"..this is ours. Stay away. I claim this for my company

im sure youve all read this!

"predict that within about three years of private human orbital flights…you’ll have the first private teams of people stockpiling fuel on orbit and making a bee-line for the Moon,” Diamandis said.

“They’ll not ask for permission…maybe cryptically hiding what they are doing…but there will be somebody making a bee-line to the Moon,” Diamandis said. The first private team to reach the lunar landscape will stake out the ground. “They’ll say this is ours. Stay away. I claim this for my company…my new nation,” he said.

This is not good! can anyone actualy deny that this will happen, no!
With all the funding of the teams we could actually start a war for land, organisations competing for land, fighting over what is actually theirs! they will claim the land, without governments to stp this happening, so far from home, who will stop them,!? the first ppl there may start to have masses of land to themselves keeping others away.

Can anyone again honestly say that there will not be wars between different organisations claiming land?!!! no!

We can't trust every person that builds ships to go there can we? they may be political economical reasons, reasojns to do with greed power and money! the very people we are funding and sending may infact be the early beginners of the first off earth riots and wars!

any opinions!? no one nation can govern them up there right?!

whoooo evil empire scenario! back them now but will we pay later?
one word "greed"


Rob

This already has been discussed in some threads in the Regulations section. May be some threads here in the Spaceflight Cafe too.

The danger of the lunar environemnet currently bars each kind of war because nearly no weapons are avalibale which can kill people without destroying habitats. The only weapons which can do so are neutron bombes which aren't available to privates.

What's left is destruction of such production equipment which doesn't need the presence of people or workers. Such destruction simply is a crime.

The companies will be dependet of Earth for a very long period of time - and so justice will get rid of criminal companies down here on Earth.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Such conflict is highly uneconomical, and is highly unlikely to be executed by any rational corporation: you don't want to blow up the other guy, you want to take over his resources. In order for you to do that, they have to be in one piece when you finally get at 'em.

The Moon is big enough for many competing teams or companies or countries to coexist without interfering with each other. It is also hard to get to, so nobody will have resources to waste on a war. I would expect a situation much like Antarctica. There have been no major problems there. At least not yet.

The Moon has a surface area comparable to North America, with flat and mountain zones, warmer and colder areas. The poles and some other areas are likely to contain concentrations of interesting materials, which would be worth “fighting over”. Yet even there, the deposits are apt to cover large areas compared to what any company can quickly develop and dominate. The existing space concept of “noninterference with established uses” is likely to prevail, and be sufficient for some time.

The big problem will be with the mega claim approach – “I claim all that I can see” – from this mountaintop or orbit. War may be hard to economically justify on the Moon, but sabotage is less expensive, and can be hard to prove. Extraterrestrial development is certain to be colorful! For optimists who dream of the UN approach, such organizations always have and always will be politically subverted over a period of time until their actual performance – compared to the theory - is a joke. Pragmatic considerations – driven by economics – will force effective operational rules between actual players. But this will not preclude “colorful” negotiations.

Antarctica is not a valid comparison. Neither mining not agriculture is practical there to sustain a colony, or produce exports, and both will be established on the Moon. It will soon be less expensive to sustain a population on the Moon than at the South Pole. The Antarctic will always remain a “cash sink”, and the Moon will not. There are plenty of available cash sinks, so there is no need to fight over this icy one.

I was at that speech!! It was so good!! Personally I don't think there's any valid concern over lunar wars. They can't start until there's enough stuff up there for the moon to already be self-sustaining for all rights and purposes, and that's longer than 8 years away.

don't even think about it. everything outside Earth's atmosphere belongs to me!!!!

Cool, so if I kill you, I'm able to own all, except earth

The wars don't need to be fought in space lol

I'll kill him for you, Sigurd -- if I get half.

NO WAY.
NO WAY!
NO WAAAAAAAYYYYY is that going to happen. Not soon anyway.

Just because nobody knows for sure that there is oil in Antarctica, and just because exploration is expensive and prohibited, that doesn’t mean there isn't any. When oil gets expensive enough, you will see pressure to exploit Antarctic resources. There are no doubt other mineral resources people would like to extract, but the cost is just too high right now. But you will never make me believe it will some day be cheaper to go to the Moon than it will be to go to Antarctica. That is just a fantasy. If we can develop technology to go to the Moon cheaper, then we can develop technology to go to Antarctica cheaper too. If in the future you could go to the Moon for, say … $1000.00, then in that same future you will probably be able to go to Antarctica for $99.95.

Just because there is no agriculture in Antarctica doesn’t mean that it is impossible, just too expensive. There is already free air, water and radiation shielding. All that is needed is energy which can be supplied in various ways (not solar, but nuclear maybe). The moon has neither air no water nor radiation shielding. We could get oxygen from the soil, maybe mine ice at the poles (if it exists), maybe extract other materials from lunar rock and soil, build power plants (possibly solar). But none of that is free and it can all be done in Antarctica too. The Moon it is a sterile hostile place, much MUCH MUUUUUCH more hostile than the poles on Earth.

Was it Jon Stewart on The Daily Show who first noted that Peter Diamandis' name sounds like a James Bond villain?

Rob, if you find yourself on the Moon and need a place to stay, just remind Peter that you were an early supporter of the X Prize and you'll probably be safe from the vaporizing rayguns on the perimeter of MoonTown.

Just one word for Peter Diamandis and his dream of lunar conquest: Go!

haha just came to see the forums as my team is 3:0 down at half time, atleast that bond line cheered me up!

ill be sure to dodge the rayguns with some james bond style, my drink shaken ready in the base! and the xprize shirt wearing lady expecting " Goldsmith, Rob Goldsmith" as i moon hop away into the errr sunet? lol

Well, at least you won't have to worry about the timing, as sunsets on the Moon tend to take a while...

bring it on!

unless the colonists are either:

1: Providing a product necessary for a civilization's continued existance which isn't available through other means..

or

2: Completely self sufficient

or

3: Have allies that will recognize them and help defend them..

then their independance and land claims are useless. Only an entity like Sealand, who no one much cares about, is able to behave the way Peter Diamandis is describing, and even it probably would have fallen afoul of the UK had HavenCo continued to operate there.