Podcasts about space act

Exploring Space Law: Insights from Experts at Space Tech Expo 2024Welcome to the inaugural episode of our Space Law miniseries, recorded live at the Space Tech Expo in Bremen on November 22, 2024. Moderated by Torsten Kriening of SpaceWatch.Global, this episode delves into the interplay between procurement and national space laws. This session offers a comprehensive exploration of innovative procurement strategies, anchor customer roles, Liechtenstein's Space Act, and the Dutch legal framework for space activities. Tune in to understand how these legal structures foster innovation and robust growth in the space industry. The Workshop was organized by Prof. Dr. Lesley Jane Smith, Leuphana University & Dr. Ingo Baumann, BHO Legal.Part 1 – SPACE PROCUREMENT AND NATIONAL SPACE LAWFranck Germes, ESA - Innovative procurement and procurement for innovation within ESADr. Oliver Heinrich, BHO Legal - The role of the Anchor Customer in space industry developmentDr. Bianca Lins, Liechtenstein Office for Communications - The Liechtenstein Space ActDr. Dimitra Stefoudi, Leiden University - The Dutch legal framework for space activitiesSpace Café Radio brings you talks, interviews, and reports from the team of SpaceWatchers while out on the road. Each episode has a specific topic, unique content, and a personal touch. Enjoy the show, and let us know your thoughts at radio@spacewatch.globalWe love to hear from you. Send us your thought, comments, suggestions, love lettersYou can find us on: Spotify and Apple Podcast!Please visit us at SpaceWatch.Global, subscribe to our newsletters. Follow us on LinkedIn and X!

The President helps set NASA's agenda and determine what our nation's space goals will be.

India's Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences says that an ISRO astronaut will be going to the International space station some time “after August”. US lawmakers fail to pass FY2025 appropriations bills affecting NASA, NOAA and the FAA. Rocket Lab has completed integration and testing of two spacecraft destined for Mars orbit, and more. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our weekly intelligence roundup, Signals and Space, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. T-Minus Guest Our guest today is Mike Cassidy, CEO of D-Orbit USA. You can connect with Mike on LinkedIn and learn more about D-Orbit on their website. Selected Reading 65 Years Ago: The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 Creates NASA One Gaganyatri Will Travel To ISS After August, Says Space Minister Space Budget 2024: Government announces Rs 1000 crore to boost space technology - Times of India What's Happening in Space Policy July 28-August 3, 2024 Rocket Lab Completes Integration and Testing of Twin Spacecraft for NASA Mars Mission- Business Wire Redwire Signs MOU with Consolidated Safety Services, Inc. to Support International Space Station Services Contract- Business Wire CesiumAstro to Power Lunar Navigation With NASA Contract for LunaNet Technology- Business Wire SpaceX completes 300th booster reflight during first of planned back-to-back Falcon 9 launches Press Release and Press Coverage- First Street International Space Station Research And Development Conference Kicks Off Monday In Boston NASA astronauts hold their own Summer Olympics in space (video) T-Minus Crew Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our 4 question survey. It'll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This Day in Legal History: NASA CreatedOn July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, officially establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This landmark legislation was a response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957, which marked the beginning of the space race. The act represented a significant shift in U.S. priorities, emphasizing the importance of space exploration for national security, scientific advancement, and international prestige. NASA was charged with the responsibility of conducting civilian space research and development, distinguishing it from military operations in space.The creation of NASA consolidated several existing organizations, including the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), into a single entity focused on space exploration. This integration aimed to foster innovation and streamline efforts in advancing aerospace technology. NASA's establishment marked the start of an era of unprecedented achievements, including the Apollo moon landings, the development of the Space Shuttle, and numerous scientific missions to explore our solar system and beyond.The act also emphasized the peaceful exploration of space, setting a tone for international cooperation. NASA's formation underscored the United States' commitment to leading the world in space exploration and scientific discovery. This pivotal moment in legal and scientific history laid the groundwork for decades of exploration, research, and technological advancements that have had profound impacts on society and our understanding of the universe.President Joe Biden plans to propose significant reforms to the U.S. Supreme Court, including term limits for justices and a binding code of conduct. Announced during a speech at former President Lyndon B. Johnson's library, these reforms also include a constitutional amendment to remove broad presidential immunity. Biden's proposals follow a series of Supreme Court rulings that countered his policies and come shortly after he ended his reelection bid, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.Biden emphasized the principle that no one is above the law, including the president and Supreme Court justices. His reforms would require justices to disclose gifts, avoid political activities, and recuse themselves from cases with conflicts of interest. The proposals come after the Court adopted a non-binding code of conduct in response to undisclosed travel by Justice Clarence Thomas and other controversies.However, the reality is passing these reforms through a divided Congress is unlikely. The proposed constitutional amendment to limit presidential immunity would be particularly challenging, requiring broad legislative support and state ratifications.Joe Biden: My plan to reform the Supreme Court and ensure no president is above the law - The Washington PostBiden Calls for Strict New Limits on US Supreme Court JusticesBiden to propose Supreme Court term limits, binding code of conduct | ReutersThe U.S. Department of Justice has urged a federal appeals court to uphold a law mandating that China-based ByteDance sell TikTok's U.S. assets by January 19 or face a ban. The DOJ asserts that TikTok's Chinese ownership poses a significant national security risk, citing potential data access and covert content manipulation by the Chinese government. Despite TikTok's denials of sharing user data with China, the DOJ emphasized the threat's seriousness. The Biden administration seeks to dismiss lawsuits from TikTok, ByteDance, and TikTok creators opposing the law.The government highlighted extensive national security concerns, even though it admitted no evidence that China had accessed U.S. user data. TikTok criticized the government for not providing proof and acting on secret information. A classified document with further security concerns has also been submitted. ByteDance's source code, comprising 2 billion lines, is deemed too extensive for a thorough review.The law, signed by President Biden, aims to end Chinese ownership of TikTok on national security grounds without banning the app outright. The DOJ dismissed TikTok's First Amendment claims, noting other social media alternatives. TikTok's proposed $2 billion data protection plan was considered insufficient by the DOJ. The legal challenge's oral arguments are set for September 16, just weeks before the presidential election.Justice Dept. asks court to reject TikTok challenge to crackdown law | ReutersBritish drugmaker GSK has confidentially settled a lawsuit in Illinois claiming its discontinued heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer. Zantac, first approved in 1983 and once the world's best-selling medicine, faced scrutiny after the FDA requested its market withdrawal in 2020. The FDA's concerns centered on ranitidine, Zantac's active ingredient, potentially degrading into a carcinogen. GSK, along with Pfizer, Sanofi, and Boehringer Ingelheim, faces over 70,000 lawsuits in Delaware and numerous other claims.Despite the settlement, GSK did not admit liability and plans to defend itself in remaining cases. Following the settlement news, GSK's shares rose by 0.8%.GSK settles another heartburn drug lawsuit in Illinois | ReutersMaryland has enacted the Gift Card Scams Prevention Act of 2024, the nation's first law to protect against gift card fraud, specifically card draining. Card draining involves criminals stealing gift cards from stores, capturing their numeric codes, and then replacing them for unsuspecting customers to purchase. When loaded with money, these cards allow thieves to steal the balance online. This new law mandates secure packaging for most gift cards sold in stores to prevent tampering.The legislation faced significant industry opposition, with retailers and gift card manufacturers lobbying against it. Despite this, the law requires both open-loop (e.g., Visa, Mastercard) and closed-loop (e.g., Target, Applebee's) cards to have secure packaging that shows signs of tampering. The bill's passage marks a significant step in addressing the surge in gift card fraud that escalated during the pandemic.Maryland's law is expected to have a national impact, as companies typically prefer to use uniform packaging across all states. This could lead to widespread adoption of more secure packaging practices. The law goes into effect next June, giving companies a year to comply. The hope is that this measure will significantly reduce the incidence of gift card fraud, benefiting consumers nationwide.The Nation's First Law Protecting Against Gift Card Draining Has Passed. Will It Work? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Voyager one's four science instruments are now fully functioning allowing the probe to resume gathering information about interstellar space. NASA and Boeing are extending the Starliner capsule's stay on the International Space Station until at least June 22.  The U.S. Space Force has awarded Blue Origin, SpaceX and United Launch Alliance spots on a potential 10-year contract to provide launch services as part of the third phase of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, and more.  Our 2024 N2K CyberWire Audience Survey is underway, make your voice heard and get in the running for a $100 Amazon gift card. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our weekly intelligence roundup, Signals and Space, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. T-Minus Guest Our guest today is Bailey Reichelt, founding partner at Aegis Law and board member at the Association of Commercial Space Professionals (ACSP).  You can connect with Bailey on LinkedIn, and learn more about Aegis and ACSP on their websites. Selected Reading Voyager 1 Returning Science Data From All Four Instruments Boeing Starliner undocking, return to Earth set for June 22, NASA says NASA Announces New System to Aid Disaster Response Blue Origin, SpaceX, ULA Win Positions on $5.6B IDIQ for USSF National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 - GovCon Wire New CISA report addresses zero trust in space, boosting security for satellites and ground infrastructure - Industrial Cyber Historic Approach to Space Debris: Astroscale's ADRAS-J Closes in by 50 Meters NATO Space Operations Commanders' Conference Future Security and Warfare Space Florida, Business and Aerospace Entities to Congress: Support the Secure U.S. Leadership in Space Act to Boost Investment in American Spaceports Starship-Super Heavy launches on the Space Coast: Some residents submit environmental concerns Redwire Hires Distinguished Aerospace Executive and Corporate Attorney Aaron Futch as General Counsel- Business Wire Aerojet Rocketdyne Delivers 1,000th THAAD Solid Rocket Boost Motor and Divert and Attitude Control System Ahead of Schedule- Business Wire Dr. Kalpana Chawla Scholarship Project Sends Iconic Image to the Moon T-Minus Crew Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our 4 question survey. It'll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Show Notes:0:00 M.C. Sungaila discussing history / preservation of space exploration 1:50 Sungaila's Portia Project Podcast interview with Space Law Expert Michelle Hanlon 2:45 Sungaila's experience with University of Mississippi School of Law's Air and Space Program 5:30 unclear language related to space law8:00 mining on the moon9:40 lessons from Holocaust-era restitution cases like Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation12:30 For All Moonkind 13:30 International Symposium on Cultural Heritage in War and Peace: Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage through Past, Present and Future 16:45 Sungaila's proposed framework to create space cultural heritage commission22:45 The Artemis Accords24:50 Italian Opera added to UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list25:15 treaty requiring registration of space objects 25:35 For All Moonkind's moon registry 26:10 One Small Step To Protect Human Heritage in Space Act 27:40 Sungaila's projection 29:30 Dubai space court31:25 urgency of space cultural heritage preservation32:40 definition of justice 35:40 9th Cir's 9 Jan 2024 opinion in Cassirer and the question of ethics and law39:45 Mismatch between domestic law and international obligations 42:10 Institute on Space Law and Ethics 44:00 issues related to satellites, drones, air taxisPlease share your comments and/or questions at stephanie@warfareofartandlaw.comTo hear more episodes, please visit Warfare of Art and Law podcast's website.Music by Toulme.To view rewards for supporting the podcast, please visit Warfare's Patreon page.To leave questions or comments about this or other episodes of the podcast and/or for information about joining the 2ND Saturday discussion on art, culture and justice, please message me at stephanie@warfareofartandlaw.com. Thanks so much for listening!© Stephanie Drawdy [2024]

