Space Treaties and Artemis Accords

enough of anything out in space. And just to be clear, this wasn't how I actually planned to start this episode. But I'm on a roll now, so you can't stop me. Okay. So sound is a physical phenomena. We've talked about this before on Tech Stuff. It's where particles transmit vibrations outward

from a source of those vibrations. And as so long as you've got a bunch of physical particles of stuff, and those physical particles of stuff are close enough together to bump into each other when one gets pushed, but they're not so tightly packed that they aren't able to move at all, well, then sounds going to travel through that substance. Sound will go through water or solid objects

or the air. And in every case, these particles, like air molecules for example, vibrate and in the air this causes little fluctuations in air pressure, which in turn affect the tympanic membrane or ear drum in our ears, and we experience that as hearing sound. I've gone into that in greater detail on other podcasts, but that's the basics there. Well, in space, there's a vacuum or essentially a vacuum, and a vacuum is an area devoid of matter. Most of

space is empty with no matter in it. And if there's no matter, there's no medium through which vibrations can travel. The vibrations can't go anywhere, so there's there's no sound, there's no vibration. But that's not what this episode is about anyway. I just wanted to say, it's not just that there's no air out in space. There's no anything out in space. That's the problem. Okay, let's get to

what this episode is actually about. It's about the rules we humans have come up with when it comes to space exploration, because, as it turns out, human beings can be amazing, but we can also be pretty terrible and space holds a lot of potential for amazing and terrible things, with or without our involvement. So in order to try and guide us towards being more amazing and less terrible, very smart people got together to come up with some basic rules that we should all follow. Basic vague rules,

but they were kind of vague on purpose. Now recently those rules got a bit of any extension with the Artemis Accords, a collection of guidelines for lunar exploration, you know, like exploring the Moon, and those were developed by NASA. Now, as I record this, NASA has announced that eight countries, including the United States, have signed the Accords. There are some notable absences in those eight countries, some that might change over time and a couple that probably won't. But

we'll get to all that first. Why do we need rules in the first place. Early in the history of the space exploration there really were just two big countries that we're making any progress at all, and those two countries were the United States and the then Soviet Union. Complicating matters is that the USA and then US s R. We're not the best of buddies, to put it lightly.

In fact, the two nations were in the middle of the Cold War, which was defined as the open rivalry between nations that doesn't reached the point of open hostilities. The Cold War was an era of propaganda. It was an era of posturing, political maneuvering, and attempts to undermine each other, like each country was doing this actively against the other country. I grew up at the tail end of the Cold War, and it was not a fun time.

And you could convincingly argue that we're seeing kind of a similar situation today between the United States and a couple of other countries. But that's a matter for a political podcast, not for tech stuff. However, it's important to note that the rush to space wasn't just about demonstrating technical superiority over an adversary, though that did play into it a lot. There were also some pretty heavy implications that go along with the capability of launching stuff into space.

So by the nineteen fifties, the Soviet Union had developed its own nuclear weapons, and when the USSR launched the first man made satellite to orbit the Earth, you know, spoot Nick, that was in October nineteen fifty seven. And if the Soviets could launch a payload into space, they might also be able to mount a nuclear warhead onto a ballistic missile and send it across the world. You know, like at the United States, there would be no need

to load up bombers aircraft to carry nuclear weapons. Those could be intercepted and shot down before they could deploy

their weapons. So this was a terrifying possibility, the idea of a nation being able to press up button, so to speak, and send a volley of missiles armed with nuclear warheads all the way across the world, and it ushered in not just the space race, but also helped boost the nuclear arms race and the escalation of the philosophy of mutually assured destruction, a truly awful awful approach to world peace, the idea of well, we have to

be peaceful because otherwise we will literally obliterate one another. Not exactly comforting if you're a little kid. And so, partly to demonstrate that the US was just as capable as the Soviet Union when it comes to long distance rocketry, and partly to attempt to secure the coveted title of most technologically and scientifically advanced nation on Earth. We saw a lot of rapid development in the fledgling space industry

