Cymric wrote:
As far as I know, there is a treaty in place (sort-of similar to the Law of the Sea) which states that anything beyond x km of Earth's surface belongs to everyone, and thus the UN. (See here, for example.) But knowing human nature, it won't be for long until someone decides that those damn are mining too much He-3 or ice, causing all hell to break loose. Some right-wingers in the United States already consider the Moon to belong to them, because they were the first to set foot on it. A sort-of finders-keepers mentality which sickens me to my stomach. To the wall with the lot of them. I also have no doubt that eventually the Moon will become an independent nation simply because any other situation will be met with disapproval, jealousy and military conflict. (Besides, it is sort-of impossible to genuinely consider people 400.000 km away to be your masters. As in: who and what army?)
I can heartily recommend Ben Bova's excellent SF series Moonrise and Moonwar for a brilliant story based on precisely this situation.
Ultimately, anyones oppinions or rules about who gets to own what in space are meaningless. If russia wants to build something on the moon, they will pick a spot and it will be theirs. The us will pick a spot, etc. It will be a good 200 years before there is enough people and stuff up there for it to matter.
