[ExI] China to Own the Moon by 2027

Kelly Anderson kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Mon Apr 2 16:36:59 UTC 2012


On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 12:31 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 01, 2012 at 04:30:24PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>> I don't remember discussing this here, maybe before I was here... but
>> it's a big deal that we should consider on this list.
>
> There's the only way to claim land: ability to defend it.

You don't see the third way... China won't need to defend it if the US
is not in a position to function independently of China. Are we going
to go to war to defend our right to the moon? Are we going to risk not
having Chinese goods on our shelves? That seems like a difficult
political play. For one thing, we would lose short of firing off our
nukes and everyone looses then. Short of going to war, what are we
going to do? Stop buying Chinese goods? Unlikely. By 2025, we'll be
further in debt to China, they'll have a bigger cash reserve than they
do today. Their population will be larger and much more educated than
ours. We will have no way to stop them. The international court system
might find against China, but what would they do? What remedy would
there be?

If you think Treaties protect you, you might want to take a quick look
at US history with regards to Native Americans... Just saying...

> I don't
> see how can any state attempt to claim the whole of the Moon, if anything,
> it would be some strategic locations (area at the poles, some mineral
> deposits, etc).

I'm sure they will begin by claiming a portion, but if we don't object
to that, they'll just claim the whole thing. If we do object to it,
they will probably still claim the whole thing. China is one of the
few nations on earth that could stand entirely on its own even if
there were a world wide embargo against them... there would be a
little pain, but it would hurt the rest of us just as much as it would
hurt them.

The surface area of the moon is equivalent to the land mass of North
and South America put together. That's a LOT of real estate. It's
worth a Quadrillion dollars for heck sake!

> I don't see how US in a position to barter away something that isn't
> theirs.

All we have to barter is OUR claim to the moon. If China claims the
moon, and the US gives up it's claim to it, then who will step up and
say, "Hey, part of that should be ours!"????

> A kind of a testing ground is Antarctica. If mining moves there and
> somebody contests the 1959 treaty then we'll likely see the same pattern
> on the Moon.

I am not intimately familiar with the Antarctic treaty, but one huge
difference is that China is not even a signatory to that treaty.

Here's the Antarctic Treaty:
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_antarctica/geopolitical/treaty/update_1959.php

And the Space Treaty:
http://www.unoosa.org/pdf/publications/STSPACE11E.pdf

By the way, the United States (and everyone else) has violated
"Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space" a
number of times by launching secret spy satellites.

Article XVI (Of the Space Treaty)
Any State Party to the Treaty may give notice of its withdrawal from
the Treaty one year after its entry into force by written notification
to the Depositary Governments. Such withdrawal shall take effect one
year from the date of receipt of this notification.

-Kelly



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