From the very beginning, NASA was defined as a civilian agency that would share its many discoveries with the tax-paying public.

Town Square with Ernie Manouse airs at 3 p.m. CT. Tune in on 88.7FM, listen online or subscribe to the podcast. Join the discussion at 888-486-9677, questions@townsquaretalk.org or @townsquaretalk. On July 29, 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Today, in 2022, we celebrate more than six decades of space exploration and the successes of the nation's space program. With several new developments on the horizon for NASA, the James Webb Telescope is giving us new images and information from space, and it may have just unearthed the most distant galaxies ever seen.  Also, the Artemis 1 Space Program, a human spaceflight program to explore the moon, eventually sending the first astronauts to Mars, is set to launch next month. For those who don't understand space, our experts in this conversation will provide understanding of our place in the world and environment we live in, as we explore all of this and more on NASA's 64th birthday. Guests: Brian C. Odom, PhD, MLIS Acting NASA Chief Historian, NASA History Division Dr. David Law Associate Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute Katheryn Vazquez Docking Systems, Hatches and Mechanisms Subject Matter Expert for Gateway's “Deep Space Logistics” at Kennedy Space Center Town Square with Ernie Manouse is a gathering space for the community to come together and discuss the day's most important and pressing issues. We also offer a free podcast here, on iTunes, and other apps.

Welcome back to Moving Hardstyle Forward, the Hardstyle Report Podcast. It's almost time for Intents Festival 2022! Are you ready to reach that high score?! Enjoy our fresh new podcast featured with the latest bangers of the moment. Ready, set, go and play it loud!

The first space race, between the United States and the Soviet Union, was a geopolitical and ideological struggle between superpowers. Now five decades in the past, it pushed the limits of technology to extremes and realized some long-held dreams of humanity, like putting a human on the moon. But after the enormous gains of the 1950s and 60s, space exploration advanced more gradually. More countries developed space programs, but between 1961 and 2000, only the Soviet Union, the United States and China put humans into space. After the U.S.'s Apollo program came to an end, humans never returned to the moon, and ambitious plans to expand human exploration to other planets were shelved. And with the end of NASA's Space Shuttle program, the U.S. seemed to become disinterested in the final frontier, even contracting human launches out to Russia. Over the past decade, something changed. In 2004, U.S. Congress required NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration to legalize private spaceflight. Then, in 2015, it passed the Spurring Private Aerospace Competitive and Entrepreneurship Act, better known as the SPACE Act, which expanded the rights to explore and exploit space to private citizens in the U.S.  During that same time, an internet entrepreneur named Elon Musk founded the aerospace company SpaceX with the goal of developing cheaper and more reliable access to space and, ultimately, to build a colony on Mars. Today, SpaceX has developed and launched its partially reusable rocket, Falcon 9, more than 150 times. The company is on the cusp of introducing a fully reusable launch system, Starship, with a lift capacity of more than 100 tons to low-Earth Orbit. SpaceX and other private companies have also developed vehicles that can put humans into space, as well as “mega-constellations” of satellites that promise to provide high quality and affordable internet access independent of terrestrial infrastructure. At the same time, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has brought an end to decades of cooperation between Washington and Moscow in space, putting even the future of the International Space Station into question. Meanwhile, China is aggressively pushing its space program, as are India and other nations. Arguably, the world is already in the age of a new Space Race. And this time, it is multipolar, with everyone from superpowers to startups participating.  Joining Trend Lines to discuss all this and more is Eric Berger, a senior space editor at Ars Technica and author of “Liftoff,” a book on the rise of SpaceX. Relevant articles on World Politics Review: As New Space Powers Emerge, NASA More Unreliable as Partner  Colonizing Space Is Not the Solution to Our Problems on Earth  Small States Can Play a Big Role in Space  The U.S. Space Program Is Back, but It Can't Go It Alone  China's Space Ambitions Have Washington on Edge    Trend Lines is produced and edited by Peter Dörrie, a freelance journalist and analyst focusing on security and resource politics in Africa. You can follow him on Twitter at @peterdoerrie.   To send feedback or questions, email us at podcast@worldpoliticsreview.com

On November 19, 2021, the Hudson Mohawk Magazine Network Roaming Labor Correspondent Willie Terry attended "CodePink Congress Calling Party and Zoom Discussion." The topic of the discussion was Abolish The Space Force. In this labor segment, you will hear comments from Congresswoman Maxine Waters on the bill, H.R 5335, "No Militarization of Space Act."

