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"  Suddenly, the idea of asteroid mining is everywhere. As a recent feature here in Popular Mechanics noted, asteroid mining has gone from a &amp;quot;someday&amp;quot; idea to a business plan for more than one company. As a professor who&amp;#039;s been writing, teaching, and practicing space law since the 1980s, I say, why not? Asteroids are valuable, they&amp;#039;re out there, and they are free for the taking.  Or are they? Asteroids are certainly available, and they&amp;#039;re valuable. More than 750,000 asteroids measure at least 1 kilometer across, and millions of smaller objects are scattered throughout the solar system, mostly in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Even a comparatively small asteroid is potentially quite valuable, both on Earth and in space.  A 79-foot-wide M-type (metallic) asteroid could hold 33,000 tons of extractable metals, including $50 million in platinum alone. A 23-foot-diameter C-type (carbonaceous) asteroid can hold 24,000 gallons of water, useful for generating fuel and oxygen. Even 1 gallon of water, at 8.33 pounds per, can cost tens of thousands of dollars to launch into Earth orbit. Prices will probably come down now that SpaceX and other private launch companies are in the game. But the numbers would need to improve a lot for water launched from Earth to compete with water that&amp;#039;s already floating in space. Larger asteroids could be worth as much as the GDP of a superpower. Asteroid 1986 DA is a metallic asteroid made up of iron, nickel, gold, and platinum. Estimates of its value range between $6 and $7 trillion. Something that size won&amp;#039;t be retrieved anytime soon, but the figure gives some idea of just how much wealth is out there. So it&amp;#039;s raining soup\u2014let&amp;#039;s get a bucket! Or, rather, let&amp;#039;s sidle up to a convenient-size asteroid, latch on, and tow it to Earth orbit, where we can exploit its resources. Oh, sure, moving it may take a while and cost a bit\u2014but so does launching water into orbit or mining platinum here on Earth. But remember that open question. If you go get an asteroid and bring it back, is it yours? On Earth, of course, no one would open a mine without being sure they owned the land or at least the mineral rights. The same is true in space. But while mining law on Earth is pretty much settled, asteroid-mining law isn&amp;#039;t so clear yet. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prevents nations from making territorial claims beyond Earth: &amp;quot;Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means,&amp;quot; it states. But what is &amp;quot;national appropriation&amp;quot;? And what is a &amp;quot;celestial body&amp;quot;? Those are the kinds of issues that lawyers grapple with. Space law used to be mainly an academic pursuit, but no longer\u2014in fact, the American Bar Association just published a guidebook in the field. Most experts\u2014including me\u2014believe that a ban on &amp;quot;national appropriation&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#039;t prohibit private property rights. The Outer Space Treaty was designed to prevent the winner of the 1960s space race from claiming the moon for itself. The United States and the Soviet Union were each worried about what would happen if the other nation beat it there. They were thinking of missile bases and territorial disputes, not mines or lunar tourist resorts. The &amp;quot;celestial bodies&amp;quot; language was added by way of expansiveness, but the Outer Space Treaty doesn&amp;#039;t define the term, except to make it clear that the moon is one. An agreement called the 1979 Moon Treaty did try to outlaw private property on the moon and beyond, but no spacefaring power signed on, and it&amp;#039;s generally considered a failure. It certainly wouldn&amp;#039;t bind any American\u2014or Chinese or Russian\u2014company that headed for space. So are asteroids celestial bodies like the moon? Or something different? A number of space-law scholars have weighed in recently. The bottom-line argument is, as Andrew Tingkang noted in a Seattle University Law Review article, that if you can move it, it isn&amp;#039;t a celestial body. We see a similar distinction on Earth between &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;personal&amp;quot; property. Real estate is land. One of its chief characteristics is that it stays put. Personal property can be huge\u2014a supertanker or a 747\u2014but it&amp;#039;s movable. The rules relating to real property are different, and usually more stringent, than the rules relating to personal property. Land is accounted for by deeds and registries; for personal property, possession is enough to establish a presumption of ownership. The biggest asteroids, like Ceres or Vesta, are probably too big to move, so even though they&amp;#039;re smaller than the moon, they might count as celestial bodies. But a 100-meter class-M asteroid is readily movable. It&amp;#039;s not real estate; it&amp;#039;s just a rock. This seems right to me, but it&amp;#039;s not the end of legal issues for potential asteroid miners. Those who move asteroids have a duty\u2014both under the Outer Space Treaty and by common sense\u2014to exercise great care to ensure that the rocks don&amp;#039;t go astray. A 100-meter asteroid would probably burn up before striking the surface of Earth, but some pieces might survive, and the risks climb exponentially as the asteroids get bigger. There&amp;#039;s also a duty to prevent so-called back-contamination of Earth with dangerous extraterrestrial matter: microbes and the like. That&amp;#039;s not a huge risk\u2014after all, asteroids strike Earth regularly without spreading Andromeda Strain\u2013like plagues\u2014but it is nonetheless one worth keeping in mind. Some carbonaceous chondrites\u2014and, even more likely, comets, should we start capturing those\u2014have chemistry that might allow for life. It isn&amp;#039;t likely, and it&amp;#039;s even less likely that such life, adapted to space, would turn out to be a threat here on Earth. Still, we shouldn&amp;#039;t take chances. We have enough trouble with invasive species as it is. There&amp;#039;s also a question about what it takes to claim an asteroid. Would a company that sent a robot to a likely rock, assayed it, and then left a transponder or a radar reflector to mark it for easy retrieval establish a property right to that asteroid? The answer to this question is probably yes\u2014similar claims involving robots have been upheld in underwater-salvage cases\u2014but at this point it&amp;#039;s not entirely clear. Going forward, there are two ways this kind of thing can shake out. One is that nations\u2014or at least one nation\u2014will promulgate a set of rules governing claims and exploitation. Another is that companies will just proceed on their own, hoping that few conflicts arise\u2014a good bet, considering that it&amp;#039;s a big solar system with lots of asteroids available. This Wild West approach may work just fine, at least for the first decade or two. And after that, the issues may be clear enough that lawmakers will be able to catch up and offer something constructive. For now, there don&amp;#039;t appear to be insuperable legal barriers to anyone who wants to tag and bag an asteroid. Let the space gold rush begin! PM contributing editor, Instapundit blogger, and University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds is the author (with Robert P. Merges) of Outer Space: Problems of Law and Policy (Westview Press). "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a12434/who-has-the-right-to-mine-an-asteroid-15265082/?click=pp>