With the new Trump policy, is the Moon to be taken?



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    President Donald Trump at a signing ceremony of the Space Policy Directive 1, which aims to send Americans back to the moon by 2024.

    Visual: SAUL LOEB / AFP / Getty Images


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This year marks Anniversary of the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the culmination of the US government's efforts for an eight-year period to land the first human being on the moon. Between 1962 and 1972, the Apollo program – which consisted of six crew landings – cost $ 25 billion ($ 144 billion in today's dollars). Despite NASA's relatively modest budgets, the Trump administration has announced plans to send astronauts back to the lunar surface by 2024.

Until now, Trump has provided little details on how he will achieve this feat with such a tight schedule and such a small budget: he has so far only requested $ 1.6 billion additional dollars. And despite the nickname "Moon to Mars" campaign, it could potentially delay the Obama era projects that were already on the move to send human beings to the red planet in the 2030s or early 2040s.

Worse, the 2024 deadline suggests a selfish motive – Trump's attempt to create a dramatic legacy before leaving office, assuming he is re-elected next year. Indeed, recent comments from NASA's Jim Bridenstine suggest that the deadline has been chosen without taking into account, if any, the scientific and technical challenges. At a recent space conference, Vice President Mike Pence told attendees that Trump had asked NASA to send astronauts to meet the deadline "by any means necessary And that it was "essential that we focus on the mission".

Perhaps more troubling, the Trump administration let the public guess what it hoped to accomplish once on the moon. Judging by the government's support for privatization and commercialization of space, the limited information available on the Moon-on-Mars project and Pence's recent comments, the administration seems at least exploit the Moon to obtain water, oxygen and rare minerals. If that is the case, we should be concerned that lunar mining would potentially violate international law, it would create a dangerous precedent that the resources of our nearest neighbor are at stake.

The Moon to Mars project – recently renamed Artemis – stems from a 2017 policy recommendation by the National Space Council, a group led by Pence and advised by a group of CEOs and operating directors of large and small space companies . The council made its recommendations under the name of Space Policy Directive 1, signed by Trump in December 2017. This directive calls for a sustained human and robotic presence on and around the Moon. This effort will include an orbiting space station known as the "Gateway" that will serve as a base for moon-surface expeditions.

To get help in achieving these lofty goals, the administration seems to rely heavily on the major players in the commercial space industry, including Boeing, Lockheed and the new ones. come, Space X and Blue Origin. Last fall, NASA selected nine companies for its lunar payload commercial services program; companies plan to carry government payloads to the moon and back.

Of course, today's business partnerships are essential to almost every major business. What is worrying about the Moon to Mars project is that the administration does not seem to have articulated a clear vision of exploring the space it wants to achieve through these partnerships. He showed little interest in answering long-standing questions about the formation of our lunar companion or what his many craters tell us about the impacts of asteroids. Instead, the Trump administration seems singularly obsessed with getting boots on the lunar floor.

In the absence of a strong vision of the president, the interests of the company can prevail. And among these interests, it seems, he is a miner.

At least one of NASA's partners, Moon Express, is actively developing technologies that would enable it to exploit the moon and send lunar material back to Earth. In February, when NASA finally announced the first dozen instruments it planned to send to the moon, three of them were prospecting instruments. In a recent speech to the National Space Council, Pence reportedly spoke of plans to "extract oxygen from the lunar rocks" and "extract the water from the … craters of the South Pole" . And while NASA's bright new Moon to Mars website is full of hype and little information, a passage from its vague science section is suggestive: "Ice is power. This represents fuel. This represents science. "

The mining of the moon is not a completely crazy idea. Lunar resources, especially water ice, could prove useful for trips to Mars and beyond. The water could not only serve as rocket fuel for travel in deep space, but also to cool, protect against radiation and, of course, drink. And harvesting the moon's water could be much more energy efficient than throwing large amounts of water out of the Earth.

But who has the right to extract from the water of the moon and how to avoid causing damage to the lunar surface?

As it happens, two international laws have already begun to deal with these issues. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty – signed and ratified by more than 100 countries, including the United States – states that space exploration must be done in the interest of all, and that it must be done in the interest of all. no country or organization can take over part of the space. And the 1979 agreement on the moon, which the United States has not signed but which nonetheless constitutes international law for the small number of countries that have signed, goes further. He states that neither the orbits around the moon, nor its surface, nor the subsoil, nor any natural resource will become the property of any country or private organization.

These restrictions of international law seem to prohibit the commercial activities of extracting resources, owning property, or altering the surface of the moon. In other words, they establish that the moon is supposed to be like Antarctica, which hosts research stations, but not commercial, and where the activities of tourists are restricted. But given President Trump's willingness to consider deploying massive weapons in space as part of a "space force" – a militarization that would violate the spirit of the Treaty on outer space as well as the long-standing United Nations program to prevent the militarization of space – do not take international law particularly seriously.

If Trump's New Trump program actually pursues mining, it would set a dangerous precedent. To claim a lunar land, to extract resources from it and to set up an outpost reminiscent of colonialism – a bit like the approach taken by the Trump government in Puerto Rico, which remains a neglected colony that has suffered from its status, and Standing Rock , where indigenous peoples' rights matter less than oil.

International treaties on space, on the other hand, have the right idea. Our moon – like oceans, mountains and forests – is supposed to be for everyone. Unfortunately, the moon does not have a dedicated environmental movement. So when it is threatened by half-cooked policies and potential prospectors, it is up to us to protect it.


Ramin Skibba (@raminskibba) is an astrophysicist turned science writer and freelance journalist based in San Diego. He has written for The Atlantic, Slate, Scientific American, Nature and Science, among other publications.

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