Space – the universal public good or the final frontier of commodities?
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:19
Hello, everyone. This talk is in English.
00:25
I don't know how many of you are actually not native-speaking German, but we don't care actually because it's taped, video recorded. And the second thing is it's the result of some research project that we have been pursuing over the last month or so,
00:42
and we found it appropriate to use the language that we originally did our research in. So please excuse our accent. So, yeah, The Man Who Sold the Moon is the title of Robert Heinlein's,
01:02
I would say, most prominent novel. It was published in 1949. This is the original paperback cover, and this is a very good book, actually. Heinlein was a very political thinker. And although the thing that he sketched in the 1950s,
01:22
so way before anyone really envisioned actually flying to the moon, is what would happen if we commoditize, if we really make commercial use of space. And the character that he describes in this book are the protagonists,
01:45
Dave Herriman is the typical hucksterist, is someone who lives from commercialization of everything. And he uses every trick to get hold of the moon as private property
02:01
and to exploit that. An interesting thing is that this used to be, I would say, a fantasy. It's more like the typical utopian set for criticizing the actual situation of the 1950s in the liberal market economy after World War II.
02:23
Times have changed. We all have seen the space race. We have seen the Star Trek age. This is what's left of that. It's in my garden, actually. That's what my children left of my beloved Enterprise model.
02:50
In the 1980s, I would say, after the space shuttle started, I would say soon after that, and at least when the Challenger catastrophe took place,
03:03
space became rather unfashionable. The 1990s were the time of the digital revolution. As Peter Thiel, the infamous Paypal co-founder, aggressive venture capitalist in the US, always keeps complaining,
03:20
people took the right turn then. They started mistaking digital for everything there is in technology. And so he now says, we need to come up with real things again. And what could be more real than space? And so nowadays, space has become really popular.
03:42
If you see this recent Wired magazine, it's on the cover page. And you find people that are interested and that love space everywhere. This photo is taken at South by Southwest, and it's just somebody playing in a band wearing this T-shirt. Or you have a recent production in Munich of the musical Hair,
04:02
and you find space even there. Also in literature, Neil Stevenson's latest novel published exactly one year ago, Seven Eves, I would say for me it's the most impressive thing that he published so far.
04:22
The setup is in orbital space, this is the International Space Station, ISS, that becomes the arc where humanity survives the catastrophe, a cataclysmic event that incinerates everyone on Earth, and only seven people on this ISS survive, all women.
04:45
And from that, over 5,000 years' time, establish an orbital civilization that becomes humanity, an orbital humanity. This novel is really interesting, it's like 800 pages or so,
05:01
it's as thick as the Bible, and encyclopedic in the details of spacefare. For example, and that I found really interesting, is these inflatable modules that were meant to house something like four to seven people,
05:20
that soon after became reality. You might have seen that, that's the ISS with such an inflatable module now attached. So science fiction about space, that was remote all the time, that was always just spaceships, Star Wars and the like, has become more like we know from cyberpunk,
05:44
for example, a genre that really deals with things that are already happening. Yeah, orbital stations have been planned for quite a while, this is from 1980, that's also from the, I think that's from the late 70s,
06:03
and this is a famous drawing by Werner von Braun, from the 1940s, from a book of his that was published in 1950, and you see that Braun, way before the first orbital objects had been placed in space, envisioned a gigantic space station
06:24
that keeps some kind of gravitational feeling through the centrifugal forces by spinning. Yeah, and all kinds of benefits, you know, we wouldn't have Teflon saucepans without space, we would probably not have the microwave without radar,
06:43
you know, all these blessings that space has already brought to us, and what could be more blessful than really traveling there as a private businessman, and that's the business of Elon Musk. Elon Musk, also a founder of PayPal, a bit more than 10 years ago,
07:01
realized that space was dominated by governments, exclusively passing business to huge defense contractors, like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and the likes, and that would be a totally inefficient business,
07:20
like all things a government does over time, at least this is what the liberal, West Coast people think. And what would be easier then, to use private venture to cut price, not by half, but by 90%, and this is Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon rocket,
07:42
approaching the landing platform that's sea-bound. So that's really science fiction-y, because Musk was not the first to land the spacecraft again, privately, it was his competitor, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, who with his Blue Origin space venture has done that before.