in the United States. Now, don't get me wrong. While the motivation to fund such development may have come from less noble origins, the people who are actually working to achieve what seemed impossible. We're mostly focusing on solving difficult engineering problems. They were using math and science and technology and human ingenuity to do some really incredible stuff. Meanwhile, some began to think ahead a little bit about the

implications of base capability. If we were to send satellites and later people into space, we might one day also send other stuff out there, weapons, for example, or colonists, or mining operations, or all sorts of things. And there were no guidelines or laws about that. I mean, who

the heck has jurisdiction out in space? The space cops someone called red letter media, and so representatives in the United Nations began to work out language that would help set expectations when it came to space travel and use the United Nations considerable clout to convince member nations to sign on in agreement. And some nations this would be less of a lift than for other nations. Because many countries were more or less bystanders with the space race.

They didn't really have any involvement in the space industry. So they could sign a treaty, but you could argue it wasn't really meaningful because they weren't pursuing space exploration or any sort of space industry. But the UN established there needed to be some ground rules for space. Ground rules for space. Well, I feel it's that's not just a weird phrase, but possibly an early discarded David Bowie

song ground rules for space. I'm getting off track. This would ultimately lead to the drafting of what we would call the Outer Space Treaty, but even that had a few predecessors. So for example, nineteen one years before the Outer Space Treaty of nineteen sixty seven, during the sixteenth session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, the UN adopted a resolution called seventeen twenty one UH. The

Assembly did this without a vote. I should add, and this resolution begins quote the General Assembly recognizing the common interest of mankind and furthering the peaceful uses of outer space and the urgent need to strengthen international cooperation in

this important field. Believing that the exploration and use of outer space should be only for the betterment of mankind and to the benefit of States, irrespective of the stage of their economic or scientific development, commends to states for their guidance in the exploration and use of outer space. The following principles international law, including the Charter of the

United Nations, applies to outer space and celestial bodies. Outer space and celestial bodies are free for exploration and use by all states in conformity with international law, and are not subject to national appropriation. The resolution goes on to invite a committee one called the Peaceful Uses of Outer

Space to research potential legal problems and their solutions. Subsequent resolutions, such as Resolution eighteen zero two and Resolution nineteen sixty two would further emphasize that space exploration should be treated as an endeavor with the goal of benefiting all people's of Earth, not just the individual nations that were involved in the actual pursuit of space exploration. Moreover, that the

guiding principles should be overall peaceful. As this was going on, the United States and the Soviet Union continued their space race, with the Soviets getting a bunch of firsts like the first human in orbit UH and the first spacewalk, but the US wasn't far behind and registered a few firsts of its own, including the first case of two spacecraft

docking while in space. Moreover, in nineteen sixty two, President John F. Kennedy famously declared that by the end of that decade, the United States would put astronauts on the Moon's surface. At the same time, the world was growing far more tense as the US and uss ARE were ramping up the Cold War. Here on Earth. The US had installed ballistic missiles and countries like Turkey and Italy that were capable of reaching locations within the Soviet Union.

The United States had also partly funded an invasion of Cuba to try and depose Fidel Castro in the Bay of Pigs invasion. The reasons behind this go well beyond the scope of our podcast, but a consequence of that action was that Castro would reach out to the Soviet Union and ask that the USSR installed nuclear weapons on Cuba as a deterrent for any future invasion attempts, and the USSR agreed and began to ship and kind of

smuggle nuclear weapons into Cuba. And Cuba is just a hundred miles or so off the coast of Florida in the United States, and the nuclear arming of Cuba led to a series of hurried and tense talks that fortunately resulted in the uss ARE withdrawing weapons from Cuba and the US dismantling the weapons it had placed in Europe. But historians point to the crisis as the closest that the two nations ever got to act initiating a nuclear war.

