The Glade 4.0

So, when the day comes that both governmental and private groups are able to start placing long-term facilities on the Moon, how do y'all think issues of jurisdiction and ownership should be decided? Should the U.S. be allowed to plant a flag (again) and declare such-and-such a region of the Moon American territory? Should Richard Branson be able to build a big-ass Virgin Galactic spaceport and claim the land it's on as his personal property (and if so, subject to which country's property laws)? And so forth. Basically just curious what folks here think.

It's ours, *****!

Possession is 9/10....

Better question, what happens to all the moon-squatters and whalers?

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It could have been ours, but we choose to claim it on behalf of all humanity. So I think it probably will come down to possession.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Thank God we didn't **** over NASA!




...oh.

#occupythemoon

Whomever occupies it, owns it until it's invaded. Much like any terrestrial land.

So far, the United States have occupied it (briefly). We're not really defending it, though, so it would be easy to invade. Also, it would probably be pretty safe from reprisal to do so, since when we *did* occupy it, we announced we weren't going to be all territorial and **** with it.

Thus, you're not invading sovereign land, you're merely seizing the commons. Which is probably considered somewhat less offensive in the international community.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Google.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

For the special low price of $10 an acre, you can own your own peice of moon land NOW. We take Mastercard, Visa, and Paypal.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

M-O-O-N, that spells "advanced colonization opportunities."

It's going to be whoever can project the force to hold the territory. Or Gru if he can get that shrink ray from Vector.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

We're also creating a new moon-estate-backed security, which will revolutionize retirement savings.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Whoever has the Moon purview gets to fight over it.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Andy Williams does.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Due to the idiotic Outer Space Treaty currently, no one can do much of anything economically useful with the moon or any other celestial body since they're part of the "common heritage of all mankind" or some such bullshit.

Because, you know, we wouldn't want to pollute or despoil a gas giant, or an airless, waterless ball of rock, or a freezing-cold radiation-swamped vaccuum.

Pretty much it belongs to whoever A) gets there first and B) has the ability to tell the Euro-wankers to **** off when they start screaming. We should have abrogated this treaty years ago.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

...

Anyway, nice clip Coro.

Delos David Harriman

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No, leaving it there until we have the ability to colonize the moon iss the right thing to do.

-> If anyone beats us there we can whine, cry, and point to the treaty.
-> If we get to the point we can colonize the moon and no one else is to that point, we can point to the treaty and offer tours to all who can afford them.
-> If we're in a race to colonize the moon, we can point to the treaty again, and claim the landing sites from the moon landing days as World Heritage Sites that we control.
-> If we find there is an alien race or native life there that we didn't discover last time around, we tell them "so sorry, already claimed by the folks on the big blue marble, where's your flag?"

Leaving the treaty in place gives us the most viable options until we decide to abrogate it.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Those are all valid points, but I think the current legal impossibility of making any money whatsoever in space (as opposed to making money launching satellites, which might be possible) has done enormous harm to space exploration in general. This treaty was signed at a time when we were well ahead in terms of ability to eventually colonize. Now, we've largely lost the ability to construct heavy-lift rockets and haven't done serious work on such things in a long time. Constellation/Ares was as close as we got but...

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."