08:06
So something that, as far as I know, most space agencies so far would have taken for totally impossible to re-land a rocket and reuse that, has been now done several times by private ventures. So that really raises the pressure on the governmental bodies,
08:24
you see here NASA reacts already, the Space Launch System, that's a very cheap satellite launching system that NASA starts, that's also a South by Southwest, that was a really inspiring conference this year, that's a rubber blow-up, you know, like these small castles that you do for children,
08:44
these Hüpfbergen, so they really mean it in terms of things getting, I would say, popular. ESA President Werner, a very charismatic person, announced nothing less than building a European village on the Moon.
09:04
We know how that ended on the far side of the Moon, we already did that. But of course, as a friend of mine who works for DLR, the competing other governmental organization in Germany,
09:23
that deals with space and air travel, Werner, with his vision, really manages to get all the talent from DLR now to ESA. So that really makes some difference. Well, the Moon is one thing, Harriman in the novel, the man who sold the Moon,
09:41
he brings diamonds to the Moon, he smuggles these diamonds to the Moon to convince people that in the carbon-rich soil of the Moon, there would be a plethora of diamonds just sitting there to make it worthwhile, traveling to there. Asteroids, of course, are real sources of raw materials,
10:00
especially iron, nickel, and all other heavy metals, are plenty there, especially iron. So, mining asteroids, yeah, seems to be the next big thing in business. Planetary resources, for example, collects money to start that very soon. We come to that later when we discuss the legal cases.
10:24
I mean, the diamonds can be a bit bigger. For example, in the carbon seas, so we have amorphous carbon seas on Neptune, there is expected to be diamonds the size of houses sitting there. Would be really interesting to bring them back to Earth.
10:41
Well, asteroid mining then will be a business. I think we can expect that, and that brought us to thinking, how would we want space to be? What's the space that we would like to see for ourselves, maybe our children, to use that kitschy phrase, for times to come?
11:03
Because, I mean, this is, I would say, not so far from reality. And now we are in reality. We have seen how science fiction became reality in a technical way, and now this is the legal part of it, because technical development and human development
11:22
and legal development go hand in hand. And here you see a screenshot by the web page of the US Congress, and you find the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. And the amazing thing is that this act was agreed upon just within half a year.
11:42
And there you find a very interesting provision. And it says, a United States citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid resource or a space resource shall be entitled to any of this resource,
12:02
including to possess, to own, to transport, to use, and sell it in accordance with the applicable law and also all international law. At a later stage in this act, there's a disclaimer which says that by this act,
12:22
the United States does not assert sovereignty or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over any celestial body to make sure that this is in line with international law. Now we fly around the Earth and we land in Luxembourg. This is maybe something you wouldn't expect, but Luxembourg clearly states that it aims to become
12:43
the space to be for innovative new space applications as well as space exploitation. So we have now seen here two examples of a very entrepreneurial approach to space law. The aim is to encourage private investment,
13:00
and this is done by granting property rights to the actors so that companies can be secure, that they can make money with what they are doing. So we are really facing a new dimension of exploration and use of outer space, and as we have just already heard, all these American companies that are willing to take risks,
13:22
that are looking at the consumer, they set this new scene also for the new legislation. So what is actually the legal framework in other parts of the world? Are we facing there the tragedy of the commons
13:40
and commons here is taken to mean any shared and unregulated resource such as atmosphere, oceans, rivers, fish stocks, maybe space, or even you understand this principle when you think of an office refrigerator. So if every individual is acting independently
14:01
and rationally to their own self-interest, altogether they behave contrary to the common good, but this is not what we want for space. And therefore, space is rather driven by a different concept, an opposite concept, which is called the common heritage of mankind. And this concept is also known in other areas
14:22
that are remote and characterized by difficult conditions for human actions, that are those areas that are interesting for scientific research and development with benefit to all people. And these are international waters, including the international seabed and the Antarctica.