While the Cuban missile crisis ended without a war, the antagonism between the United States and the USSR was undeniable, and with both nations launching missions into space, committees within the United Nations felt compelled to outline a more thorough set of rules regarding space exploration and how space should

be treated from a political and global perspective. And that's how the Outer Space Treaty of nineteen sixty seven, otherwise known as the Treaty on Principles governing the Activities of States in the exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, would come about. The United Nations opened the Treaty for signatures in three locations on January nineteen sixty seven. Those three locations were Washington, d C. In the United States, London in England, and

Moscow in the Soviet Union. Like the earlier resolutions, the Outer Space Treaty largely lays out general rules for space exploration, with the focus on peaceful applications that benefit all of humanity, rather than space exploring nations hoarding knowledge and resources just for their grubby, own little selves. It also laid out general rules that no one can claim any part of space as part of the nation. You can't, you know, map out a sector of space and say this belongs

to Germany, or I claim the Moon for Luxembourg. I mean, you could say it, but if you sign the treaty, everyone would give you mad side eyed and say bro for reals, non reality. There would be a lot of pressure here on Earth, and not just atmospheric pressure, so they would say, you know, just play nice, don't don't do that. Also, claiming any part of space would be

really hard to back up. But then this treaty was made in part as an effort to prevent potential conflicts in the future, rather than as a response to a current crisis, so this was kind of future proofing space exploration. Now, there are seventeen articles in that Outer Space Treaty, and I'm going to summarize them quickly just give you an

overview of which what each one is. So the first is that bit I talked about where space exploration results should be done with the goal of benefiting all peoples of all countries, whether or not those countries are in the space exploration biz. Second is the bit that says no nation can claim sovereignty over any part of space. That's article too. The third is that space exploration should

be conducted within the parameters of established international laws. So, in other words, if it's illegal in the middle of the ocean, where no single nation really has dominion, it would also be illegal in space. The next article says putting nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in orbit around Earth is a big no no. You're also not allowed to put military installations on celestial bodies

like the Moon. And then the next article states that astronauts are envoys for all of humanity and that should an astronaut need emergency assistance, any capable country should agree to help, regardless of where the astronaut is from back

on Earth. So, in other words, if if a Soviet cosmonaut were in danger, then and an American crew had the opportunity to help, the cosmonaut, it would be the responsibility of the Americans to lend that help, regardless of whether or not the political tensions between the United States and the USSR were, you know, at all time high.

Article six says that countries will be held responsible for any activities they conduct in outer space, whether those come from a government origin or from a non governmental entity within the country. So, in other words, if a company like Coca Cola were to install nuclear weapons on the Moon as part of the Cola Wars, you know, they really ramped up, the United States would be held accountable for that transgression because Coca Cola's headquarters are right down

the street for me. Seven. Article seven states that if you launch something and in the process of the launch you cause damage to some other country, it's tots your fault and you need to exchange insurance information. Article eight is that if you launch it into space, that thing is yours. It belongs to you, and it doesn't matter how far away it gets from you. If it goes out of the Solar System, it still belongs to you.

Article nine says that all nations agreed to explore space responsibly, taking care not to interfere with any other nations activities in space as well as avoid bringing potentially contaminating material back to Earth. So essentially, this is like I'm drawing a line down the middle of space, and that side is yours and this side is mine. Not not so much that, but more like, here's a little imaginary border

around what I'm doing. Please don't go across it because you might hurt what's going on, and everyone's supposed to, you know, kind of agree to that. All right, So we're about halfway through the articles, but I think I need to drink some tang. That's a space joke, So

let's take a quick break. All right. We're up to Article ten of the nineteen sixty seven Space Treaty that one says that space exploring nations shall quote consider, on a basis of equality, any requests by any other states parties to the Treaty to be afforded an opportunity to observe the flight of space objects launched by those states end quote. In other words, to share expertise when it comes to stuff like spacecraft flying through and stuff. You

