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Re: Space questions...



At 10:10 PM 7/22/96 -0700, Kevin 'Tex' Houston wrote:
>Kelly Starks x7066 MS 10-39 wrote:
>> The U.N. is largely composed of third world nations (their are more of them
>> then us) who generally have a socialist attitude.  They largly drafted
>> whats called the space treaty (which the U.S. has refused to sign, thou
>> Clinton did make some moves to reverse that policy).  Said treaty roughly
>> states that space is the common heritage of all mankind, and as a common
>> heritage no one person, group, or state can own or take profit from any
>> part of any planet, moon, orbit, or inter planetary transfer orbit.  Any
>> attemp to use space must be done by an international body that distributes
>> all profits equaly to all nations regardless of the participation in space
>> by that state.
>
>Kelly, I'm not sure that Socalist leanings are the real reason for the third
>world nations' wanting the space treaty.  It seems to me that the more
important
>reason, is that they are currently unable to participate in any commercial 
>exploitation, and want to stall the more developed countries from gaining an
>unbreakable foothold.  At least until they (the third world) can be in a
position 
>to catch up.

That just isn't fair. Isn't there anything anybody can do?

>This might work Ben, but Liberia is the wrong place for this.  It is on the
west
>side of an ocean.  A better place (for safety reasons) would be brazil, or
somewhere
>around VietNam (ie near the equator on the eastern rim of an ocean.) A company
>involved in commercial space flights (for sattelites) was trying to launch
out of
>french guianna (sp) but they found out that the local infrastructure was so bad
>that it was worth the loss of a boost from earth's rotation just to have access
>to Nasa's launch facilities and tracking stations etc.

Oh.. the only reason I said Liberia was that I heard many companies, especially
oil companies, like do stuff through Liberia cuz there are no restrictions. Did
I hear right?

>But back to legal issues.  Your idea would work only until the local government
>figured out that you were making money (or at least, you were spending so
much that 
>a few percent for taxes would hurt)  Then they would hold some space law
over your 
>head.  Or worse, they would just nationalize the launch facility, and put
you in jail
>for espionage, drugs, or violations of some obscure religious code.

So there's really nowhere on Earth where someone/some group could do private r&d
as well as launching?