“How can you change the world if no one knows you exist?” – Izzy House    When it comes to marketing, Izzy knows a thing or two. And when it comes to marketing for space, Izzy House wrote the book on it- literally! Her new book, Space Marketing aims to empower companies within the space industry promote space, generate excitement, and implement marketing strategies and tactics to help companies thrive. The space business model is changing, and the companies that are successful right now do ONE THING CONSISTENTLY. On this week's episode, Izzy shares with Beth one of the simplest marketing strategies that works, yet so many companies just don't do…      Here's more about the book Space Marketing:  https://izzy.house/space-marketing-book/ From Izzy's website: Since the 2015 SPACE Act opened the doors for commercial companies, the space sector has exploded with activity. There are thousands of new players. As of 2018 data, over 72 countries have launched new governmental space agencies. As a result, unprecedented competition levels grow as countries ramp up their programs and the cost for entry into the industry reduces. Subsequently, Many of the space industry professionals have not had to maneuver in these waters before now. NASA's not the only game in town anymore. ESA, India, Israel, China, United Arab Emirates, and many other countries are going into space. Therefore, it is going to get even more competitive as these counties pour funds into their space programs and their country's businesses as they reach for a piece of this powerful industry. Marketing will become a necessity if you want to run in the space race. About Izzy: Izzy House utilizes creativity and her extensive marketing experience to help her business partners grow. The marketing strategies that she creates are attractive, produce results, and create income streams that have benefited 600+companies for over 20 years. From websites to print to video, her award-winning campaigns connect companies to their audience. With an extensive marketing background, she turns the lens of marketing onto the space industry. Armed with experience in public affairs, outreach, and marketing, she aims to empower space companies and further their dreams of space exploration.  https://www.ilsehouse.com/

Space law is the body of law governing space-related activities, encompassing both international and domestic agreements, rules, and principles. Parameters of space law include space exploration, liability for damage, weapons use, rescue efforts, environmental preservation, information sharing, new technologies, and ethics. Other fields of law, such as administrative law, intellectual property law, arms control law, insurance law, environmental law, criminal law, and commercial law, are also integrated within space law. The origins of space law date back to 1919, with international law recognizing each country's sovereignty over the airspace directly above their territory, later reinforced at the Chicago Convention in 1944. The onset of domestic space programs during the Cold War propelled the official creation of international space policy (for example, the International Geophysical Year) initiated by the International Council of Scientific Unions. The Soviet Union's 1957 launch of the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, directly spurred the United States Congress to pass the Space Act, thus creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Because space exploration required crossing transnational boundaries, it was during this era where space law became a field independent from traditional aerospace law. International principles and declarations. The five treaties and agreements of international space law cover "non-appropriation of outer space by any one country, arms control, the freedom of exploration, liability for damage caused by space objects, the safety and rescue of spacecraft and astronauts, the prevention of harmful interference with space activities and the environment, the notification and registration of space activities, scientific investigation and the exploitation of natural resources in outer space and the settlement of disputes". The United Nations General Assembly adopted five declarations and legal principles which encourage exercising the international laws, as well as unified communication between countries. The five declarations and principles are: The Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Uses of Outer Space (1963). All space exploration will be done with good intentions and is equally open to all States that comply with international law. No one nation may claim ownership of outer space or any celestial body. Activities carried out in space must abide by the international law and the nations undergoing these said activities must accept responsibility for the governmental or non-governmental agency involved. Objects launched into space are subject to their nation of belonging, including people. Objects, parts, and components discovered outside the jurisdiction of a nation will be returned upon identification. If a nation launches an object into space, they are responsible for any damages that occur internationally. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/law-school/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/law-school/support

Welcome to another episode of Action and Ambition. Today’s guest is Tim Chrisman, Executive Director at Foundation For the Future, author of the book Humanity in Space, and a former Army special operations officer. With passaging the SPACE Act of 2021, Foundation for The Future is focused on the creation of a secure, sustainable, and efficient gateway to outer space in collaboration with the US Space Port Authority. The organization holds monthly virtual events that bring together industry leaders from both the public and private sectors. Tim holds two master’s degrees in Intelligence Studies, and one in International Relations and Affairs. Join us in this episode and learn more about Tim’s mission and story!

In 1958, in the wake of the Soviet Union launching Sputnik 1 – the world’s first artificial satellite – into space, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, was born. And the space race was underway.In the following decades, the world would see the first man in space, the first spacewalk, and astronauts landing on the surface of the moon. Across eight different programs, the United States would fly 239 space missions, with 135 of those representing the space shuttle program.On August 31, 2011, the United States’ shuttle program was officially ended, and the United States government was out of the business of space exploration and travel.Today, private companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin are leading the way into the final frontier. Elon Musk has announced his plan is to have 1 million people living in a colony on Mars by the year 2050. As a new space race to settle on Mars and, perhaps, beyond takes flight, significant ethical questions remain unclear and unanswered. Today, we talk with Joel Sercel, an entrepreneur and space technologist, who argues that we need to start building international consensus on questions surrounding bioethics, property rights, laws governing space travel and space settlements, and stewardship of God’s creation outside of the Earth’s atmosphere.Subscribe to Acton Institute Events podcastTransAstra CorpWould Kuyper go to Mars? - Dylan PahmanThe frontier spirit of ‘The Martian’ - Dylan PahmanThe stewardship of space - Jordan BallorThe new space capitalists - Jordan BallorThe cultural mandate and the final frontier - Dylan Pahman See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

À l’initiative des États-Unis, huit pays viennent de signer l’accord d’Artemis, du nom de la prochaine expédition américaine sur la Lune, prévue en 2023. Ce nouveau texte juridique autorise l’exploitation et la possession privée des ressources de l’espace. À l’image du Homestead Act qui avait lancé la conquête de l’Ouest américain au XIXe siècle, l’accord d’Artemis ouvre la voie à la conquête des ressources de l’espace. L’initiative vient de la Nasa. L’agence spatiale américaine prépare une expédition vers la Lune pour y installer une base pérenne, étape avant le grand voyage vers Mars. Elle entend extraire et utiliser sur place les ressources naturelles dont elle aura besoin. Des métaux comme le fer et le titane ont été identifiés en plus grande quantité que prévu sur la Lune, et surtout de la glace, qui permettra de fournir l’eau, l’oxygène, l’hydrogène aux communautés humaines qui s’y installeront. Glace et métaux Mais à qui appartiennent ces matières premières ? Le traité sur l’espace de 1967 règle bien le problème de la propriété des planètes et des corps célestes : aucun État ne peut en revendiquer la souveraineté, mais il n’aborde pas la question de leurs ressources. Le traité de 1979 exige lui une répartition équitable des ressources entre tous les États, avec une attention spéciale pour les pays en développement, mais il n’a été signé par aucune puissance spatiale. C’est ce qui a permis à des sociétés privées américaines de s’engouffrer dans la brèche. Dès 2015, Planetary Ressources expose publiquement ses ambitions sur les matières premières de l’espace. Le président américain de l’époque, Barack Obama, leur donne même une caution légale avec le Space Act, qui les autorise à extraire, posséder, transporter, utiliser et vendre des ressources spatiales. Les États-Unis proposent des zones de sécurité Aujourd’hui, l’administration Trump va plus loin avec un texte proposé aux autres États, qui autorise la création de « zone de sécurité » pour protéger les activités des pays et des compagnes privées sur un corps céleste. Aucune grande nation spatiale n’a signé, ni la Chine, ni la France, ni la Russie. Moscou juge qu’Artemis est une initiative trop américano-centrée. Mais sept États ont déjà paraphé le document : l’Australie, le Canada, l’Italie, le Japon, le Luxembourg, les Émirats arabes unis et le Royaume-Uni. Parmi eux, certains ont déjà montré leur intérêt pour l’exploitation privée des ressources spatiales.