can't prevent other countries from serving what you're doing. It's kind of a transparency argument. Article eleven This one says that nations should share the results of their space exploration work with the Secretary General of the United Nations, who then has a responsibility to disseminate that information to the other nations that are within the u N. So essentially saying, if you learn something cool, you've got to share it

with the rest of the class. Article twelve says that if a nation allows members of another nation into their space stuff in outer space, it's expected that the visitor will extend the same courtesy to the host reciprocity. In other words, Article thirteen covers cases in which there may be an international inter governmental organization or a group of organizations working together, and how to resolve any questions or

issues between these should they come up. The actual wording is a bit clunky, but essentially tries to create a way to work out any issues before they graduate from issues and become full blown problems. Article fourteen just covers the process of signing the treaty, saying that even if a state doesn't sign the treaty before it's enforced, it can join at any point afterwards, so it's no sweat if you couldn't hoof it to Washington Moscow or London,

you can sign it later. Fifteen says that any state that signs the treaty may propose amendments to the treaty. Article sixteen says the nation can withdraw from the treaty, but only after the treaty has been in force for a full year. So after it's been signed by enough signatories to be put in force, you could wait a year. Then you could announce your intention to withdraw from the treaty, and the date of actual withdrawal would be a another

year from the date of request. So, in other words, the very earliest you could back out after you signed the treaty would be two years after the treaty was actually put into force. And finally, Article seventeen covers how the treaty is made available in various languages and locations and authenticated so that the nations of the United Nations can actually read the ding dang durn thing. It's just

like here's where it lives kind of deal. Now, since the U N entered the treaty into force, more than one nations have signed it, and politics being what they are, some of the nations that had signed it are, you know, no longer nations Today, it's changed, and some nations that have signed it didn't exist as sovereign nations at least back in ninety seven. So I guess the fluid nature of humanity points to why the treaty was a good

idea in the first place. The u N would consider subsequent rules for space exploration to expand on this space Treaty in the following years. Some of those would be ratified by space exploring nations and some were not. For example, there's the Agreement governing the Activities of States on the Moon and other celestial bodies, also known as just the Moon Agreement, which the u N opened for signatures in

December of nineteen seventy nine. It took several years for the measure to receive the five signatures it would need to enter into force, with Austria being the fifth in July. Since its introduction, no nation that has actually sent missions, manned or otherwise to the Moon at least successfully has signed on. That means that while the treaty has entered into force, none of the countries that are actually sending stuff to the Moon have signed onto that part that

particular agreement, which makes it largely meaningless. Though, I should point out that India, which does have a space program but has failed in a recent attempt to send a lunar mission, did sign it, or is at least participating in the agreement, but has not as of yet ratified the agreement. So why is that? Why are the country reads that actually are sending stuff to the Moon. Why have they not signed on with this agreement that's been

available since nineteen nine. Well, many of the provisions of the agreement kind of fall in line with the older Space Treaty, you know, it's more of the same, but they extend it to not just the Moon but also lunar orbit. Now, if I'm reading the original treaty correctly, I think you could reasonably argue that lunar orbit counts

as space. Therefore prohibiting stuff like the deployment of nuclear weapons and lunar orbit is somewhat redundant, because the original treaty says you're not supposed to do that in space period. But my point being that the Moon Agreement was making a point of saying the Moon is not to be weaponized or leveraged for militaristic purposes. Perhaps Article seven of the Moon agreement is where actual nations that had been sending lunar missions started to feel a reluctance to sign on.