14:40
And so this concept, in its pure version, contains the following aspects. The use of the area is limited to exclusively peaceful purposes. The conduct of scientific research is freely and openly permissible. The region is not subject to appropriation of any kind,
15:02
neither public nor private, neither national nor corporate. And we come back to that later. All people are expected to share in the management of common areas, and if natural resources were to be exploited, any economic benefits would be shared internationally. That's the pure version of it.
15:21
And it has been enacted in international treaties for the different regions of the world in different ways. And I think it's quite clear that research is always allowed and international cooperation is encouraged. Then access to these regions is free. That's also part of the concept of a common good.
15:41
That access is more important than appropriation. With regard to sovereignty, in space, there's no state that is sovereign. And at Antarctica, there were sovereignty claims in the past, but they were frozen when the treaty was adopted.
16:01
And on the seaside, there's a system of different zones, and the international waters are also not governed by any sovereignty concept. On military uses, in Antarctica, any measures of military nature are prohibited. And in space, space is also to be used only for peaceful purposes,
16:24
but that doesn't mean that all the measures are prohibited. But it's clearly stated that nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction are prohibited. On the exploitation side, the Law of the Sea
16:41
establishes an international sea bed authority that is based in Kingston, Jamaica, that manages mining rights. And so there's a commission on the limits of the continental shelves in New York that decides if exclusive economical zones of 200 nautical miles can be extended.
17:00
With regard to Antarctica, there were some discussions and the draft of a convention on the regulation of Arctic mining of mineral resources, and that was not ratified. Instead, there was a complete ban introduced. And the last point that might be interesting is that tourism in Antarctica also exists, and the numbers have raised.
17:22
In the 1990s, there were about 1,000 tourists in Antarctica, and in 2011, 25,000. And they all need authorization by a national authority. Okay. So that was the background, and now let's have a closer look at space law.
17:42
What is interesting is that space law consists of basically five international treaties, and they were all developed at the time of the Cold War. This picture is from 1968, and it's the opening ceremony of the first United Nations conference on the exploration and peaceful uses of outer space.
18:02
And so far, there have been only three of these conferences, one in 1968, another one in 1982, and one in 1999. And so in 2018, it will be the 50th anniversary of this first conference, and there will be another conference that will then have a look at the current space law
18:25
and at the new challenges. So these are the five treaties, and the first one, the outer space treaty, is the most important one, and that was signed by more than 100 states.
18:43
The basic... What it regulates is five space freedoms that are very basic, so the freedom to explore outer space, and that can be with a scientific reason, but it can also be without, and therefore, it could also be for commercial exploitation.
19:01
And the use of outer space would also cover the exploitation, and then there's the freedom of scientific investigation, the freedom of access to all areas, and the access also to outer space as a precondition to get to the celestial bodies.
19:20
But these freedoms are not without limits, and a very important limit is the no appropriation principle. And that means that no appropriation is allowed by means of sovereignty, occupation, or any use. And this also includes the exploitation. Therefore, when companies would exploit
19:42
any celestial body, they would not be allowed to appropriate what they find. Then as a downside of the freedoms, the treaty also sets up some space obligations for states
20:01
because freedom also means responsibility. So states have to authorize and supervise all non-governmental space activities. So if a private company wants to set up, wants to launch a space object, it has to be registered with the states, and the states have to notify these space objects
20:23
to a register and also notify them to the United Nations. States have to assume international responsibility and liability for space activities. So whenever a damage occurs on the earth, a state is strictly liable and in an unlimited way. And finally, states have to coordinate
20:41
the use of frequencies and orbits. And that is also very important because no space object would ever function without any frequencies because that's needed to communicate. I might add to the frequency thing. That is not really undebated. Behind that is the concept of free broadcast.
