| dethalternate | Date: Friday, 27-November-2015, 2:03 PM | Message # 1 |
-- dragon lord--
Group: Users
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| Toward Mining Asteroids
At the moment it's not clear whether space mining is legal. Although there's nothing expressly forbidding asteroid mining by private companies, the Outer Space Treaty declares that no nation can own property in space. The wording of the treaty is vague enough that companies want to ensure they'll own the resources they mine from asteroids before investing millions or billions of dollars trying to extract them.
The bill would make those property rights official, at least under U.S. law. Although companies can't own the asteroids themselves, the current version reads:
“A United States citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid resource or a space resource under this chapter shall be entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained, including to possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law, including the international obligations of the United States."
An earlier version passed in the House in May. Since then, the Senate amended it with a few interesting changes. For one, by adding the word "abiotic" to the definition of "space resources," they specify that living things are not considered a resource.
Read more/full article/source - http://www.popsci.com/congress-votes-to-legalize-asteroid-mining
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