That article states the countries sending up Moon missions quote shall take measures to prevent the disruption of the existing balance of its environment end quote, which might be seen as too great a limitation by some nations that are determined to exploit the Moon's resources. But I really think it was Article eleven that did it. That article states, quote, the Moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind, which finds its expression in the provisions of

this agreement end quote. And then it goes on to say, quote neither the surface nor the subsurface of the Moon, nor any part thereof, or natural resources in place, shall become property of any state, international, in, inter governmental or non governmental organization, notational organization, or non governmental entity, or

of any natural person end quote. So, in other words, while the agreement doesn't expressly forbid mining the Moon for resources, the agreement calls for those resources to not belong to any one company, person, or nation. You know, it doesn't matter who dug it up. It doesn't belong to them. It rather belongs to humankind. The article goes on to propose an international body that would determine how such resources

might be put to any use. And I'm guessing that's where a lot of the countries that were sending up missions to the Moon said, yeah, no thanks, but hey, what the heck is up there anyway? I mean, what resources could possibly be on the Moon apart from dust and some moon rocks, And why would we want to spend the resources and incur the risks of such a

complicated operation in the first place. Well as the m I T Technology Review put it in an article titled Here's how we could mind the Moon for rocket fuel? As a spoiler alert right there, that article published on May ninety they said, quote, the Moon is a treasure trove of value bowl resources, gold, platinum, and many rare earth metals await extraction to be used in next generation electronics. Non radioactive helium three could one day power nuclear fusion reactors.

End quote. Now, it sounds as though a lot of those resources would be ones that we would want to harvest from the Moon and then bring back to Earth, though we have to keep in mind that that approach would be outrageously expensive. It would need to be a truly remarkable return, like the mother load of all mother loads, to make this a viable alternative to just mining those

same resources here on Earth. Even if the resources are far less plentiful on Earth, we don't have to go into space to mind them, right, or we would have to reach a pretty bleak point where the resources here on Earth are so incredibly difficult to access or are so incredibly rare that it necessitates the risk of acquiring those same things off planet. But that's that's a big

bar that you have to meet. But the most precious resource in the long run is the one that we have a lot of here on Earth, and that's water. I mean, like our planet's surfaces covered with the stuff. But it's really precious on the Moon. And that's because we all know that water is made out of hydrogen and oxygen, right. Well, if you split water molecules apart so that you harvest the hydrogen and the oxygen, and then you liquefy both the hydrogen and the oxygen, you've

got yourself some rocket fuel. Not to mention, you could also harvest oxygen so that you have you know, oxygen, the stuff we need to breathe, and as I've been told there's not a whole lot of that out and outer space, so being able to make oxygen for the

purposes of life support would be really helpful. Uh. And obviously this would be an enormous benefit for any mission that aims to explore our Solar System or beyond while relying on stuff like rocket propulsion, right, because by making rocket fuel on the Moon or within lunar orbit, we could create refueling stations. So imagine a station that's in lunar orbit and spacecraft from the Moon are bringing fresh supplies of rocket fuel to this. This lunar orbit station,

or maybe the station itself is a processing facility. It's just taking in the raw oxygen and raw hydrogen and making rocket fuel there. Meanwhile, spacecraft from Earth will swing by the Moon for a refuel before they head off somewhere else like Mars or whatever. It would mean that we wouldn't have to load down the spacecraft on Earth with so much fuel. We would only need enough fuel to launch it off the planet and send it to

the Moon for its refueling. And that's great because fuel is heavy stuff, and as we add fuel to a spacecraft here on Earth, we increase the overall weight of the spacecraft, which in turn means that we need to make sure that we have enough fuel to get not just the spacecraft, but all the fuel that's carrying up

into space. This is a really delicate balancing act. We need enough fuel to get to where we're going, but it's not just as simple as adding a few thousand gallons here or there, because that added weight changes the requirements we face to get something into space in the first place. And as Austin Powers would say, oh no, I've gone cross eyed again, a refuel station in lunar orbit would decrease the amount of fuel that we would need to produce and use here on Earth per launch.