On this day in 1958, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Learn about the dreams of Carl Sagan to make understanding space science accessible to everyday Americans. Today is July 29, 2020. This is the Librarian's Almanac. Feel free to check out more from the Librarian's Almanac on their website: http://www.librariansalmanac.com/ I'd also love to hear from you directly. Feel free to send me an email at librarians.almanac@gmail.com

When President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act in 1958, Charles "Pete" Conrad '53 was training as a U.S. Navy test pilot. Eleven years later, he’d become the third person to walk on the moon. Nov. 19 marks the 50th anniversary of Conrad’s moonwalk, part of the Apollo 12 mission, and to mark the occasion, PAWcast spoke with Jordan Bimm, a historian of science and postdoc in Princeton’s sociology department.

Saturday, October 5th is the 132nd birth anniversary of rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard. His was the first liquid-fueled rocket to prove the concept that allowed for the exploration of space as we know it today. He launched the first liquid-fueled rocket in March 1926. The maximum altitude he achieved was 1.7 miles. His technology eventually was adopted in America soon after his death in 1945. October 5th is also the 61st anniversary of the founding of NASA. It was originally established as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and had 8000 employees and three laboratories. President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act in August 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik on October 4th, 1957. Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on October 1st, 1958. Along with our seasonal weather change comes the now obvious changes in sun time. We’re down to 11 hours 36 minutes of sun above the horizon vs 15 hours on June 21. We’ll still lose another 2 hours and 15 minutes between now and December 21 with Halloween as the halfway point to Winter Solstice. This is a great time for stargazers because they can start early enough and be warm enough to see three seasons of constellations from sunset to sunrise. Jupiter and Saturn are still the showpiece items of the evening sky. On Sunday night at 8 p.m., 60 degrees up in the NorthEast, the International Space Station will be visible.

On this episode, we talk about the American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act, along with its ramifications to the Outer Space Treaty. Sources: HR. 2809 The Week Article Outer Space Treaty Moon Express SPACE Act of 2015 Paper on Outer Space Treaty Republic Policy Committee Kevin McCarthy House Speech Music: (in chronological order) Pacific Hike -- Silent Partner Bumblebee -- Quincas Moreira Night Vision -- Bird Creek

Legally Insane – Episode 31 Matt and Tony start off the show with a friendly argument regarding who knows more about the law. After all, these days a quick Google search can reveal quite a lot. In other news the guys have a live show coming up May 3rd at The Hollywood Improv. There will be a live podcast recording and a ton of great stand up comics. Stay tuned for this week’s episode on the legalities of laying claim to outer space. Highlights: [07:20] – In 2015 The SPACE Act was passed to allow US citizens to explore the moon and exploit planets. [09:00] – Space is free for exploration but nobody can claim sovereignty over it. [11:17] – In 1936 Dean Lindsay went to the Pittsburgh Notary office and tried to lay claim to everything in space, naming it Lindsay’s Archipelago. [11:47] – James Thomas Mangan founded the nation of Celestial Space, he tried to lay claim to the planets and stars. [20:20] – Alexander The Great and King Frederick and their space wishes. [23:02] – Jergens soap or lotion? Hollywood Improv Ticket Link: https://www.ticketweb.com/event/legally-insane-with-nick-thune-hollywood-improv-the-lab-tickets/8216265?pl=hollyimprov&REFID=hollywoodimprov&_ga=2.136525936.1919426937.1522706538-541958136.1519503963 Twitter: @mattritter1 @toekneesam Website: www.cascademedia.com

  While the History Fangirl Podcast has typically gone around the world to find the most fascinating stories, today we're taking our eyes off the Earth and casting our gaze starward. Today's guest is Valerie Stimac, an accomplished travel writer in her own right, who has started a unique site at spacetravelguide.com. While she isn't quite making recommendations for the burgeoning field of travel into space, Valerie does specialize in covering travel destinations that are of interest to space geeks around the world. In this week's episode we talk about the history of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, how Houston became such an important part of its mission, and what happened on the ground during the most dramatic moments in American space exploration. We have liftoff Valerie provides the Cliffs Notes version of NASA history in this week's episode of the History Fangirl Podcast, starting with its founding in 1958, following President Dwight D. Eisenhower's signing of the National Aeronautics and Space Act. NASA started with a budget of about $100 million and three large facilities and two small research facilities. But in 1963, it was clear those facilities would not be able to handle all of the development that needed to happen (Langley Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia you may remember from the movie Hidden Figures), which led to the establishment of what was eventually called Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Houston, we have a space center When the U.S. federal government was looking for a city where they could build a mission-critical space center, it wasn't too unlike the way corporations now search for their headquarters. They had various cities wooing them, and NASA factored in several different facets when conducting their search: it had to be near a big city, it had to be near a large university with resources for research, etc. And it had to be away from other NASA centers around D.C. and Florida. We couldn't have all of our brain trust in one place for, well, safety reasons. Phoning home If you quote or paraphrase any astronaut (as I did above), you're likely quoting mission control in Houston, or something an astronaut said to them. “Houston, the eagle has landed,” “Houston, we have a problem”; those are quotes from two different Apollo missions. As Valerie tells me in this episode, with all manned spacecraft being operated from Houston, some of the most iconic moments in space have filtered through Johnson Space Center. Of course Johnson is much more than mission control, there are numerous buildings in the complex that includes engineering and simulation and more, all of which can be called upon to help solve problems in space. Mission control The Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas is an amazing place that for the last 60 years has launched some of the most incredible feats of human ingenuity, and helped those feats stay on track once they're out of our atmosphere. As Valerie tells me in this episode, you can actually visit the historic mission control center where NASA staffers on the ground kept Apollo astronauts in the heavens alive. But that's just the beginning of what you can see there. It's a truly rare historic site, and even if you don't think of Houston as a historic city, the space center is a must-see. Outline of This Episode [1:07] Why Valerie founded SpaceTourismGuide.com [5:39] Brief history of NASA [10:09] How Houston got a space center [16:03] Important historic events at Johnson [22:06] How Houston helped Apollo 13 [27:16] How it became a tourist attraction [28:48]] What to see at the space center Resources Mentioned Space Tourism Guide Space Tourism Guide Twitter Johnson Space Center Connect With Stephanie stephanie@historyfangirl.com https://historyfangirl.com Support Stephanie on Patreon   Featuring the song “Places Unseen” by Lee Rosevere. More info and photographs for this episode at: https://historyfangirl.com/space-tourism-in-houston-texas/

The black letter law discussed in this episode is: George Washington University Space Policy Institute https://spi.elliott.gwu.edu/ Center for Space Policy and Strategy http://www.aerospace.org/policy/ OECD Study Space 2030: Tackling Society’s Challenges https://www.keepeek.com//Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/economics/space-2030_9789264008342-en#page1 Dr. Hertzfeld’s TED talk “Who Owns The Moon” https://youtu.be/XU_jlTjL9dQ UN Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/copuos/index.html 1967 Outer Space Treaty http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/outerspacetreaty.html Agreement on Rescue and Return of Astronauts http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/rescueagreement.html Convention on Registration of Objects http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/registration-convention.html Convention on Liability http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/liability-convention.html Moon Agreement http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/moon-agreement.html SPACE Act of 2015 https://www.congress.gov/114/plaws/publ90/PLAW-114publ90.pdf SpaceX http://www.spacex.com/ Journal of Space Law http://www.spacelaw.olemiss.edu/jsl/ German Journal of Air and Space Law http://www.english.zlw.heymanns.com/journal/ UN Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) http://www.unoosa.org/ Dr. Hertzfeld is a professor at George Washington University https://elliott.gwu.edu/hertzfeld

Episode Links: Russian Soyuz, with 3-man crew, set for Friday trip to space station (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/three-man-soyuz-crew-set-for-friday-launch-to-space-station/) The Discovery of Eris (http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/) STS-51-F Mission Summary (https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-f/mission-51-f.html) 9 Weird Things That Flew on NASA's Space Shuttles (https://www.space.com/12128-9-weird-nasa-space-shuttle-cargo-mementos-countdown.html) National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 (https://history.nasa.gov/spaceact.html) President Eisenhower Presents NASA Commissions (https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1139.html) Why We Explore- The Birth of NASA (https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/whyweexplore/Why_We_29.html)

The Space Act helps many American companies bring new products to market with technology transferred from NASA.