21:01
Free broadcast is a typically, I would say, western concept. It is strictly opposed, for example, by Russia or China. So it's not that clear. We have it in the treaties now, but it is debated. And that is regulated by the International Telecommunication Union.
21:21
And this union has 193 member states. So basically all member states, all states of the world are member states to the ITU. And in the radio regulations, it is clearly mentioned that here we have another limited natural resource because radio frequencies and any associated orbits
21:41
are such a limited natural resource and therefore they must be used rationally, efficiently and economically. And the member states are requested to limit the number of frequencies and the spectrum used to the minimum essential to provide the necessary services. So here we have another concept of what you can do.
22:00
When you have limited natural resources. Yeah, so now let's see how that applies to what can happen in space. So we call that cases, I mean like lawyers do. And first, well that's our title case. Let's sell the moon like Dave Herriman did.
22:24
So what would happen? Yeah, and then just to add to the science fiction case, a real case that we found. This is the case by a US citizen who claimed that the US to read 433 with the name Eros was his private property. And then when NASA wanted to land a spacecraft on it,
22:42
he demanded parking fees. And obviously he never got those parking fees because this principle that I just explained, the principle of non-appropriation also applies to individuals. And this covers also the other case from the book. Yeah, I mean non-appropriation, that's a tricky thing.
23:02
I mean if you don't appropriate but you take away all the richness, there is, I mean, what's left might be just the empty thing. And that's the next case. What about asteroid mining? So that has different implications. One is, I mean, destroying these asteroids to get the iron,
23:21
to get all the raw materials from there. The second is, it's not really without dangers because these asteroids that in their flyby around Earth have to be brought into an Earth orbit. Otherwise you couldn't get a hold of the material. Yeah, and so we have one solution that was done in the United States that I quoted earlier, this act in the United States.
23:43
Others say that asteroid mining is completely forbidden because it's clearly stated in this treaty that I just explained. But then how can you have this US commercial launch act? Well you could argue that at the time when this treaty was adopted that was in 1968, nobody really thought of the possibility
24:02
that this mining would ever become possible. And therefore this case was not regulated. And so you would have a gap in the regulation and you can fill this gap. Either, some people even argue you can just fill it by analogy to the fishing rights as there is enough fish in the sea,
24:21
you can also, yeah, do asteroid mining. And so the United States and Luxembourg would prefer to have an act that clearly states it. There's also a third idea, that's the Moon Agreement that I also mentioned earlier that I had on my slides.
24:42
But that was only adopted or signed by 16 states because there's a foundation also for asteroid mining. But it says that the state parties have to establish an international regime to govern the exploitation of the natural resources
25:00
and then this exploitation would become feasible. So the next thing is really creepy, that's nanosatellites. But again, we saw that on the South by conference. This is a Japanese company called Ale, really promising name I would say. And they sell bespoke shooting stars.
25:25
So you can order your bespoke shooting star bonfire for your corporate event, for example, by these small satellites sent into orbit and then brought back and raining space debris down. And the question would be, how can that be?
25:42
I mean, there should be some regulation, shouldn't it? Yeah, so that would just be a small satellite as there are many other satellites because a lot of research is done on satellites by universities and also startups are working on these small satellites because they are very cheap, they are very fast to develop.
26:03
You can just use off-the-shelf materials. And so this is really part of what's called democratization of space because it's cheap and everybody can do it. And at the moment, there's no special regime for these small satellites
26:21
so they are covered by the normal space law and the full regime would apply so you have to register them. So everything that applies to rockets as well. And if you want to get into this business and build your own small satellite, check US web pages.
26:42
There you have detailed checklists what you need to do. Yeah, so the main thing that I'm concerned with is debris. Obviously, there is some risk of these satellites that we will further clutter the orbits with junk. Yeah, it's already a real problem and you can read many articles about that.
