18 Nov How property rights in outer space may lead to a scramble to exploit the moon’s resources
The Washington Post reports that the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation known as the SPACE Act of 2015 (The U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act), which recognizes and promotes the rights of U.S. companies to engage in the exploration and extraction of space resources from asteroids and other celestial bodies.
Mining the moon for water has attracted the attention of Shackleton Energy Resources, which suggests that there are billions of tons of water ice on the poles of the moon that might be converted into rocket fuel. Moreover, NASA has two different mission concepts for extracting water from the lunar surface. If there’s ever going to be human lunar colony, then finding water on the moon is going to be a priority. It’s just cheaper and easier to have a source of water on the moon than it is to bring water to the moon.