I call Pluto.

The first thing that came to my mind was Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon. It's about a guy who finances his private moon venture with what essentially amounts to a pump and dump scheme (among hundreds of others).

My belief is that getting there is hard enough that if a private venture actually established anything in space everyone would leave it alone. The dirtside costs of attack would simply be too great to risk.

Less expensive to simply duplicate whatever it was that the first arrival did. At least as far as facilities go. I suppose local resources might be a little different, but even there the dirtside risks are huge.

At least so far it's not even like the settlers moving across the American west. 1) There are no current occupants to dislodge 2) Right now there isn't a great deal differentiating one place from another or at least there are just as many known good places to attempt whatever you are doing. 3) The costs of boosting any sort of weaponry to try and dislodge whatever you want to capture are greater still.

My belief is that getting there is hard enough that if a private venture actually established anything in space everyone would leave it alone. The dirtside costs of attack would simply be too great to risk.

I'm not exactly sure how the substantive law would work given that it's based on a treaty, but I would imagine that an order could be enforced on the defendants by means of enforcing against their earthside assets. At present at least you just couldn't run any sort of space operation without a very substantial earth side support.

Just tie up their supplies and launch pads and they can either let them starve up there or pull them back.

Personally, I am looking forward to the day when the are property rights in space so that the government can Eminent Domain that property away from the poor and give it to rich planetary developers under a pretext that will never be challenged due to the SOS/TL ( Statute of Space/Time Limitations).

Can I get a "Hell, Yeah!!!!!"?

Ben,

I just don't see the country where those facilities are located going along with it when push comes to shove on it. The treaties will be honored as far as government non-interference with each other's doings goes, but not against those government's citizens.

I mean, say the Chinese do lodge a formal court proceeding, or even some international tribunal again a private US venture. Just like the Vienna Convention, do you really expect US courts to stop something the US political process has already approved? And the political process will go along for tax or bribery reasons.

The key is someone figuring out something that makes the venture worthwhile. Whether that is mining He-3 or some other task, until a profitable reason for doing it is found it won't be a problem and once that reason is found no one will be in position to stop it.

And if the US stops it, perhaps the Kenyans can be bough off or somewhere in Micronesia.

Melancton Smith,

That is what I was referring to about dirtside consequences. I don't think governments would do much of anything about people claiming rights to something that government has no ability to claim itself in any sort of reasonable time frame. I do however think governments would take notice if people started messing with their citizen's installations.

Notice how well orbital volume around the Earth has been shared for the most part. A war of sattelite attrision would help no one and so it hasn't happened. I see the same thing with operations further out.

Until space is populated enough that there are self-suffiencent groups I don't think there are going to be major property rights disputes.

Also, if such battles did become common I would think the tradional advantage goes to the defender would be even stronger than on land. For the attacker the battle isn't worth it unless they can capture the installation with little damage.

Soronel Haetir: I mean, say the Chinese do lodge a formal court proceeding, or even some international tribunal again a private US venture. Just like the Vienna Convention, do you really expect US courts to stop something the US political process has already approved? And the political process will go along for tax or bribery reasons.

Unless, of course, the Chinese are the ones doing the bribing.

Or for that matter, threatening to dump our T-bills if we don't go along...

Somebody already owns the sun (and the owner is a lawyer):

Lawyer Claims To "Own" The Sun

Lunar Land Grab: Celestial Real Estate Sales Soar

Unfortunately, I think the concerns noted in that Globe article about the commercialization of space necessarily entailing the [further] militarization of space are well-founded. Part of what private property rights entail is a promise that the state will exert its legitimate use of force against those who infringe on those rights. Alternatively, in the old days (e.g., the privateer-explorers also mentioned in the article), it meant endorsing a certain measure of "self-help," which with modern technology and the hazards of extraterrestrial existence have the potential to be fatal for everyone involved; the most likely outcome of a shooting match between two spaceships is that both end up dead.

The article mentioned that there are asteroids within striking distance (relatively speaking) with trillions of dollars in potential mineral wealth. Fair point, but that's counting things deep in the core of asteroids that we couldn't reach with current mining technology, or even two or three generations' worth of more advanced technology. (The Earth, after all, probably has quintillions of dollars worth wealth if you count all the molten minerals of the mantle and core.) In addition, many asteroids aren't near the Earth all that frequently. So what happens when three or four spacefaring powers all come to the same conclusion: that the ideal spot for launching a mining expedition to a particularly rich Aten is July 1, 2030, and that there is one particular spot on that asteroid where the most valuable minerals are closest to the surface?

I want to note only that I park in front of Buzz Aldrin's childhood home every day and my town clerk has chachkes that have been to space all over the place.

What's Buzz Aldrin worried about? If somebody tries to screw him over he'll just knock them out.

"allowing private property rights"

Allowing?

I call Pluto.

Screw that, I call the Lagrange points of the Sun/Earth system!

Right now there isn't a great deal differentiating one place from another or at least there are just as many known good places to attempt whatever you are doing.

People that think space is a vast emptiness have obviously never been assigned to calculate the minimum-energy orbital boost between planets for a homework assignment (hint, work out a time to leave such that your path is an elliptic orbit with minimal eccentricity (can't be none though))

There are orbits from which it is much easier to slingshot to far off places, there are stable points where you don't have to constantly expend fuel, there are shitty points.

The whole thing makes me wonder whether you get a point fixed relative to the stars or fixed in orbit relative to the sun or earth ...

Orin,

That actually brings up something I've wondered about before, given I know there are various sattelits already at L points, how big is the usable volume at each? I know the trojan regions are large enough even for Earth that it's going to take awhile before anyone complains about crowding.

I understand that theoretically there is /one/ spot, but that's only in a three body system aiui. So there is going to be fuel use to keep any of these stations anchored, it's just a matter of how big the region is before those fuel costs become prohibitive.

We do have private property in space, as anyone who is familiar with satellite television and radio is aware. The question of anyone's sovereignty is a closer one.

No one has genuinely reduced the Moon or any other real estate other than near Earth satellite orbits to possession, so the rule of capture remains an open question in that setting. Posting a flag and making a few steps, and then leaving, is more akin to littering than possession.

Notably, in a couple of other desolate and uninhabited places (the blue sea and Antarctica) recognition of private property rights is very limited. Both places treat the sovereignty issue that is necessary to resolve private property issues as something of a flag of choice issue -- the same has largely been used in spacecraft and space stations in orbit, which are generally under the jurisdiction of one or joint sovereigns, and upon which individual private property (and the property of sovereigns that is managed as property rather than as a commons) exists.

Antarctica is extra-territorial to any nation in most contexts, by the way, but is considered domestic for tax purposes, so it does not qualify for the foreign earned income exclusion. Astronaut salaries, like Aldrin's, while in space is also taxed as domestic income despite the fact the the federal income tax is commonly described as a tax on "worldwide income" an underinclusive term. If its taxed, it must exist as property.

On the other hand, the fact that everyone who has ever earned money while in space is a civil servant, and civil servant salaries are subject to tax even in otherwise federal income tax exempt places like Puerto Rico.