谁拥有月球？
发布于: 4年前
Narrator: Who owns this? Is it America – the country that planted a flag on it? Or this man, who has been selling plots of it for almost 40 years? Or is it us and anyone else who bought one and has the certificate to prove it?
Today, many believe the Moon could be the next frontier for tourism, space exploration, or even the mining of precious natural resources, which means this question might be about to become a lot more important.
In 1969, an estimated 650m people watched as Neil Armstrong took his first step on the surface of the Moon. Five more landings followed. And then for almost 50 years, no humans went back. That is about to change.
There are dozens of lunar missions planned over the next 20 years and some will carry crews. The first to land could be in 2024, when NASA hopes to send a crew to the lunar south pole, where it's believed water may be frozen in craters. That crew may well include the first woman to land on the Moon.
After years of being left alone, why is the Moon hot property once again? This book could have the answers, or at least the man who wrote it might. He's Oliver Morton, senior editor at "The Economist".
Oliver Morton: The most simple reason perhaps is tourism. We do live on a planet now with an extraordinary number of very rich people, and only some of them need to think this is a cool idea for it to happen. There is a Japanese billionaire who has ordered a space flight from SpaceX, Elon Musk's company. The Chinese have talked about putting people onto the Moon. Then the Americans are thinking about going back because the Chinese are thinking about going. Of course, none of this would be happening if you still had to spend sort of like a huge chunk of America's national budget to go to the Moon. But in fact, you probably don't now.
Narrator: The price of a space launch – the most expensive part of going to the Moon – has dropped substantially. In 1981, NASA paid almost $62,000 a kilo to launch the Space Shuttle. Last year, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy cost just under one and a half thousand dollars a kilo. That's a real term drop by a factor of 40.
There's another reason the Moon may be an attractive destination: its resources, one of which is vital for supporting life in space.
Oliver Morton: One of the things you don't have much of in space near the Earth is water.
Narrator: But in the past few decades, ice has been discovered in craters of the Moon's poles.
Oliver Morton: So that's something that would be really useful if you're building a Moon base, because you wouldn't have to ship it up from Earth.
Narrator: And there's the potential of mineable treasure, including highly valuable platinum-group minerals left over from asteroid impacts. And the very rare isotope helium-3 absorbed by the Moon's surface from the sun and used in nuclear fusion to produce a clean source of energy. There are plans to mine both. But Oliver isn't convinced.
Oliver Morton: If the platinum-group metals are there in really, really localised rich ways, there might be something to be done there, but we don't know that that's the case. The helium-3 is there, but if you're doing something really difficult, like trying to recreate the power that drives the sun in a little magnetic bottle, do you really want to make life harder by saying, "oh, yeah, and I'll use Moon dust, too?" It's…I don't think that's a very serious idea.
Narrator: As well as its resources, the Moon can teach scientists more about the history of the solar system. And it could be a proving ground for further space exploration, for example, for a manned mission to Mars. But ultimately, the main driver for returning to the Moon is nationalism.
Oliver Morton: I think the politics of the Moon will probably reflect the politics of the Earth.
Mike Pence: Make no mistake about it, we're in a space race today, just as we were in the 1960s. And the stakes are even higher.
Xi Jinping: Boundless vistas are beheld from perilous peaks. I hope that our spaceworkers will boldly scale the high peaks on their journey to develop the space industry.
Oliver Morton: If two nations that both have an interest in a crater on the south pole of the Moon also have an interest in, say, the South China Seas, then the chances that they might be somewhat daggers drawn on the Moon is obviously higher.
Narrator: And this is where who owns what on the Moon really starts to matter, which brings us back to this man. He's Dennis Hope. In 1980, he claimed ownership of the Moon and started selling it off for around $25 an acre. He says it's netted him millions. Apparently, even three former US presidents have Moon plots from him. Vicky Jeong is a space lawyer. Yes, that is a real job. We showed her our lunar certificate.
Vicky Jeong: Oh, you've even got a land registration form, this is proper. Wow! And it looks very pretty and nice, but doesn't have any legal validity at all.
Narrator: This is because of an agreement signed in 1967, called the "Outer Space Treaty".
"Meanwhile, the foreign minister presided at the signing of the treaty banning nuclear weapons from outer space."
Narrator: As well as trying to avoid an arms race, the treaty set out certain restrictions.
Vicky Jeong: It states that it should be for the benefit of all mankind. And it sets out important principles such as non-appropriation. So, whether you put up a flag, whether you do anything, you build anything, you just don't have property rights over the Moon.
Narrator: But the "Outer Space Treaty" only prohibits ownership of the Moon itself. The legality of who owns resources found on the Moon, like metals or water, is left up to interpretation. So, what if, say, China and America both want to mine the same bit of the Moon? To work out what could happen up here, we have to look down there.
Oliver Morton: So, the deep sea is really not a part of any country. It's also very hard to get to and that's like the Moon. So, the "Law of the Sea" is the best model there is at the moment for what a Moon agreement might be like.
Narrator: The "Law of the Sea" sets out which part of the deep ocean belongs to specific countries and which is shared by all humankind. For those areas, it has strict criteria for how private companies can mine for their own gain. This includes respecting the environment and ensuring some of the proceeds go to help less-developed countries. But America has refused to ratify the "Law of the Sea", believing, as with the Moon, in "finders keepers". So, even if there is a new Moon treaty, America is unlikely to sign up to it if it's modelled on the "Law of the Sea".
Vicky Jeong: There is definitely a need to create another international legal framework. Most countries recognise that, but it is very hard to reach consensus because a lot have their own interests. It will be a political mess.
Narrator: Just how much of a mess won't be known until the first crater is mined, or the first hotel is built. And it may be many moons until the question of who owns the Moon is finally resolved.
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