Plus rocket fuel is really expensive, so by splitting that up between Earth and lunar operations, we might be able to be more cost effective with our fuel production, depending on how we do it, Although that could just turn out to be just as expensive or maybe even more expensive, but easier to do it. It's kind of hard to

say because we haven't done it yet. In addition, here in the United States, we've seen the rise of the private space industry, something that has become necessary as NASA, you know, the government's funded space agency in the United States has faced challenges in several forms, like in budget cutbacks,

failed projects, and occasional organizational problems. Moreover, while we in the United States, at least those of us from Generation X or maybe older generations, we tend to think of space exploration as a NASA thing, the truth is that the technologies that are used in space exploration come from hundreds of non governmental companies, you know, the private sector. It's not like NASA has a space ship factory where the organization creates all the launch vehicles and spacecraft for

all the missions. You've got companies like Boeing, lockeed Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and many others that are building the components and the spacecraft that NASA uses. Add to that companies like SpaceX, and you've got a heavily involved private sector. And most companies won't quote share the assets we create with all of humanity and of benevolence way up in their mission statement. That's just not you know, important to them. Companies exist to make profit for those who run or

fund the company. So if the space industry is reliant on these private sector entities to get things done, and if those entities are going to be doing the heavy lifting, I mean, even on the Moon, where gravity is just one sixth of what we have here on Earth, then it stands to reason that it's not likely a country like the United States is going to agree to sign over any resources that it harvests to some international body

that will determine how those resources can be used. And that brings us up to a new proposal, one that was first unveiled in the spring of twenty twenty, and it is one proposed by NASA, has some early buy in from a few countries and a few notable object actions, and it's called the Artemis Accords, and I'll tell you

more about them after this quick break. In the United States, NASA has announced plans to return to the Moon by twenty twenty four project Artemists, and aggressive schedule to be sure, and one that I wonder if we can make in a world that has been largely sidetracked by the COVID pandemic. I was skeptical we could achieve it without the COVID problem. With the COVID problem, I'm really skeptical. Doesn't mean it's impossible,

but it's going to require a whole lot of work. However, assuming that all plans are still pointing to a new crew going to to the Moon and we would actually see the first woman visit Earth's natural satellite on that mission, then NASA wants to work out some rules and set x spectations as well as create standards and things like the equipment that we would use in lunar operations to allow for international cooperation. Now, standards are important because everything

really needs to work well together. Think of it as being almost modular, like the International Space Station was designed in such a way. So one obvious example of why this is important would be docking mechanisms. It's important to standardize them so that any two spacecraft, no matter where they are from or who built them, would be able to dock with one another safely and securely so that they could you know, share resources or or do a

rescue operation or whatever it may be. But as Christopher Johnson, a space law advisor, and you know how cool is that title. But as Christopher Johnson has said, quote, We're not going to wait to negotiate a treaty that we think is in our national interest end quote, we being

the United States. See treaties take a lot of time because you've got so many different parties that are involved that might object to one part over another, and then you have to amend it and you know, end up showing it to everybody again see if there are any

other objections. And you're talking about numerous committee meetings and drafts and approvals and ratification steps, and at the end of that process, there's no guarantee that the outcome that the actual treaty that's been drafted is going to be one that the United States would agree to in the first place. So instead, we're gonna make our own Moon agreement with black Jack and wait, no, sorry, sorry, got

Futurama there for a second. Anyway, NASA's alternative to this, to to waiting around for another treaty or you know, ratifying the nineteen seventy nine Moon Agreement, happens to be the Artemis Accords. Now, these are named after the mythological artemists twin sister to a follow the Goddess of the Moon and also Goddess of the Hunt, and lots of other stuff. NASA unveiled these accords on May twenty. The actual signing of the accords happened in October twenty twenty.

