Quote from: Danderman on 10/17/2018 05:10 amThe 1967 OST would not support a claim in space based on Cubesats sitting on an asteroid. In fact, the OST does not support any claims at all, any more than theoperators of a ship can claim the water under their ship.True, but my understanding is that, like a ship that can use and consume the water under it, the OST allows for resource extraction. One doesn't necessarily need to make ownership claims of the object itself in order to own the resources (kind of like how one can have mineral rights to a property without owning the property itself).
The 1967 OST would not support a claim in space based on Cubesats sitting on an asteroid. In fact, the OST does not support any claims at all, any more than theoperators of a ship can claim the water under their ship.
When providing an economic benefit requires two things and one is much, much harder than the other, it doesn't make sense to do the easy thing before anyone has any realistic plan underway to do the harder thing.Figuring out which asteroids have the resources someone is looking for is the easy thing. Extracting the resources and bringing them somewhere where they can be put to use is the hard thing.Once someone has a realistic, funded plan to develop a system that can make use of resources extracted from asteroids, then it will make sense to prospect. Not before. Any government scheme to encourage early prospecting would just be rewarding globally-inefficient allocation of resources and discouraging investment in the actual resource extraction.
Taking samples from asteroids might also reveal substances we haven't even thought of yet, and might be worth bringing back because we only find them on asteroids.
Quote from: high road on 10/19/2018 07:49 amTaking samples from asteroids might also reveal substances we haven't even thought of yet, and might be worth bringing back because we only find them on asteroids.IMO, mostly agree with the rest of your post, but I doubt we'll ever find new, unknown substances on asteroids, mostly because asteroids sometimes crash into Earth and we would have probably found those substances by now.
Active presence would suggest a cubesat with a solar powered interactive radar transponder and a harpoon for surface anchoring might fit the minimum definitions for a claim then.
Let’s say you were starting up a new company to prospect for ores on asteroids. How could you make revenue in the near term?If discoveries of ores on asteroids could be protected, and such claims were transferable similar to patents, then we might see an industry of prospecting firms.
I have friends who work in the terrestrial prospecting business. They sell data. There's no "mining patents" involved. Planetary Resources isn't dead yet... they're trimming the fat after a Series A. That's normal.Hopefully they'll be going out and collecting data soon, and they'll use that confidential catalogue to raise the next round. Yes, for a long while their assets will be primarily intellectual property.
Quote from: AdrianW on 10/19/2018 10:04 amQuote from: high road on 10/19/2018 07:49 amTaking samples from asteroids might also reveal substances we haven't even thought of yet, and might be worth bringing back because we only find them on asteroids.IMO, mostly agree with the rest of your post, but I doubt we'll ever find new, unknown substances on asteroids, mostly because asteroids sometimes crash into Earth and we would have probably found those substances by now.IMO, the rather significant list of "meteorite minerals" indicates said.list is likely incomplete. More may fall on the 3rd rock and be discovered, but others will wait for a visitor.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_meteorite_minerals
Actually, there is a public benefit from knowing where mineral resources are among the asteroids.
Ok, there are some people here who have no interest in companies planning to prospect for mineral resources among the asteroids. For those who think the time for such companies has come, my suggestion is a registry for claims of discoveries of ore bodies, based on Dr. Zubrin’s Mining Patents concept. The registry would give a company discovering valuable minerals the equivalent of a copyright of the location. Anyone else infringing on the intellectual property granted the company would be sanctioned by the US government.