this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
113 points (100.0% liked)

World News

48141 readers
2005 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Author: Martina Elia Vitoloni | DCL Candidate Air and Space Law, McGill University

Celestial bodies like the moon contain valuable resources, such as lunar regolith — also known as moon dust — and helium-3. These resources could serve a range of applications, including making rocket propellant and generating energy to sustaining long missions, bringing benefits in space and on Earth.

The first objective on this journey is being able to collect lunar regolith. One company taking up this challenge is ispace, a Japanese space exploration company ispace that signed a contract with NASA in 2020 for the collection and transfer of ownership of lunar regolith.

The company recently attempted to land its RESILIENCE lunar lander, but the mission was ultimately unsuccessful. Still, this endeavour marked a significant move toward the commercialization of space resources.

These circumstances give rise to a fundamental question: what are the legal rules governing the exploitation of space resources? The answer is both simple and complex, as there is a mix of international agreements and evolving regulations to consider.

The article has a breakdown of the laws and further context

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

The cost of anything beyond our current small-scale exploratory probing of space has to be astronomical with our current footing. Imagine how much fuel/energy you would need to get industrial mining equipment to the Moon or asteroid belt, extract meaningful amounts of material, pack it up, send it back to Earth orbit, and de-orbit it intact.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

Most of these costs are in terms of energy, one of the most plentiful things in space. Also, if we do things right (a huge if, I know), the bigger idea is to bootstrap it by sending enough tools to make the tools you need to extract and refine resources. This doesn't require a von Neumann machine since we can control them, either directly or remotely. Also, if we are going to extract resources in space, a lot of infrastructure will need to be built first, which is cheaper if we use resources that are already in space. And as the saying goes, the surface of the moon is halfway to anywhere in the solar system.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

astronomical

: D

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I think what they will do is just toss it back to earth and let most of it burn up on reentry but at least we can get some extra lead on the planet even if it crashes through someone’s roof occasionally.