More on that in just a minute. The subtitle for the accords is Principles for Cooperation in the Civil Exploration and Use of the Moon, Mars, Comets and Asteroids for Peaceful Purposes. So already you can see that this appears to be treading, you know, familiar ground or regulars I guess, as the Moon Agreement from the United Nations and the Treaty Outer Space Treaty before that. But there are some important differences, the big one being about all that exploitation

of resources. But I'll get to that in a second. So the accords state that quote the principles set out in these Accords are intended to apply to civil space activities conducted by the civil space agencies of each signatory. These activities may take place on the Moon, Mars, comets and asteroids, including their surfaces and subsurfaces, as well as in orbit of the Moon or Mars, in the Lagrangian points for the Earth Moon system, and in transit between

these celestial bodies and locations. End quote. Now, the accords have some sections that are pretty much in alignment with the articles, or at least some of the articles from the Outer Space treaty. There are sections about releasing scientific data gathered during experiments in order to benefit all of humanity. For example, there's also a section that stresses the importance of all activities on the Moon and Mars, etcetera, should

be for peaceful purposes. There's another section that's about keeping outer space heritage such as moon landing sites safe, as these are records of important historical events. But then we

get to section ten space resources. Under Section ten ub section two, we get the following passage quote, the signatories affirm that the extraction of space resources does not inherently constitute national appropriation under Article two of the Outer Space Treaty, and that contracts and other legal instruments related to space

resources should be consistent with that treaty end quote. Now, if we dip back to Article two of the other Space Treaty, that's the one that says no one can claim a part of space as belonging to any particular nation or entity. So, in a way, the accords liken the extraction of resources in space to what we do with oceans. So nations can extract resources from otions, even into international waters. You can do that to an extent anyway, but no nation can claim the oceans for its own. Likewise,

the accords allow for a little more wiggle room. You can't claim the Moon, for example, but you could claim the stuff you mine from the Moon. Since the U n's Moon Agreement has only a few signatories on it, and only one of those has ever attempted a lunar mission, and that one failed, the Artemis Accords could become a real set of standards for lunar exploration and exploitation, as well as the principles for mining mars and asteroids and

comments and whatnot. Eight nations have signed the Accords in October as founding members. They are, in alphabetical order, Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Interestingly, Australia was also a party to the Moon Agreement, though not a signatory. NASA plans to add more nations to

the Accords over time, having them sign on. But there are a couple of glaring gaps in that list that are not likely to join anytime soon, and that is a bit of a problem. And one of the big ones is Russia. While it's been decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has carried on the tradition

of space exploration. Heck, one of the reasons the private space industry is so important in the United States is that it is an alternative to depending upon Russia when it comes to launching missions with a crew up into space. Once the space Shuttle program ended, the United States didn't have an alternative, and so we've had to depend upon Russian spacecraft to get people up and back to space and from space. But Russia did not sign the Artemis Accords,

so that ends up being an issue. Dmitri Regozzen, the head of the Russian space program, called out the accords for being quote to US centric end quote of NASA's plan to return earned to the Moon in general, just the Artemist project, not the Accords in particular. He has said, quote with the lunar project, we are observing the departure of our American partners from the principles of cooperation and mutual support that developed during cooperation on the I s S,

the International Space Station. They see their program not as international, but similar to NATO, there is America, everyone else must help and pay to be honest, we are not interested in participating in such a project. End quote. As for the Artemis Accords themselves, according to the Verge, he actually compared those to a lunar invasion in a tweet that

has since been deleted. Yikes. Now, some might dismiss the objections of Russia as pure political posturing to be alliterative, but I'd say Demitri is not alone in criticizing the Artemis Accords. Uh. Aaron Bowley and Michael Buyer's Uh. Those are two researchers. They wrote a piece for the Policy Forum of Science magazine, and they said that the Accords were problematic. The pieces titled U S Policy puts the safe development of space at Risk, which kind of gives

you an indication of how they feel about this. They state that the Accords quote, if accepted by many nations, could enable the U S interpretation of international space law to prevail and make the United States, as the licensing nation for most of the world's space companies, the de facto gatekeeper to the Moon, asteroids, and other celestial bodies

end quote. Buyers and Bulli argue that the Accords are a thinly veiled effort to further the commercial interests of the United States without regard for the international community or the principles behind the Outer Space Treaty. Now, the other big absence from the list of countries that have signed the accords would be China. China hasn't necessarily refused to

sign the same way Russia did. I mean, the Chinese government might very well agree with Russia's point of view, but whether that's the case or not, it's a moot point. Because NASA isn't allowed to engage with China. It's against the law. See back in two, US Representative John Culberson from Texas urged then President Barack Obama against cooperating with