27:01
There are 750,000 objects or fragments of one centimeter or larger in the orbits and more than a million objects, more than 100 million objects that are smaller. And all these, they can explode, they can collide
27:22
and this can be called collisional cascading. And the cascading thing is really something that should be taken earnest. There are many papers on that. This is quite a recent one.
27:41
The thing is that these particles start, for example, if some disturbance occurs start colliding in a cascade of ever further fragmenting particles
28:01
and that would act like a gigantic explosion that might destroy a whole orbit. And there's obviously two things that are threatful in that. These cascading debris, they can also contaminate other orbits and cause huge damage.
28:24
But more interesting is how would you differentiate that from a military sabotage operation because it's easy to initiate such a cascading collision. So how would you say this was not an aggressive act, for example, of your adversary?
28:46
And as I said, there is quite some interesting strategic research going on how to prevent that, that accidentally, for example, the US might blame China for sabotaging their orbital objects.
29:02
Now for more benign and, I would say, happy things. This is the last page of my first print of The Man Who Sold the Moon. This is an ad for interplanetary vacation that you could book in 1950.
29:22
But you might have heard that this is not so far off. This is New Mexico near a town with the nice title Truth or Consequence. New Mexico, not without cause, you know, very nearby is the town Roswell. Roswell is of some historic meaning to space travel, not only because the aliens landed there,
29:48
but more because it was the first site where the US tested Werner von Braun's A-4 rockets. So nearby also is White Sands Missile Test Range.
30:01
And this building is the American spaceport of Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. So Richard Branson sells tickets to go into space. So tourism is real. Let's see what that means on the legal side.
30:22
Yeah, and just to add to that, we also found an article that you can even book in Germany or reserve these space flights and design travel agency is the place to address. And these suborbital tourist flights pose more new legal problems
30:44
because it's not quite clear whether you would apply air law, space law, both of them or none of them. And while the international community is still arguing about that, the United States again have covered these questions in their act. They have a provision that states that private operators can obtain an experimental permit
31:04
for testing suborbital rocket launch vehicles. If they want to have commercial operations, they would need a license. And then they also state that the space flight participants, that's the opposite to astronauts. So people without a professional training must be advised of the risks.
31:22
And that would include the safety record of the launch or reentry vehicle because as everybody knows, it is very dangerous or it can be very dangerous and you don't know whether you survive. And so people who want to do it, they must agree to accept these risks and comply with any safety regulations, training, medical regulations.
31:42
I mean apart from the historic reasons, the funny thing about New Mexico is that New Mexico exempts all companies, all private companies from liability to the passengers of space flight. So it's the only place in the world you can have a company sending people into space without any liability risks. And this is a very good reason to start your business there, I would say.
32:03
So now let's see, so that was all what's there already. So let's see what's up to come. Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, the United Nations Space Conference will set up a process to discuss all these challenges that we have just presented
32:26
and they will have four pillars in the end for a space vision for 2030. And these will be space economy, space for the development of the economy, the space society, the evolution of society and societal benefits
32:41
stemming from space-related activities, space accessibility, strengthening of national infrastructures and capacity building also to involve developing countries, and then space diplomacy, building partnerships and strengthening international cooperation in space activities because without international cooperation there won't be any good solutions.
33:04
I mean, yeah, and that's our point now, to make our postulates. So what's really that we demand as a society? And we have some more slides then, but to bring it here now, so how would we get where we want to be?
33:22
How as a society would we shape space in the future? I mean, the first objective should be to maintain these space freedoms, which is not perfectly clear, because the freedom to access space, if it is tied to economic might, I mean, if you just can go to space,
33:44
if you can afford it, in our view, that would not be fair. So, as with all public goods, I mean, we are free to use water, for example, but if we use water, we have to pay for it,
34:01
and that might be a good regime that we might demand, for example, for the United Nations, and it's very common, and we have that in many aspects of our lives, that common goods are charged by a fee. Why not demand from these asteroid mining companies a fair share for society?
34:21
I mean, society has built the civilization that makes space flight possible in the first place. It's not, as we are told, the private endeavor of single entrepreneurs. And so that's really the give back to society, what we owe to society.