On this episode of Mars Ascend is Air and Space Law Instructor Andrea Harrington of the University of Mississippi School of Law.  Andrea is also a lawyer and instructor at the International Space University and the Executive Editor of the Journal of Space Law. She is a doctoral candidate in the field of Air and Space Law. In this Part 2 of a 2 Part series we discuss the national U. S . Space Act signed into law in 2015 and it’s relationship to the international Outer Space Treaty. The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space or COPUOS oversees the Outer Space Treaty.

What follows is an edited transcript of my interview with Alex Salter about the economics of space. The first half deals primarily with the issue of space debris, while the second half deals with the possibility of private governance in space. There's something in this episode for everyone to enjoy, so I hope you'll listen, read, and share it with your friends. Petersen: My guest today is Alex Salter of Texas Tech University. Alex, welcome to Economics Detective Radio. Salter: Thanks very much for having me. Petersen: Our topic today is the economics of space. Alex has written two papers on the subject. The first is entitled, "Space Debris: A Law and Economics Analysis of the Orbital Commons." The second is, "Ordering the Cosmos: Private Law and Celestial Property Rights." So Alex, let's start by talking about space debris. What is it and why does it matter? Salter: So space debris is basically junk in space that no longer serves any useful purpose. So as you can imagine, since the first piece of space debris launched up in 1957---which was the rocket body from Sputnik I---a lot of orbits around the Earth, especially low Earth orbit, have become kind of cluttered with space junk. And the reason it gets cluttered is because no one has an incentive to clean it up. It's a problem because a lot of this stuff is big enough and moving fast enough that if it strikes something like a communications satellite, it can take it out. So the probability of a collision right now that will cause serious damage is currently low, but there are a lot of worries among scientists who study the problem that as debris occasionally collides with more debris, you get a sort of snowballing effect of the clutter. So if we're going to get a handle on it, it needs to be earlier rather than later. Petersen: I think intuitively it seems like the sky is so big and satellites are so small that we'd never have to worry about collisions. So why is that not the case? Salter: So there's obviously quite a bit of room up there, but the problem is that some orbits are more valuable than others. In particular, geosynchronous orbit, which is I think 36 thousand kilometers above the Earth, is a really valuable place for specific satellites. And also low Earth orbit is a valuable place for specific satellites. Now, there's still a lot of room there, but it's significantly restricted. If my communications satellite is taking up a particular orbit, your satellite can't be in the same place. So there's only so much of it to go around, and again, what we're really worried about is debris colliding with something, which creates more debris, which can collide with more stuff. We're really worried that snowball effect, which is sometimes called the Kessler syndrome after the scientist who first wrote about it. Petersen: So the odds of a single collision might be low, but given one collision, it becomes much more likely that we'll have two and three and four---a chain reaction of collisions. Salter: Exactly. So right now the probability of collision is pretty low over the life of a satellite, for example in low Earth orbit, it's no more than one in a thousand. But conditional on getting hit, that can cause a pretty serious business disruption and economic losses, and as you said, given that one increases the likelihood of all future collisions, it's kind of like a positive feedback loop. So that can get pretty nasty pretty quick. Petersen: Have there been any collisions in the past? Salter: There have been many collisions in the past. I think the most notable one was actually intentional. In 2007, China performed an anti-satellite test, where it purposefully took out one of its old satellites that was no longer useful. And it created, I think, about a hundred and fifty thousand new pieces of space debris with that one anti-satellite test. So I'm not aware of any instances of grave, private sector disruptions caused by space debris collisions, but honestly unless there's some means of cleaning this stuff up or it de-orbits on its own, it really is only a matter of time. Petersen: So, you make a distinction in the paper between access to orbit and particular orbits. Can you explain what those are? Salter: Right. So access to orbit is basically getting your payload up into space. If you have a communications satellite, it's getting it to the orbit you want. And economically that has the characteristics of a public good. The standard definition of a public good in economics is anything that we like which is not rivalrous in consumption and non-excludable. So if I consume one more unit of it, that doesn't stop you from consuming more. And also non-excludable, the second part, means it's costly or very difficult for me to stop other people from enjoying that. So both of those characteristics fit getting a satellite into your desired orbit---going through space to get to where you want to go. Once your satellite is in position though, a particular orbit has the properties of what we call a common-pool resource. It's rivalrous---if I have it you can't also have it---but it's also non-excludable. I can't really stop you from using it. As orthodox public finance theory will tell you, sometimes the provision of those goods, public goods and common-pool resources, are difficult because if they're non-excludable you can't stop people from enjoying the benefits and so that limits the incentive for producers to make the stuff in the first place. Petersen: Right, so in order to prevent someone from launching a satellite into your orbit, you'd have to somehow police every potential launch site on the globe, which of course we can't do. And that's what makes it [non-excludable]. Salter: It's incredibly expensive and therefore not really feasible. Petersen: Right, so from reading your paper I know other researchers have looked at this problem and they suggested taxing people who create space debris. So do you want to comment on that suggestion, and maybe what are the pros and cons of taking that approach? Salter: Sure. Let me first start by saying that the case for a corrective tax here stems from the fact that we have a common-pool resources problem, or a public goods problem. Nobody owns orbit, and so nobody really has an incentive to worry about how clean it is. If I'm launching a communications satellite, I don't really worry that I'm also imposing a cost on other potential launchers with my useless rocket body. So if everyone thinks that way, then the debris problem becomes unmanageable. So there is a textbook rationale for some correction to what we call this external cost in economics. Because nobody owns orbit or access to orbit, nobody has an incentive to care for it or clean it up. At least not as much as we would like. So the argument for a corrective tax is basically, we want to bring the private costs of polluting space more in line with the social costs of polluting space. So if you tax a polluter, someone who's contributing to space debris, you raise the expensiveness of creating debris. And as economic theory will tell you, when something gets more expensive, all else being equal, people will do less of it. That's the theoretical argument for what's called a Pigouvian or corrective tax. The problem here---and this is not specific to space debris, this is specific to all taxes correcting external cost problems---is that you don't really know how big to make the tax in order to get to the efficient amount of pollution mitigation. And even if you did, you have to take political economy considerations into concern. Corrective taxes are not run and operated by benevolent social planners. They're typically run and operated by bureaucracies, and bureaucrats have their own incentives to which they respond. And the incentives facing politicians and bureaucrats may not be the same as incentives for contributing to social efficiency or maximal wellbeing. Petersen: Right, so we might worry that the body that determines the tax on potentially space-junk-producing private actors might be less concerned with the externality and more concerned with their own revenue and so set the tax not at the social-welfare-maximizing point but at the revenue-maximizing point. Salter: Right, that's one potential worry with that sort of a solution. Again I want to emphasize, though, that's in the abstract. It's still very very difficult---in fact I would even say impossible---to know what the right size of the tax should be. I think that there is an inherent knowledge problem that sometimes gets overlooked at the expense of the incentive problem that you just talked about. Both are very important, and they're related, and they complement each other in terms of the critique, but they are distinct problems. And public policy has to be able to present credible solutions to both of those problems if we're going to argue that a corrective tax would improve social welfare. Petersen: Right, so you launch a satellite, maybe you leave a piece of large debris like a rocket body, but you also create a risk that the satellite will explode or be hit by something and create a snowball effect of more debris. It's really hard to compute the net cost because you not only need to know how likely is it to create more debris and how likely is that debris to impact something. You also need to know the value of the future satellites the debris might impact, which means forecasting the future of space and the future of the economy and all these things into the deep future. Have other researchers at least tried to tackle this problem? Are there some attempts? Salter: There have been some attempts, and as you noted, any estimate is going to be very imprecise because there's a lot of variables moving in the background. But you could look at scientific studies that estimate the damage to useful communications satellite or other valuable space equipment from a collision can range anywhere from 20 to 200 million. That's a reasonable interval for estimating the damages if you count not just the initial collision but also the potential snowballing which can destroy other things. And you can also look at what private companies are doing right now to get an appreciation of the magnitude of the problem. For example, if you're a communications satellite launcher you can buy insurance for your communications satellite. In 2011, market premiums for these kinds of space risks totalled about 800 million dollars. And also in 2011 there were about 600 million in claimed damages. So private actors are spending a lot to insure themselves against risks such as these and that in combination with some of the scientific studies can help build your intuition for understanding that we're talking about a lot of money here: a stream of valuable services into the future which can be risked by space debris. Petersen: So we do have a ballpark estimate, but nothing so precise that we could set an optimal Pigouvian tax even if we had a government that was benevolent enough to try to reach that optimum. So in your paper you suggest alternatives to the Pigouvian route. In particular you suggest potential private solutions. So what private solutions are there to reduce the creation of space debris? Salter: That's a really interesting question because the standard response that economists would give to externality problems seems impractical here. Usually when you have an externality problem, a public goods problem, the solution is to create property rights. Property rights align incentives so if we create property rights to a common pool resource, that will cause people to take better account of the effects of their behaviour on others. But how do you really create a property right to something like an orbit? Is it a specific volume of space? How big is it? Under what conditions can somebody else move through it when your satellite is not in that orbit? I think in this case we have to take seriously the idea that creating property rights to orbit and to access to orbit is simply too costly. It's not feasible given the costs and benefits of the situation. I think the most promising way forward in this particular issue is using market mechanisms to mitigate the problem. So in order to talk about market mechanisms I need to do a little background on international law. There's this treaty, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which basically says among other things that nations retain jurisdiction over the stuff they put in space. Now that's important because if debris is big enough to be tracked, we can tell more or less who made it. So if you have, for example, a piece of Chinese space debris, it's technically contrary to international law for a US organization to go up there and do anything without the Chinese' permission. So if the US wants to do something it has to take care of its own space debris. If the Chinese want to do something, they have to take care of their space debris. Given that constraint, I think one potential is for the US government to auction off contracts to go and mitigate this stuff. Another potential is instead of auctioning off contracts to go remove it, auctioning off a contract to debris itself. One thing that's not often realized about space debris is that a lot of that stuff is valuable metal, material, that's already in orbit. The most costly part of space commerce is actually getting stuff out of Earth's gravity. So if you have debris that's currently up there that can be re-used, perhaps at a later date for in-situ manufacturing and repairs, then that's a valuable asset. Firms should be willing to pay for that. So I think we need to look at market mechanisms within particular nations to address this problem until and unless we can get a more favourable framework in international law. Petersen: So something big like a rocket body has a lot of scrap metal that you don't have to burn fuel to get it there because it's already there. That's really interesting. So it could be a resource in itself. But then there's the issue of much smaller debris, something that isn't a resource in itself. A paint chip or a little fragment of debris that is not useful and is more of just a pure hazard. How would you deal with that? Salter: That's extremely difficult. I'm not sure that there is a good solution to that right now. My guess is there has to be a technological solution in the sense of just developing thicker plating for spacecraft. Because a lot of that stuff is so small that it can't be tracked, but it's still big enough that if it hits you, you're going to be in trouble. I think that the only way to really be safe against something like that is just to wait for material to get more robust. And that's obviously not going to solve the problem but it's going to mitigate it. Petersen: It's too bad. In science fiction they would just say "raise shields" and it would be dealt with, but I guess we can't do that. Salter: That's another imaginative technological innovation and maybe something like that will be feasible some day. There's an actual technological literature on this, of people thinking up contraptions and devices for going out and removing specifically that kind of debris, but none of them are economically feasible and I think most of them aren't even technologically feasible at this point. We just can't even make the stuff apart from economic considerations. Petersen: So there's a future in building technology to deflect or remove tiny bits of debris from Earth orbit. I don't know if you saw the move Wall-E? It was a Pixar film. Salter: Yeah. Petersen: Yeah, humanity had to leave Earth because it was too full of garbage, and there's the scene where not only is Earth covered in garbage but its orbit is full of old satellites. Salter: Right. Petersen: The ship is just sort of pushing its way through comically. But in real life, it could really happen, but it wouldn't be so easy to just push through it. It would be flying so fast and hit you with such force that it would likely cause serious damage unless you could defend against it somehow. Salter: Right, this stuff is moving fast. In low Earth orbit it's going about seven to eight kilometers per second. And there's about 300 thousand pieces of debris that we know about that can destroy a satellite upon impact. So obviously, even if it's small, the fact that it's moving so fast can cause you some serious problems. If we get to the point where we develop strong enough technological---not like energy shielding---but the strength of metal and the strength of materials to push through that, we're a ways off from that. I don't even think that's on the horizon. Petersen: And of course there's the issue that if it makes the satellite heavier, then it becomes much more costly to launch it. So there's the issue of being able to make something strong enough to withstand an impact while light enough to be able to actually launch it in the first place. Salter: Right. As always there are tradeoffs, which is precisely why economics has a valuable perspective to offer on this problem. Petersen: So let's move on to your other paper which deals with property rights in space. It starts with a discussion of the 2015 SPACE Act, signed into law by President Obama. What can you tell me about that act? Salter: So the SPACE Act is largely intended to guarantee that the US government will do something to protect commercial entities' property rights to celestial resources. Celestial property rights, basically. There's no specific commitment to what that protection will look like, it's more a statement of intent to encourage private sector development and exploration of space by the US government saying, "Look, we know this lack of property rights thing is a problem. We just wanted to let you know that in the event of a dispute, we are going to protect your property rights as governments are supposed to do. The problem with that is that we get into some pretty thorny issues with international law. Again, talking about the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which was signed by all of the current spacefaring nations, Article II of that treaty states that nation states cannot extend their territorial jurisdiction into outer space. And a lot of legal scholars think if a government is protecting private property rights, it's de facto extended its territorial jurisdiction over those rights. So if deep space industries or planetary resources, asteroid mining