Russia hostile to Trump declaration to promote private enterprise in space
Russia today issued the first international response to the Trump executive order yesterday calling for private enterprise and property in space, and that response was decidedly negative.
Attempts to seize the territories of other planets are harmful to international cooperation, Deputy Director General of Roscosmos for International Cooperation Sergey Saveliev said on Tuesday. “Attempts to expropriate outer space and aggressive plans to actually seize territories of other planets hardly set the countries for fruitful cooperation,” Saveliev said.
He recalled that there were examples in history when one country decided to start seizing territories in its interests. “Everyone remembers what came of it,” Saveliev added.
Part of the goal of Trump’s order was to try to garner international support for the idea of allowing private property in space. The Russian response today suggests that they will not go along, and instead will use the words of the Outer Space Treaty to block such rights.
As I have been saying for years, the real solution is to pull out of the treaty. It forbids us from establishing our laws anywhere in space, which means future space-farers will be second class citizens, with their only rights determined by the UN, not the Bill of Rights.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Russia today issued the first international response to the Trump executive order yesterday calling for private enterprise and property in space, and that response was decidedly negative.
Attempts to seize the territories of other planets are harmful to international cooperation, Deputy Director General of Roscosmos for International Cooperation Sergey Saveliev said on Tuesday. “Attempts to expropriate outer space and aggressive plans to actually seize territories of other planets hardly set the countries for fruitful cooperation,” Saveliev said.
He recalled that there were examples in history when one country decided to start seizing territories in its interests. “Everyone remembers what came of it,” Saveliev added.
Part of the goal of Trump’s order was to try to garner international support for the idea of allowing private property in space. The Russian response today suggests that they will not go along, and instead will use the words of the Outer Space Treaty to block such rights.
As I have been saying for years, the real solution is to pull out of the treaty. It forbids us from establishing our laws anywhere in space, which means future space-farers will be second class citizens, with their only rights determined by the UN, not the Bill of Rights.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
This will be the most important struggle over resource allocation in the Human History of the Holocene. Allowing political allocation of these resources, by some negotiated elite political management scheme, will mean the basic freedoms of action needed for industrial society will never apply to the Solar System’s resources. Nor will the productivity rates of industrial economies.
“When a society moves from allocating resources by custom and tradition (moderns read here, by politics) to allocating resources by markets, they may be said to have undergone an industrial revolution” Arnold Toynbee-1884
The reactionary States that wish to constrain space development to political allocation of resources will be acting because they see a Solar System free to use market allocation without much constraint as a direct challenge to the stability of their pre-industrial hierarchies. They will not willingly allow market networks to spread so far they can have no hope of constraining them.
That is why the US move at this moment is so important. Getting this policy engraved as the basic template about Solar System resource allocation is crucial. While there will be many in US academia still pushing for political control of resources they claim are misused by market networks, they ignore the far worse record of misuse by political resources allocation throughout the 20th Century.
Trump’s name on it will make many turn up their noses at his supposed impoliteness. I have no sympathy for them. All the politeness of the preceding 25 years simply allowed the gains of peace and freedom by the end of “the socialist camp” to be eroded by continually ignoring those gains among academia and their media followers.
The importance of this issue cannot be understated.
It boils down to this:
As long as governments run the space programs and control access to space then any development and exploitation of resources found there are controlled by the governments.
This is the essence of socialism. Government control of the means of production.
That includes Earthside production to get there, in situ production in space, orbital or lunar construction projects, etc.
Capitalism in Space on the other hand is forcing open the door to stop this. Since we know, based on history, that free enterprise can out pace governments, this will ensure the freedom of the humans as we mature into a space-faring race.
What the POTUS has done is simply pushed the door a little further open. But we should not rest. I feel this beginning is still fragile. I think it is naive to think otherwise.
And Putin is no fool. He knows it. He knows that if the American brand of Free Enterprise truly takes hold, then he has lost. He will fight this tooth and nail. He may enlist the Chinese to aid him in this arena.
Trump should remind them that they only recently seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.
“Do as I say, not as I do” seems to be the national motto of both Russia and China.
{Heck} On Wheels
“Defending a Legacy” transcontinental railroad
Thomas Durant Speech
https://youtu.be/yAHL5oPXOD0
2:59
“If it’s a villain they want I’ll play the part, after all, what is a Drama, without a villain?”
Polish-Soviet War of 1920
https://youtu.be/P9Jd0vvMLW8
23:00
If Russia’s space program was not in such bleak shape, you have to think they would be taking a different line. They know that neither Roscosmos, nor any Russian space startups, have any prospect of creating the capabilities to exploit these resources.
They certaily don’t show such reticence about going after mineral resources in the Arctic and the Black Sea.
Because they know they can’t compete.