Alert: America Is Drilling a Loophole in ‘Space Property Rights’ Law

According to a report, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a space commerce bill in May. This bill acknowledges two specific private property rights — namely, who is able to take resources from space, and who receives ownership of said resources. What’s more, the bill stipulates that others are not allowed to interfere in the affairs of any American citizen in space. There are space lawyers who believe that this bill makes clear an important point, that America will admit its position regarding the rights to the development of space and satellites for private interest. The first legal action taken by Congress was to put the rights to the commercialization of space issue before the entire world.

As a matter of fact, according to the stipulation concerning the “non-appropriation principle,” the 1966 bill “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies,” aka the “Outer Space Treaty,” ratified by the United Nations on Oct. 10, 1967, outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means. The “Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies,” better known as the “Moon Treaty,” passed in 1979 during United Nations Conference and ratified on July 11, 1981, further clarifies this stipulation in that it prohibits the surface and the subsurface of the moon, and any part thereof or natural resources in place, from becoming the property of any state, international, intergovernmental or nongovernmental organization, national organization or nongovernmental entity or of any natural person. However, due to the fact that the “Moon Treaty” has never been recognized by any nation equipped to conduct manned space flight, it has been largely been disregarded as nothing more than countries wishing for a perfect-world scenario of how space exploration and the utilization of celestial bodies should be conducted. In the real world of space law, it doesn’t count for much.

Where international issues are concerned, as the number one superpower and the world’s great hegemon, America will always pursue its own interests and stubbornly make its own rules as it forces its own internal laws onto international ones, as well as its bilateral or multilateral agreements. The idea that America’s space commercialization laws conform to the Outer Space Treaty is actually under the sway of American propaganda campaigns, so it’s inevitable that the interpretation and enforcement of the Outer Space Treaty will fall under America’s control, leaving every other country wishing to peaceably explore space and utilize its resources confronted with a major and unprecedented challenge.

First of all, America relies on its advantages in aerospace technology and power. Through legislative tricks, it has furnished protection from responsibility and simplified approval procedures for private space tourism and satellite development companies to promote private space interests and to undertake manned space activities for commercial purposes, most especially in the area of mining companies’ collections of space rocks, where the stores mined from satellites total $1 trillion. This firmly establishes a position of dominance in commercial space activities. America’s legislative actions are essentially aimed at the Moon Treaty and its “non-appropriation clause,” as America seeks to create a unilateral interpretation and implementation of it. The long-term effects of America’s presumptuousness here can only lead to the great degradation of space, and there will be no end to the trouble it brings.

Secondly, America’s selfish legislative activities will lead directly to stagnation in any future negotiations or amendments of the Moon Treaty, causing the hopes for any cooperative exploration and utilization of space to likely go up in smoke.

Thirdly, competition in the exploration and development of outer space will only intensify. Dirty competition — room made for the pillaging of outer space, its satellites and celestial bodies — will inevitably lead to the degradation of the space environment. Any incentive that countries may have to strengthen cooperation and any efforts for the mutual development of space will be faced with even greater difficulties.

Even though America’s space commercialization bill still needs to be examined and ratified by the Senate, and needs presidential approval as well, essentially making it a long journey to being formally signed into law, the fact that the bill passed in the House reflects, in exceptionally lucid terms, American policy direction. To every country wishing to undertake the peaceful exploration and utilization of space, the negative ramifications of the groundwork now being laid will be profound and far-reaching.

The author is a researcher at the China Foundation for International Studies.