I guess a website called “spacepolitics” is as good a place as any for such boorish bigotry.

Anyways…

I happen to think the new policy is the best thing that ever happened to HSF–if that policy survives. Ironic that it was proposed by this administration.

“But the right wing has learned to be careless with facts and to see those who are already bent into one lean…accept statements which are ludicrous on their own… without even bothering to check reality or do their own research simply because they sound like what should be true.

There can be no rational debate with those people. The only thing to do, particularly after the experience of the Iraq lies…is to simply call them out as exaggerators or liars and point them and the folks who believe them out as people determined to mislead the American people.”

HUH! How did we get back to “Iraq Lies”?!?!?!?!?

Obama supporters: You spent 8 years ripping anything from Bush, now you expect blind devotion to Obama. You spent 8 years saying to anybody who would listen that “Bush Lied, People Died” to the point that now you appear to actually believe your own propaganda. You now justify cheating (even up to Senate races – Franken) because “they” cheated. You justify underhanded tricks (parliamentary tricks to take over 1/6 of the economy) because “they” did it first. Where is your self-reflection?

“The space shuttle and the Delta 4 heavy are both ‘green’ space rocket ships that can use clean hydrogen and oxygen for carbon neutral fuel– if derived from the nuclear or hydroelectric electrolysis of water.”

Shuttle green? Not that I care particularly, but the shuttle SRB’s emit over 1000 tons of aluminum salts and other combustion products that horrify tree huggers. Makes a pretty contrail at sunset though. NASA’s liquid hydrogen supply is derived from natural gas in good old fashioned Gulf Coast refineries.

So you theory in how to proceed to the stars is, the same strategy America followed in the past? Make a treaty with people that will last “as long as the sky is blue and the grass is green” only until such time as we illegally find out there is resources on their land, then show them America’s word isn’t worth the paper it is printed on, break the treaty, goto war with them and take the resources and claim them as ours?

Now that is a winning strategy for America and truely shows “American exceptionalism” as hannity on fox noise is always promoting.

Show the entire planet that when you sign onto a treaty with America, it is never a question that we will break our word, it is only a question of when.

Two problems:
a/ Some areas of the Moon are more valuable than the others. Notably the near permanently illuminated peaks and water filled permanently shadowed troughs (craters). Should there be a premium or is it first come first served?
b/ Who gets the leasing fees?

Under the OST the scenario is not possible. OK Treaties can be broken but usually at cost.

For further reading I recommend
http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/oosa/COPUOS/Legal/2009/symposium.html
United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs
Legal Subcommittee: 2009
Forty-eighth session
(23 March-3 April 2009)
The first two papers Tuerk and Gilbert are excellent.

Who is “we”?

“Government purchased, explored, and secured the Louisiana territories so that people and private industry could settle it!”

“Not the best example to use on our way foreward into the stars.

Those territories had already BEEN settled for 10,000 – 20,000 years. Those lands already had people on them. It would be same thing if I sold france to china and said go and settle it. All it would take is for me to say the indigenous people do not have a claim to it and me, having the divine rights of Kingship, can claim it and sell it.

What we need going foreward is a internationally defined property rights regime. Why spend my money on going to the moon if I can own any resources when I get there?”

If we get there then we’ll own it. Whose going to stop us? Nepal?

No nation should own the Moon or Mars or the planets. But nations should be able to lease limited amounts of territory for a specific period of time, IMO.

For instance, an international law that said that a nation could lease control of 25 square kilometers of land (at $1 million per square kilometer per year) on the Moon or Mars in a particular area for 50 years with an option to renew the lease for another 50 years at twice the cost wouldn’t be too unreasonable. Individual governments could then lease portions of the territory that they control to private industry.

However, I probably wouldn’t allow a single nation to lease any other property on a planetary surface within 100 kilometers of property that they already leased. And I wouldn’t allow another nation to lease property within three kilometers of another nation’s leased property. This would allow many nations to exploit the resources of a particular area without boxing in any nation’s particular territory.

I’d also limit the amount of territory that can be leased on a moon or planet to less than 0.1% of the total surface area. For the Moon, that would only allow nations to lease up to 30,000 square kilometers of land. On Mars, that would be 144,000 square kilometers of land. I also wouldn’t allow any individual nation to lease more than 1000 square kilometers of territory on a Moon or planet.

I can’t figure out why doing R&D on a hydrocarbon heavy lift vehicle would be considered a ‘green collar’ job since using fossil fuels to get into space would increase global warming– not decrease it.

The space shuttle and the Delta 4 heavy are both ‘green’ space rocket ships that can use clean hydrogen and oxygen for carbon neutral fuel– if derived from the nuclear or hydroelectric electrolysis of water.

“Which, as I understand it, is exactly what the FY2011 NASA Budget sets in motion. Constellation was killing NASA’s ability to explore, and any hope for what you are passionate about coming to pass.”

I guess you didn’t read the budget. It reduces manned spaceflight related expenditures from $8.4 billion a year down to only $4.1 billion a year by the year 2015. And there is absolutely no commitment to place a permanent base on the Moon in that budget.

There are many faster and cheaper back to the Moon architectures than the Ares I/V. Many!