34:44
For that, of course, we need to set up a regime for space mining that should be transnational, like, for example, the ITU is for the use of frequencies. It's no secret that we oppose the appropriation of common goods by private people,
35:06
at least me always did. So I would really demand that we see for the private of the public, to maintain that, that this idea of the common heritage of mankind
35:26
can be maintained even if there is private entrepreneurship in space. And a really interesting and important point is to prevent that. I mean, there is some provisions for military use in space,
35:44
but this is far from satisfactory. We should fight, go on fighting, to prevent a militarization of the celestial bodies and of outer space. Because there's so much to come. So that's the, now comes the science fiction part.
36:04
That was all basic nowadays things, now comes science fiction. I mean, of course, you all have heard about the Mars mission that's up to come. So there's scientific conferences at Ivy League universities dealing with manned flight to Mars.
36:26
That's also a nice project. You might have seen that, the power project. That's a 15 to 20 kilometer height tower. So this is Mount Everest in comparison. And this tower should be used as a launch system.
36:43
So you can easily launch objects then from this tower to an orbit of, say, 400 kilometers, which is the orbit of the ISS at, I think, a third or so of the costs compared to launching the vehicle from ground.
37:01
Neil Stevenson, by the way, is the main evangelist of this project. Then we have the famous space elevator. I mean, no one really has seen that, but I found that that's a children's book of the 1970s. We have the space elevator concept quite elaborate here.
37:22
We start with a huge space station in geostationary orbit. So really far out there in almost 40,000 kilometers away. And from that to both sides, we build these elevator threads.
37:42
Here you see helicopter platforms working. And that's how the final thing will look like. Launch system with elevators driving people halfway up to the moon. That's also nice. That's interplanetary society.
38:02
That's a plan that was recently brought back to people's consciousness by Stephen Hawking. Stephen Hawking announced that we would start bringing vehicles to Alpha Centauri. That's like four light years from here. That's quite a bit. And this is a plan from the 1930s, I think, already, how that vehicle should look like.
38:24
And finally, this is a friend of ours, Andreas Vogler. Andreas Vogler is a Swiss architect. He's focusing on design for public buildings and also the interior, for example, of public transportation systems like trains.
38:43
And he was commissioned to design a city on the moon. So this is the real thing that's going on. We have architects working on a permanent moon base. This city will be called moon capital because there's many cities to come
39:05
and this will be the main city. You see beautifully shaped domes for people living here in space. So I think it's worthwhile fighting to keep the moon free so that we all get our share of space.
39:25
I doubt that we, that we sit here, will be walking on moon sands soon but maybe our grandchildren also might have the pleasure but only if we prevent selling the moon. And that's our side and now I'm happy to tell you more if you have questions.
39:45
Thanks. Thank you for the talk. To go back to the subject of asteroid mining.
40:06
I don't know if you know, there has been for years a legal controversy about fishing ships who also can process the fish up until they can. Now let's transfer that to asteroid mining
40:23
so you have spaceships who like travel there and not just mine the asteroid but also process the materials. Now how is that applied? Because in the case with the fishing ships it's,
40:41
yeah the fish are basically have the same legal status as if they were brought to land and then processed. That's a very good question. So, so fish are animals and raw materials are different so.
41:02
Yeah but the question is, the good thing is, the interesting question is, is the, is the, are these ships regarded as sovereign territories like ships are on earth? That's a very good question.
41:20
I guess not. Yeah. I guess not. But that's a very good question. Well it could be like on the ISS, it's not one space object but whoever contributes to it, that's under their responsibility basically. So I guess that could be applied maybe to your case.
41:41
So the appropriation would then take place on site by just digging the things into the ship like it's shown here. Yeah but there's no sovereignty in space so I think that's different.
