My space

If we really want to explore space, maybe we should sell it off to the highest bidders

Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/18/my_space?mode=PF

By Drake Bennett

May 18, 2008

If the past few years have taught us anything, it is to not underestimate
the intoxicating allure of property. Real estate, it turns out, brings out the
adventurer in all of us.

It's unsurprising, then, that a few enterprising thinkers are hoping to
harness that power in a more exotic neighborhood: space....

One of the more straightforward models for celestial private property has
been put forward by Wasser. He made his case most recently in an article in the
winter issue of the Journal of Air Law and Commerce: The United States and
other national governments, he argues, should pass what he calls "land claim
recognition" legislation...

A third model tries to ensure that the most advanced national and private
programs wouldn't scoop up all the available celestial property as soon as
it became accessible. The extraterrestrial property regime envisioned by Glenn
Reynolds, a professor and space law specialist at the University of Tennessee
Law School, and ROBERT MERGES, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT BERKELEY'S BOALT HALL SCHOOL OF LAW, would be, in most ways, a basic
first-come, first-served system. But it would have one key condition: A portion
of the total available property would be set aside for a period of time to give
developing nations a chance to catch up and to bid once they'd reached the
point at which they were technologically and financially able....