellites or the Hubble space telescope.
* Definition - "take (something) for one's own use, typically without the owner's permission".
How does one go about staking a claim?
That is the most important aspect of all this space mining talk.
Can I send a fleet of shoe box sized drones out with hundreds of rol flags to plant on everything they touch, and hence own the entire Sol system's resources?
or more importantly can Precious Metals Inc, effectively go on an asteroid banking mission to ensure its more Earth bound resources remain highly scarce and therefore highly profitable.
We've seen how land banking works to the detriment of communities, so surely we need to take that experience and legislate against that happening out in space.
Perhaps one solution could be that all the asteroids you own get taxed at the rate they would be if in production.
So to bank an asteroid, as in own it and not allow it to be worked, costs the same in tax as if it was in full production.
There's no point trying for something like that with our current land banking blight, as the ones benefiting from it are the ones we would have to ask to legislate against it.
If it's anything like patents, there'll be no need to actually plant flags. It will be enough to vaguely describe the object being "claimed". The system will be introduced in the US first, and then the US claims will be extended to other jurisdictions through inter-governmental "free trade" "agreements" that bypass national legislatures.
Once again the EU prove it's lack of intelligence and greed.
1.) The EU does not own the asteroids, nor does it own any of the other planets
2.) The United States of America was the first to step on the moon, but did not claim it for ourselves but instead making it a giant step for all of MANKIND.
3.) The EU members are insane And their idiotic way will carry war from this planet into space on to other planets. Is this really what the people of earth want ourselves to be known for If we do make contact with any other lifeform out there? Not me says I.
To the EU I say. Stand up. Sitting on your brain not only squishes it, but also deprives your brain of the oxygen it needs to think in a logical manor.
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