42:04
There's, why I brought up the fishing vessels is because there was legal debates whether or not the process of processing the fish turns them into something different
42:22
so that the rules would change or if they were applied as if they were brought to land. Yeah and I guess you can just have two opinions on that, either you agree that it changes or it doesn't and for that maybe a solution has to be found then also at this conference in 2018.
42:41
I mean there is, so I think that at least some of the concepts of these asteroid mining companies rely on processing the things in space. So there is concepts that for example are described by Neil Stevenson in 70s also
43:01
to break up these asteroids to build orbital structures. So it's much cheaper to get, perhaps at least theoretically, to get a fly by a steroid and divert that into an Earth orbit and then start breaking it up and build structures there like huge space stations.
43:26
Of course you could never bring so much material to space orbit to build structures like that but with things that are already in space that's feasible. And of course then the question would be the processed material,
43:47
the space station so to say, whose is it? And that's a very good question. So far we have two examples. We have the national space stations like Skylab or Mir.
44:01
We have the ISS now that was born out of budget restraints, budget in the late Reagan era was very limited for NASA so they asked for international support. At that time the Soviet Union went down.
44:21
It was a good time to do cooperative things. I would say that was really a lucky incident. I doubt that we will see that now easily. I have a question. You mentioned only space, I remember only space 3 1999.
44:42
At that time Germany, but seems like the USA and Japan had not signed this moon treaty. There are five treaties as you know. And the moon agreement, excuse me, not treatment.
45:01
What is the status right now? And another question, Germany because after ISS as you know, there's another, the global exploration strategy and there were commitments also every national, although like Germany, India, China, et cetera,
45:20
shall commit to the moon exploration. And Germany also had a national moon program. I don't know what happened to it because of the financial crisis. Do you have any news about this? Thank you. So the moon agreement is in force, but only 16 states signed up to it.
45:41
Austria is one of them for instance. But neither the United States nor Luxembourg signed up to it. But Germany, well I... Germany did I think. Yeah. Check it on the internet there. There you can see all the states that have signed
46:00
and also whether they have just signed it or ratified it. The second part of the question is also interesting. The question of is there a German national moon program?
46:22
I mean yes, because everyone is dreaming of that. But at the moment, as far as I know, there is only the ESA moon program.
46:59
Excuse me.
47:00
I do know that we have a national moon program. Like India went to the moon. China went to the moon. Their commitment, once you are committed, you show to the international community that you have the capability to do exploration to other planetary and other bodies like the moon. Germany also was committed. Like Charles Strasburg, you know, the Stuttgart at the university.
47:24
There is one PhD also who wrote a great doctor on this program. The point is that, I mean, implicit in our postulates is that of course we see that we have two kinds of competition now forming.
47:44
One is the private competition that takes place. The Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and these entrepreneurs. But the second thing at the same time that takes place behind that kind of a theater for that is again a national rally for space.
48:05
And that's true. And I don't think that's a good thing. But we see that at this moment. For example, you might have heard that NASA prohibited US space vehicles to be transported by Indian rockets.
48:25
So that's one example. So there's obviously something going on on a national level, too. Let me just correct. So Germany has not ratified the moon agreement. Austria has it. Uruguay. Saudi Arabia is an accession country,
48:42
which is quite interesting. The Philippines have ratified it. The Netherlands, Morocco and Chile. We have another question over here. I have a slightly far question.
49:01
Is there any thought put for discovery of any life form, complex life form and regulations for it? For example, contact with life form? That's a very good question. Because that will become important with Mars at least.
49:21
I don't know if you have seen that, but when the first astronauts returned from the moon, they were taken into quarantine for several weeks to see if they would have carried any malicious organism or other unknown threat with them. And of course this is, I think,
49:44
what everyone expects from a Mars expedition also. That will take place. I don't have doubt about that. Also the unlimited liability of states for every damage that is done by their space fare,
50:00
I think makes it reasonable to go that route. Nevertheless, I mean there is very few places in space where we would expect life forms. There could be Mars, there could be, of course, Encliados. So everywhere we see some kind of moisture or so. We haven't detected any sign of a chemical imbalance
50:26
on any of the celestial bodies yet. You know that even from far apart everyone, every alien would immediately recognize that there is life on Earth because of the oxygen-rich atmosphere. The atmosphere couldn't be as rich in oxygen.
