[FPSPACE] Selling space - literally

[LARRY KLAES]

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....