Socialists Seek To Prevent Humanity From Colonizing Space

Chris | InformationLiberation

Humanity will not be allowed to colonize outer space if socialist professors are allowed to have their way.

Via Space.com:

Does Asteroid Mining Violate Space Law?

Several well-known billionaires are forming the new company Planetary Resources with plans to send a robotic spacecraft to mine precious metals from an asteroid and bring them back to Earth. Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt and their business partners say the enterprise will "add trillions to the global GDP."

But to whom do those trillions belong -- the company, or everyone? Does a private company have a right to stake claim to an asteroid, or are celestial bodies such as the moon, planets and asteroids the communal property of all Earthlings?

"The law on this is not settled and not clear," said Henry Hertzfeld, professor of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University. "There are lots of opinions on the status here, and nobody is necessarily right because it's complicated."

[...]Frank Lyall, public law professor at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and director of the International Institute of Space Law, and Paul Larsen, a space law expert and adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School, both interpret the OST as meaning that no one -- neither a government, nor a person -- can claim title to an asteroid, or the precious metals therein.

The point is proven by a 2001 court case, they said. In 2000, an American man named Gregory Nemitz registered a claim to the asteroid Eros. When NASA sent a satellite to investigate this asteroid soon after, Nemitz sent a letter to NASA telling the space agency to pay parking fees for landing the satellite on his property. "NASA declined and so did the U.S. Dept. of State," Larsen explained in an email. "The reason is that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, Article II, specifically states 'outer space ... is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereign, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.'" [Images: Planetary Resources to Mine Asteroid Riches]

Thus, as the international law on the matter now stands, "an asteroid in outer space cannot be mined for the purpose of appropriation," Lyall wrote. "All the states whose nationals might mine are part of the 1967 [Outer Space] Treaty agreement and hence their national systems cannot provide the base of a title to the property."

Well then, if the law says it, then it must be so!

Fortunately, not everyone agrees.

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it's really really stupid to use the word socialists here The idea does seem socialist- well, maybe not socialist since there's no government ownership- there's NO ownership, so I'm not sure what to call it. But certainly not capitalist. I don't think it's the professors' fault, however- over 100 countries agreed to this amazingly socialist (or whatever the correct term is) treaty- even the U.S.!

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SpaceX: Entrepreneur's race to space

From PayPal to electric cars to rockets, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk wants his company, SpaceX, to build America's next manned spacecraft. Scott Pelley reports.

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Bullion Vaults Run Out of Space on Gold Rally

By Chanyaporn Chanjaroen, Nicholas Larkin and Debarati Roy

Deep in the 7.4-acre Singapore FreePort next to Changi International Airport?s runways is the bullion vault of Swiss Precious Metals, behind seven-metric-ton steel doors built to survive a plane crash or earthquake.

The rooms are almost full after demand rose fivefold in the year since the Geneva-based company opened the facility. The firm plans an extension, and relocated Chief Executive Officer Jean-Francois Pages to Singapore last month to cope with the surge of investors willing to pay as much as 1 percent of the value of their holdings each year to keep them secure.

?The European debt crisis and its impact on the solvency of European financial players are driving European customers to find refuge in tangible values like physical gold and other precious metals,? Pages said. Demand ?is totally compatible with the current financial and political global turmoil.?

Barclays Capital is building a new vault, The Brink?s Co. (BCO) and Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) may add more space, and the Perth Mint may expand for the first time since 2003, a sign they expect demand to keep increasing after the 11-year rally during which prices increased sevenfold. Investors in exchange-traded products backed by gold bought 2,198 tons of bullion since 2003, exceeding all except four countries? official stockpiles.

Gold climbed to a record $1,921.15 an ounce on Sept. 6. Prices more than doubled since the end of 2007 as stock markets slumped, economies contracted and central banks and governments pumped more than $2 trillion into the global financial system.

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Voilent Riots, Wild Markets & Human Anger, Have We All Gone Mad? Or Are The Space Storms To Blame?

Rosalba O’Brien
Reuters

Rollercoaster financial markets and the worst riots Britain has seen in decades have made it quite a week for a time of year that is usually so dead the newspapers are filled with “silly season” tales of amusing pet antics.

Everyone is pointing fingers — at blundering politicians, hooded thugs, disaffected youths, bumbling police and greedy bankers — but could the cause for all the madness really be the star at the centre of our solar system?

There isn’t a lot of evidence pointing to little green men involving themselves in Earthly affairs, but the sun has been throwing bursts of highly charged particles into space in a phenomenon known as coronal mass ejections or CMEs.

Three large CMEs prompted U.S. government scientists to warn of solar storms that can cause power blackouts and the aurora borealis, or northern lights, caused by disturbances in the Earth’s atmosphere, have been spotted as far south as England and Colorado, NASA said. “Earth’s magnetic field is still reverberating from a CME strike on August 5th that sparked one of the strongest geomagnetic storms in years”, website SpaceWeather said.

Some academics have claimed that such geomagnetic storms can affect humans, altering moods and leading people into negative behaviour through effects on their biochemistry. Some studies have found evidence that hospital admissions for depression rise during geomagnetic storms and that incidents of suicide increase.

A 2003 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found that such storms could affect the stock market, as traders were more likely to make pessimistic choices. “Unusually high levels of geomagnetic activity have a negative, statistically and economically significant effect on the following week’s stock returns for all US stock market indices,” the authors found in their report.

It could of course be mere coincidence that this has been a rollercoaster week on the markets, and that Britain was rocked by a wave of ferocious rioting and looting.

But market watchers may take comfort from the fact that the space weather forecast for Friday has gone quiet again.

They shouldn’t be too complacent though. The solar cycle is on an upswing due to peak in 2013 and there are likely to be more geomagnetic storms heading Earth’s way in the months to come.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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