50:42
Oxygen is very reactive. It would, over a very short time, just react with other elements and go away and become, for example, a carbon dioxide again as we see in the Mars atmosphere, for example. So the Mars atmosphere might look like the Earth's atmosphere
51:01
before plants were there. And so this is called the GEA hypothesis. You would notice if you see a chemical imbalance like that,
51:23
that would be a hint of life existing. And we haven't found that yet. And also not on any of the exoplanets yet, which doesn't say anything, that it might not evolve then. I mean, astronauts come there, change things. Maybe, like we have seen in many movies,
51:42
some kind of monstrous organism forms at this moment. Of course, no one knows. On the other hand, I mean, the astronauts, when flying back, they have something like a year to incubate. Hopefully that is sufficient also as a quarantine.
52:01
We have another question over here. And you brought up the subject of fees for the use of space. Very practical question in return. How would we appraise the use of space? So how would we set a cost for the, air quotes, real estate?
52:24
Yeah, that's a very good thing. You could, for example, find some kind of auction mechanism. I mean, there are lots of examples to set a price for common goods.
52:41
You could just assign a price tag arbitrarily. I mean, these are all publicly listed companies. You can just look into their balance sheets and just see what profits they are calculating and just take a tenth of that or something like that. So there's many, I would say there's many mechanisms
53:01
where you could set these fees. I think an auction mechanism could make sense. Another question over here, please. And anybody else who hasn't asked a question before, you're also very welcome to ask questions too. No, no, nobody has a question. I just want to make sure you're welcome. To my follow-up before, like the outer space clearly defines Nautical 1.
53:22
Space, the use of outer space is for the benefit of humankind. Yes. That's the principle. Yeah. And it should be this way. Exactly, that's what we propose. And it will be this way. And everybody is watching over it. And another question was...
53:40
Before you ask your second question, I mean, what the benefit for all humankind is, however, is debatable. So there is certainly different approaches to that. I mean, you could say that it's an approach of commons, that space should remain a common good,
54:02
open to everyone in every detail. Or you could say, well, private entrepreneurship is also part of the benefit of humankind. Yes, I agree with private entrepreneurs, but I don't agree with military. Because this is also the space treaty says explicitly for the peaceful users.
54:24
Exactly. Oh, yeah, very good. And that is, me as not being a law person, I would read it the same way, but you corrected me and said, well, that just means a non-aggressive way.
54:40
So, for example, there's two regulations that are really interesting for, I mean... National defenses. No, it's two things that have had economic impact already over a long time. One is already mentioned, the broadcast. So people are free to set up satellites,
55:02
to broadcast television, for example, or to use that for telecommunication purposes. Of course, that's a good business that has been set up for a long time. And the second is the military use for this. It's called reconnaissance. So the spy satellites, and these spy satellites are perfectly legal,
55:20
and it's clearly military use. So it might sound like it is not really peaceful, but however, peaceful does not mean no military in legal terms, as far as I see it. Yeah, well, this interpretation was done at the time because in 1967 when this treaty was adopted, the United States and the Soviet Union
55:41
had already launched satellites into outer space for military purposes, and therefore they had to take this interpretation. Otherwise, it would have been contrary to the treaty that they just adopted. And I think it started from there, and then you also understand that because it's mentioned no nuclear weapons and no weapons of mass destruction are allowed.
56:03
So that is very clear. And for the rest, yeah, there are also dual use goods, and you can use military personnel and military objects, and yeah. You know, this is why I like this picture so much because this is not a weapon of mass destruction.
56:22
It's a precision killing weapon. So you know, it's the future of drone warfare in space, killing one after the other. So I think we are done. Time is up. Let's end with this beautiful picture of the moon station, and thanks everyone for listening. Bye-bye.