China's space program. He argued that the Chinese government was not being transparent about the goals of their space program, and that by aiding China, the United States could be

putting itself and other nations in danger. Further down the line, that would lead to Congress eventually proposing and passing a law that says, quote, none of the funds made available by this division may be used for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or the Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop design plan promulgate, implement, or execute a bile out ural policy, program, order, or contract of any kind,

to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese owned company unless such activities are specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of enactment of this division end quote. So yeah, that's off limits. NASA officials have said that the agency stands ready to engage with China should Congress ever change this law. Ever, you know, put a new law in place that would allow such a thing, But that largely depends upon how

China behaves in general. And I would say that right now, signs are not particularly positive as far as things changing enough for Congress to reverse that previous decision. And so there is very little chance China is going to join the accords in the near future, and that represents a pretty big problem. A lot of the accords focuses on stuff like way is to avoid conflict and reducing the

chance for problems with stuff like space debris. But if two major space powers either can't or won't sign those accords, then it's not particularly helpful. The US might use the accords to justify its own operations on in space kind of a see, we're behaving by the rules that we happen to have set up for everybody else. It's just that not everyone agreed to play by those rules, that's all. And I realized this comes across as being a bit cynical, but I also think it's kind of how things are

shaking out. The reality of the situation is we've already seen some initial steps toward a future where space mining is a real thing, whether it's on the Moon or asteroids or comets or Mars or whatever. In fourteen, the Rosetta orbiter was the first man made object to soft land on a comet nucleus. As I record this episode, there is a spacecraft called Osiris Rex that is preparing to touch down on an asteroid in order to gather samples from that asteroid and then return back to Earth.

It's a NASA project. There are numerous companies that are aiming to make asteroid mining and space mining a real industry. They are working toward that right now, and so having some rules seems like it would be a really good idea.

But I definitely can understand why researchers and some nations might object to those rules coming from one specific country and everyone else agrees to go along with it, especially a country that has a very large vested interest in the space industry, as opposed to an agreement that has

been arrived at through international treaty processes. Will these accords go down in history as an agreement that led to an unprecedented era of space exploration and exploitation, or will they be held up as the United States attempting to justify practices that the international community hasn't really signed off on at large? What will Russia and China end up doing? Is space destined to become the next Gold Rush land grab? Well,

that's exactly what treaties are supposed to prevent. Now, if I'm being honest, I think we're gonna be in for a few messy decades on this one unless we see some real international cooperation on the treaty front that has buy in from multiple states. And I just don't know how that's gonna happen in a world where too many parties see potential profit out in space. There's there's too many interests that conflict with one another, So I think it's just gonna be a rough thing to work out

and it's coming. It may not be you know, within the next five years or so, but I'm certain within my lifetime it's gonna end up being a bigger deal. So I hope we can work that out well. That rab so this episode about Space Treatise and Moon Agreements and Artemis Accords, and it really does tie back into technology, and in multiple ways, not just the technology that requires us to get out there and make this stuff happen, you know, to have like a viable mining operation or

lunar you know, base or whatever. It also ties back in because the resources we might mind, some of those might come back to Earth and end up being part of the next generation of technological gadgets we depend upon, and it helps us get around things like the problems we find with rare earth metals, although honestly, the real pub problem with rare earth metals isn't necessarily their scarcity so much as the ethics behind it. But that's a

that's a topic for another episode entirely. As for this one, it's time for me to sign off. If you guys have any suggestions for future topics of tech stuff, please reach out and let me know. The best way is to do that on Twitter and they handle is text stuff h s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.