companies, eventually go out and claim an asteroid, and Uncle Sam says, "Yep, we'll recognize and defend your claim to that asteroid," many legal scholars say that's a de facto extension of territorial sovereignty to that asteroid, which Article II of the space treaty explicitly forbids. So we're in a bit of a sticky situation international-law wise. At best the legal framework is unclear and at worst the 2015 SPACE Act contains provisions that are not compatible with existing international law. Petersen: It seems like the 1967 treaty was a little bit short sighted in blocking people from owning parts of space. I guess it was during the Cold War and you can see why the Americans would not want to Soviets claiming the moon or vice versa. So recently, Elon Musk unveiled a plan to send colonists to Mars some time during this century. And if you literally have a colony there on Mars you're going to need property rights. And to have a treaty that might be a hundred or more years old at that point blocking that, it seems like a hurdle that we'll need to clear. People could potentially just ignore the treaty once they're on Mars. So, what kind of solutions do you see for this problem in the future? Salter: Well I think that international law on this should be expanded and clarified on this just for clarity's sake. I don't think we need to rely on publically protected and enforced property rights to get things like space commerce or Mars colonies or all that cool science fiction stuff that actually now doesn't seem so infeasible. If you look throughout history, there are many, many examples of legal systems that are purely private and voluntary. And they are purely voluntary because the property claims underlying that legal system are self enforcing. We don't need to rely on the state, a monopoly enforcer of social rules. We don't need to rely on the state to enforce our property rights. Given the situation we find ourselves in, I will respect your property rights because it's in my self-interest to do so and you will respect my property rights because it's in your self-interest to do so. And it seems like that's incredible. If there's no monopoly enforcer protecting things, how can we have a viable legal order? But again if we look throughout history we see lots and lots of examples of these private legal regimes. In fact, one of them exists today. International trade law is almost entirely privately produced. International trade is almost entirely privately governed. And it's not hard to see why: there's no international super sovereign that can enforce property rights over disputes if Al is from one country and Bob is from another country. And so given that problem, traders going all the way back to the middle ages had to come up with a body of voluntary and self-enforcing law if they wanted to exchange across political boundaries. And it turns out that this law has worked out very, very well. The basics haven't changed in pretty much a thousand years and while it's being applied in newer and more interesting ways, the foundation is solid. And I think that the situation in which international traders find themselves in today---"international anarchy" because again there is no international super sovereign---closely matches the situation that commercial entities would find themselves in in doing space commerce. So I think that there's a lot of potential for existing international and commercial trade law to provide a governance framework for outer-space commerce going forward. Petersen: Yeah, there's a quote from your paper I wanted to read, that deals with these international frameworks going back to the middle ages. It says: Following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, the volume of international trade shrank considerably. The legal infrastructure provided by the Empire no longer stood, and the transition away from this order caused significant commercial disruption. By the ninth and tenth centuries, trade was recovering. Across Europe, a professional merchant class emerged and developed mechanisms to resolve disputes over property rights and contract enforcement, even when subjects were from different polities and thus no national court had jurisdiction. So can you explain more about how that system developed, and how something that we developed here on Earth a millennium ago, how can that apply to space? They would seem to be very different settings. Salter: So they're different settings geographically, but I think the economic and legal problem is the same: facilitating coordination and cooperation among disparate entities when there is no possibility of turning to something like a state to serve as an overarching referee and arbiter. And so the medieval law merchant, called the Lex Mercatoria, was basically a self-enforcing system of property law and the legal rules that went along with it. And what's interesting about that is that when we think of law we normally think of a body of rules and then we talk about applying those rules in specific circumstances. This most closely works the other way. Law is created whenever international traders enter a contract. And provided that commercial instrument became widespread and actually helped traders achieve their goals---and was mutually beneficial of course---then arbitration courts overseeing merchant disputes would come to see that sort of contractual arrangement as valid. And so the arbitrator is less making law than recognizing law---a body of rules for coordinating behaviour---that actually exists. So if I'm a trader form some country in medieval Europe and I'm trading with another guy in another country, obviously I can't turn to my king to enforce my property rights because he doesn't have jurisdiction over your country. You can't turn to your king to enforce jurisdiction. In some situations maybe Church court can act as a venue for arbitration and dispute resolution, but most of the time what they did was---if they had a dispute---they would find some neutral third-party merchant who was an expert in the area and say, "Look, we have this dispute. Here is this contract. I think I was supposed to do X, my trading partner disagrees. He thought I was supposed to do Y. Can you help us sort this out?" The arbitrator, using his expertise, would look at it and come to a decision, and for the most part they were complied with voluntarily. Because if you went to commercial arbitration in the Lex Mercatoria system and then you ignored a ruling, you would become known as a defector, as a cheater, as someone who didn't act or uphold his or her word. And international trade was a relatively small and close-knit community and so that information would get around. You'd be branded as someone as not worthy of doing business with. And so you could cheat and get a payoff now, but you would risk that no one would trade with you in the future. So you'd be losing all future business, which is why most agreements, both for the medieval law merchant and the current law merchant---the current system of international commercial law---are actually complied with and adhered to voluntarily. Petersen: OK, so what kind of legal disputes do you see potentially arising in space? What sort of resources might people come to have conflicts over? Salter: Good question. I think the most obvious one, at least to me, is probably with asteroid mining companies. So if I go land on an asteroid and I want to mine it for valuable minerals, do I own the entire asteroid? Do I own just a portion of its surface? What happens if there's water underneath the asteroid and someone wants to go in and get the water while you're getting the minerals? How deep, literally geographically, down into the center of the asteroid do my property claims go? And water, once you're actually in space, is pretty valuable because it's used for making rocket fuel, essentially. And also, water is very heavy. As we discussed earlier, it's really expensive to get water into orbit. So if there's water already in space, in an asteroid, that's a valuable resource. People are going to want that. What happens if you want the minerals and I want the water? But me going to get the water creates a situation where you can't go and get the minerals. Maybe my mining operation is in the way of yours. Those are very real disputes that there are actually very real analogues of here on Earth that we're going to have to go and settle in space. Petersen: I'm reminded of, during the California gold rush they developed an elaborate set of rules for how large a claim an individual gold miner could mine. And how you would draw the lines between different people's claims, and they established de facto courts to deal with claim jumpers. So we're thinking that California during the gold rush might as well have been outer space, it was so far from the rest of civilization. And so we're more or less thinking that something like that would occur. Salter: Exactly. Economically, I think this situation is very closely analogous. Gold miners in California are outside of the reach of the formal US Government. They're in the metaphorical Hobbesian jungle, a state of nature with respect to each other. Orthodox theories of social cooperation says they shouldn't be able to cooperate and yet they clearly did, historically. The gold rush is a really interesting period of American history to study for that. There's also a book by scholars Anderson and Hill called The Not So Wild, Wild West. We have this impression from Hollywood that the American frontier was a violent and lawless place, when in fact most likely the opposite was true, because people knew that they didn't have access to formal dispute resolution mechanisms offered by the US Government they had to come up with their own. And they worked relatively well. And I think that's the situation we find ourselves in in space. There are governments "nearby" but given current international law they can't actually extend their jurisdiction into space and therefore mediate space-related disputes. Or at lease some disputes. And so we have to have space tourism companies coming to agreements with asteroid mining companies coming into agreements with communication satellite providers. There needs to be a body of voluntary and self-enforcing rules, and again I think that there are numerous historical examples you can point to that should lead us to be actually pretty optimistic about this. Private law is not just feasible but it is also desirable because it has some pretty nice consequences in terms of creating incentives for making and stewarding wealth. Petersen: So, the nice thing about private law, you sort of alluded to it earlier but Hayek makes this distinction between law and legislation, and the nice thing is it's adaptive. When you encounter new issues and new problems you set new precedents that can change and adapt with the circumstances. That's one major advantage of private law, right? Salter: It's important to recognize that that's not unique to private law. That also exists in the common law legal system that exists in the Anglo-American tradition. So the benefits of specifically private law---I think we're talking about private law here as opposed to some sort of common-law extension into space which again, Article II of the space treaty seems to say that's not OK. So given that, are these adaptive features of a purely private legal system good enough to facilitate social cooperation and basically get people to not fight with each other? And I think they are. It's sort of a bottom-up process for discovering rather than creating law. There are many rules that are probably equally feasible. It's a question of finding the rules that best give individuals incentives to act in a socially responsible way. And we also want those rules to provide for orderly, quick, and low-cost dispute resolution. People are going to disagree; it's inevitable. What we want is for a legal system that is sufficiently adaptable so it can tend to specific circumstances, but also sufficiently general that individuals can form reliable expectations of their trading partners' behaviour. And as Hayek pointed out, private law is one kind of law that has that dual feature that we like so much: adaptability yet at the same time predictability. So it's not the case that only private law can have that. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that private law can have that, and given current international law, that's the only ball game in town. Petersen: So, when you said about clarifying the rules, do you feel that if the governments of the world were to say right now that, "disputes in outer space are not our jurisdiction, you're on your own," and codify that and maybe have another treaty, do you think that would hasten the development of these private mechanisms? strong>Salter: I think it would. The private mechanisms are only going to arise as needed in a private law system. When there's no actual dispute and no actual thing being tested, there doesn't need to be a rule for overcoming one party's disputes or claims against the other. So I personally actually not only think that private law is desirable in space just because of current international law. I would actually like to see space kept "safe" for private law. Because it has all these nice, socially beneficial properties in terms of aligning people's incentives and giving them the information they need to do good things. And if you look at the most likely counterpart---imagine international law were amended---what's likely to happen is there would be some international governance body, a regulatory body that's given authority over space activities. And once we embrace that sort of bureaucratic regulatory solution, that comes with all sorts of political economy and public choice problems. How do the regulators get the information necessary to make good rules? What are the incentives to make good rules? I think that several schools of economics and legal thought have shown that in this case embracing a top-down regulatory solution would actually be pretty dangerous. So I would like to see international law clarified, but I would also like to see private law prevail in space. Petersen: Right, and if we're talking about particularly humans in space, as in the case of a Mars colony, it would seem to be undesirable to bring our baggage and our governance here to a place as distant as Mars. The people there are likely to face all sorts of their own problems. And if there was part of Mars that was governed by, say, the US Government you would almost face the same problems the Thirteen Colonies had being governed by the British. You have this vast gulf between the people who are doing the governing and the people who are being governed. So could a Mars colony function on private law? Salter: Wow, that's a fascinating question and one that I didn't tackle in the paper. That's actually a little beyond my expertise in this area. I don't see any reason why it couldn't, simply because I don't see the economic and legal problems that potential Martian colonists would face are any different than people on the international law merchant scenario would face. Or individuals in medieval Iceland---who had their own body of voluntary and private law---face. I think the best analogy for these sorts of situations is the economic literature for what is sometimes called "analytic anarchy." And people are sometimes scared of it because the word "anarchy" is in there. But all anarchy means in this context is we don't have recourse to a nation state to solve our disputes for us. So if we're going to get governance, we're going to have to find a way to do it ourselves. It has to be voluntary, it has to be agreeable to all parties, and it has to do a good job at facilitating social cooperation. So how do people actually do that when they don't have access to the nation state? Which is again pretty new in human history. So if you're looking at any time prior to 1648, there's got to be some way of generating order. And if you look at history I think you have a lot of examples of proprietary communities and voluntary communities which can be models for a Martian colony. So to make a long point short, I don't see any evidence that a Martian colony cannot be purely privately governed. And I don't think we have any reasons to think so because the problems they're going to face have been faced historically and overcome by people in various times and places. Petersen: Do you have any closing thoughts about the future of space and the role of economics in helping us achieve our goals there? Salter: I think that economics is going to be particularly useful in helping us highlight exactly which potential problems are worth caring about and, of those problems, which ones deserve or merit public policy responses. So, for example, I don't think there's any reason to be afraid of creating a private law governing space. I'm actually encouraged by that prospect. But that doesn't mean that domestic agencies, especially national agencies, don't have a role in making space a formidable and habitable environment. We just spent the first half an hour talking about space debris, right? And there's lots of things that US agencies can do to mitigate space debris for example. Various agencies can have a rule, and there are such rules in place now, saying if you're going to orbit a space craft you’ve got to provide for de-orbiting the debris and also de-orbiting the space craft when it's no longer useful. So economics, and particularly the economic way of thinking, can help us identify, OK this anarchy in space problem is not actually a problem. Private law is viable, so we don't have to worry about that. Oh, space debris is a problem because we have this common pool resources problem, externality problems, and the usual solutions---taxes and or property rights---aren't feasible. So we need to find some other way, maybe harnessing market mechanisms at the margin to address these. And I think the economic perspective is going to do a good job at cautioning us at taking a top-down approach at space governance. The temptation is huge to say, "OK, we're on the verge of major space breakthroughs. Let's sit down and write down a body of rules that's going to govern space." That's really dangerous because there's no way that you and I sitting in our armchairs can see all the eventualities or problems that people will confront in space. And so the rules that we write are almost certainly going to have little to no relationship to those problems, and therefore won't help commercial and or government actors solve those problems. So figuring out what's important and avoiding the temptation to engage in what Hayek called "The Pretense of Knowledge." Thinking that we can learn and know and plan more than we can actually do. Petersen: My guest today has been Alex Salter. Alex, thanks for being part of Economics Detective Radio. Salter: It's been a pleasure. Thanks again for having me.  

