For All Moonkind: While I agree entirely with your goals, I once again will state my fear that, trapped as we are under a UN regulatory bureaucracy because of the restrictions of the Outer Space Treaty, with no clear rules for establishing law or borders or limits on the power of that bureaucracy, any preservation rules established will end up acting to limit the freedoms and rights of future space colonists. Nothing you’ve said here changes that.

First, thank you!
Second, we have no desire to place limits on the freedoms and property rights of future space colonists. We seek to develop balanced rules to manage preservation and development – much like many terrestrial preservation regulations. We need to keep alive the memory of our past to guide our future. This means some sites should, perhaps, remain undisturbed for posterity, but others, perhaps, should be fully recorded before permitting development. The bottom line is that we have – for the first time ever – the opportunity to observe and preserve sites marking one of humankind’s most remarkable evolutions. It is an opportunity we would be foolish to waste.

Over time, you keep suggesting that the US should do ungentlemanly or even animalistic things, then you say that it is the other countries that act badly. I wish that you would recommend more civilized solutions for our problems. You may come from a foreign point of view, but I wish you had a better opinion of America and its respect for law and order, rather than suggest that we act like a frustrated baby instead of the adult in the room.

Treaty or not. Treaties are for gentlemen, not with communists or islamists or other animals. Regardless of what their eternally failed “lawyers” say about it.

Edward: Ugh, this has been an error-filled few days. I misread their name as “For all Mankind.” I have now corrected the post.

As for future space colonists, I suspect that when they realize that they are living under similar limitations as the American Colonists (e.g. mercantilism, lack of control over their own laws, someone else claims ownership of their property, etc.), they will eventually declare a similar independence.

If akmed wanted that sample return bag “preserved for all mankind” so bad, he should have bought it at Auction, no one was stopping him.

Just who do these clowns, think they are?

(tangentially, the sooner were turn the UAE into an ash-heap, the better.)