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10.4 days old
By Adrianne Jeffries
NASA (click here) is now working with private companies to take the first steps in exploring the moon for valuable resources like helium 3 and rare earth metals.
Initial proposals are due tomorrow for the Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown program (CATALYST). One or more private companies will win a contract to build prospecting robots, the first step toward mining the moon.
The contract will be a "no
funds exchanged" Space Agreement Act, which means the government will
not be directly funding the effort, but will receive NASA support. Final
proposals are due on March 17th, 2014. NASA has not said when it will
announce the winner.
NASA works with private
companies that service the International Space Station, and those
partnerships have gone well. Faced with a skeleton budget, the agency is
looking for innovative ways to cooperate with the private sector in
order to continue research and exploration, as it did recently with a crowdsourcing campaign to improve its asteroid-finding algorithms. That campaign was launched with another private company, Planetary Resources, the billionaire-backed asteroid mining company....
When NASA has a skeleton budget it is FORCED to work with private exploitative companies.
This is really a shame. I am quite confident NASA was ordered to conduct this mess by Congress with private wealth companies rather than first perfecting it.
Is there no international treaty about the moon?
According to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty of the United Nations,
countries are prohibited from laying claim to the moon. The possibility
of lunar mining and the emergence of private space companies has
triggered a debate over lunar property rights, however.
When the USA pulls these stunts it sours international relations. I mean why cooperate with an International Space Station if competition is it's primary purpose. That isn't cooperation. It is Wall Street.
An international treaty organization has to be established regarding the Moon. Unbelievable. This entire idea is nothing but hubris.
The moon is not owned by NASA. The moon is not the wild west and it is not a 'Gold or Land Claim State' of the USA intended for homesteading.
