Is Asteroid Mining Legal?

Copyright © 2016 by Thomas Gangale

@ThomasGangale

In his article, Is Asteroid Mining Legal? The Truth Behind Title IV of the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015, Sagi Kfir, General Counsel for Deep Space Industries, writes, "People often ask, 'Is asteroid mining legal, especially considering the Outer Space Treaty of 1967?' The simple answer is: Yes."

Kfir's argument is that asteroid mining is legal because the 2015 US statute invokes the Outer Space Treaty, and in turn, "...it is indisputable under international law that any nation, which is a party to the Outer Space Treaty, has the right as a sovereign nation to interpret and implement its treaty rights on a national level."

This is a very weak argument. It implies that a sovereign nation has the right to interpret a treaty as it pleases, which is incorrect. Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties lays out the rules by which treaties are to be interpreted. Regardless of how clever one's argument may be, black is still black.

The principal point of the controversy over the legality of asteroid mining is the interpretation of Article II of the Outer Space Treaty, which Kfir does not even mention. The real question is whether Article II prohibits asteroid mining, and Kfir does not answer it.

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