Chief among them is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which makes it illegal for countries to appropriate the moon or other celestial bodies. That treaty notoriously does not specifically mention private citizens, which has led to people like Dennis Hope, a Nevada-based “real estate agent” selling tracts of land on the moon and claiming the treaty doesn’t apply to him as a private citizen. So far, Hope hasn’t run into much legal trouble, but that’s because he’s basically selling novelty certificates to suckers (no offense). The whole paradigm changes when someone like Bigelow Airspace, who is currently working with NASA, decides to make a private space station or announces plans to put an inflatable on the moon. [...]
But that doesn’t mean that commercial space is inherently doomed. Amending the space treaty isn’t going to be easy, but it also might not even be necessary. Sattler says that there is enough wiggle-room in the language of the treaty that spacefaring nations can sign memoranda of understanding with each other to allow specific commercial activities, a move that would be several orders of magnitude easier to finagle than a whole new international treaty. [...]
Instead, the State Department or some other national body is going to have to strike a deal with other nations—and other nations that want to do this are going to have to strike a deal with us. Considering that Russia just announced plans to have moon bases by 2030 (and potentially plans to extract minerals there) and says it’s done working with the United States in space, that may be a negotiation that requires more than just a rubber stamp.
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