We Need a New Space Treaty

There is only one law in space, and it's called, appropriately, the Outer Space Treaty. Approved by the United Nations in 1966, its primary purpose was to prevent the militarization of space. Back then, the US and the Soviet Union were at the height of the space race, and what the world feared most was the prospect of nuclear weapons orbiting miles overhead like so many swords of Damocles.

The treaty forbids any government from placing any weapons of mass destruction into orbit and requires the moon be used only for "peaceful purposes." It also makes states liable for "any damage caused by their space objects." Pick up your stuff, nations!

So far, the treaty has worked. The problem is, things have changed since 1966. The Outer Space Treaty hasn't.

When the treaty passed, two countries could reach space. Today, more than 70 countries claim to have space programs, and most have their satellites in orbit. Even more complicated is the rise of private space exploration, the subject of Evan Dashevsky's cover story this month. Dozens of firms are regularly operating in space today. Elon Musk's SpaceX is probably the best known, but Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin are also launching vehicles. And those are just the transport companies.

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Once you get to space, there is real money to be made. Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources are two of the firms formed specifically with the idea of mining extraterrestrial bodies for rare minerals. Building asteroid-grabbing rockets isn't cheap; Caltech estimates one craft could cost $2.6 billion to construct, but the potential payoffs are even bigger. Planetary Resources estimates the platinum mined from a football field-sized asteroid could be worth $25 to $50 billion. (Ironically, this kind of abundance would crush the market value of this "rare" metal.)

With so many players and so much money involved, space is just getting too complex for the current Outer Space Treaty. Many members are considering dropping out of the treaty or simply ignoring it. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any international consensus on what the new rules of space should be, and in that vacuum, the tendency is to do nothing. This unregulated state is also exactly what private companies want—a new frontier outside the reach of all governments.

So what do you do? If you are Dr. Phil Davies of Hampshire, England, you point a 100mW laser at Mars and declare you own the place. For the last seven years, Davies has been sending quadrillions of photons 33.9 million miles to the surface of the Red Planet. These photons have heated the surface and released an admittedly infinitesimal amount of carbon dioxide. Davies is using this process to claim he is terraforming the planet, a form of "effective possession," and hence, he owns it. According to existing international law, he might be right.

Of course, Davies doesn't really want to own the planet—he wants to use his claim as a lever to get the United Nations to rewrite the Outer Space Treaty. If you think that's worth doing, Davies is willing to sell you some of his planet online (at mars.sale). The Early Bird sale is over, so now parcels of 25 to 100 square kilometers of land start at $21. All proceeds go towards Davies's legal bills as he submits Martian land-registration forms to both the UK government and United Nations.

Full disclosure: I bought a plot of Martian land. It is less volatile than bitcoin, and when it comes right down to it, I'd rather have Dr. Phil Davies run Mars than Jeff Bezos. See if you feel the same way after reading Evan's story in the August issue of the PC Magazine Digital Edition, available now.