2015 was a good year for outer space. Star Wars: Episode VII came out, NASA started hiring astronauts again, SpaceX successfully launched and returned a rocket, and the U.S. Congress passed the SPACE Act of 2015—a bill that gives any American who extracts resources from an asteroid legal rights to the bounty they reap. Since no one has yet mined an asteroid this legislation might seem premature, but it’s essential to the future of two Silicon Valley asteroid mining companies. That’s right, they already exist. They’re just waiting for humans to start colonizing space. Reporters Katie Gilbert and Annie Costakis talk to Daniel Faber, the founder of Deep Space Industries, about his dream: to build the space equivalent of Home Depot, as well as fueling stations and manufacturing plants. They also explain a few of the untested theories behind asteroid mining. We wanted to know more about the history of space dreaming and space colonies, so we talked to Patrick McCray, a historian of science and technology and the author of The Visioneers: How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future. He says utopian space visions have long filled the heads of scientifically minded dreamers, especially when life on Earth isn’t going so well.   Show Clock: 00:03 Introduction01:26 Will asteroid mining save us?12:40 Who were the visioneers? Credits: Hosts: Michal Meyer and Bob KenworthyGuest: Patrick McCrayReporters: Katie Gilbert and Annie CostakisProducer: Mariel CarrAssociate Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Music: "Boop" By Podington Bear, courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Additional music courtesy of the Audio Network.   

