
NASA's Curiosity Eyes Prominent Mineral Veins on Mars - happyscrappy
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4536
======
interurban
I wonder what (if any) legislation currently regulates extra-terrestrial
mineral rights. Is Curiosity squatting on someone's claim or staking its own?

Jokes aside, mineral rights have been a contentious issue for centuries. What
kind of regulations are companies like Planetary Resources dealing with?

~~~
cellshade
Ownership of celestial bodies is covered by the Outer Space Treaty of 1967
which states that celestial bodies (such as Mars) are not subject to national
appropriation and are the common heritage of all mankind.

Whether the treaty will mean anything in the future to come, however, is an
open question, I guess.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This is something that, with "luck", will come up in our lifetimes. I expect
that if China lands robotic miners on the Moon and starts harvesting helium 3
and sends back canisters of it to China, or if someone figures out how to
create permanent presence on the Moon without cooperation from other nation-
states, it will bring that issue to the forefront.

It was also an interesting question for me with the asteroid mining startups.
If you land on an asteroid and extract its platinum, can you keep it?

~~~
pc86
It's one thing to say that a celestial body is the common heritage of all
mankind.

It's something else entirely to say that if you spend billions of dollars to
pull platinum out of an asteroid you can't sell it for profit. I don't think
the two things are necessarily mutually exclusive.

~~~
joshuapants
If they plan on selling the platinum they harvested they'd better plan on
cutting dividend checks to every last person on earth.

------
nickhalfasleep
It's interesting to think of what would happen when such a discovery triggered
an economic case for mars. Say you found a field of rare elements, or
plutonium, or perfect slow-grown silicon crystals exposed on the ground?
Suddenly there is a market valuation for going there and getting those
materials.

~~~
astrowilliam
I am 100% behind scientific research of Mars but I'd be very interested in
seeing what kind of companies would spring up almost overnight if they knew
they could make multiple billions of dollars and also how fast we would put
people on the red planet if a profit was involved.