HAPPY TURKEY-DAY EVERYONE! Wishing you a wonderful Thanksgiving, a day of thanks,food,  football, and more food! A perfect conversation for relaxing, working or traveling this holiday weekend! Alex has the Assistant on again to go over some serious Space Business! From Blue Origin successfully and historically landing their rocket, to Scott Kelley's celebration of his last 100 Days left in Space - all the way to a rundown of what this Space Act of 2015 really is. We take a crack at the new Senate-passed Act - what it is, what it means & why did it get passed so quickly? @StationCDRKelly and @Astro_Kjell shared their Thanksgiving Menu while sending well wishes back to Earth! https://twitter.com/Space_Station/status/668892211434557440 The links to all the articles and information we talk about in this show are available below in Space Links: SUPPORT THE PODCAST HERE: AMAZON.COM! NO COST, JUST CLICK ON THIS & SHOP - THANKS! THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT! SPACE LINKS: BLUE ORIGIN HAS HISTORICAL ROCKET LANDING WITH BLUE SHEPARD VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pillaOxGCo WEBSITE: https://www.blueorigin.com/ ARTICLE: http://www.cnet.com/news/blue-origin-sticks-historic-rocket-landing-lets-go-to-space-yall-tomorrow-daily-277/#ftag=CADf328eec SCOTT KELLY CELEBRATES 100 DAYS LEFT IN YEAR IN SPACE MISSION https://twitter.com/StationCDRKelly/status/669313439534202880 SPACE ACT OF 2015 IN FULL TEXT: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2262/text SOURCE: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2262

WELCOME TO THE SHOW! Alex talks about his new job and how being a field engineer could be a really exciting job for any new, up-and-coming engineer! He also talks about germs on the ISS, the Andromeda Galaxy and his thoughts on Aliens. ENJOY! THIS PODCAST IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY: AMAZON.COM! SUPPORT THE PODCAST BY CLICKING HERE AND SHOPPING! SPACE LINKS: The International Space Station is home to potentially dangerous bacteria http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/10/international-space-station-home-potentially-dangerous-bacteria The Andromeda Galaxy: 1888 vs. Now! https://www.facebook.com/TodayInSpacePodcast/posts/1141343442550090 The Space Act of 2015? Apparently, its real - and no one is talking about it https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2262 NASA - Pioneering the Path to Mars http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/journey-to-mars-next-steps-20151008_508.pdf