The
following is a work of pure conjecture with a smattering of reason
thrown in. I have no special
knowledge of the current legal framework governing satellites, just
a conviction that mankind will one day spread out from Earth, a market
anarchist view on property rights and way too much time spent reading
science fiction. Special thanks
to Andrew Leonard for proofreading assistance.
Introduction
Land property rights on planets are based on self ownership and the concept of “first use” where the first person to use a piece of property is considered its owner. This concept is fairly clear when applied to unmoving (relative to the planet) real estate on Earth or any other fairly rigid body, but becomes a lot more complex when outer space is considered.
Ownership of orbits
In space, nothing is really fixed in place relative to anything else. Everything not actively accelerating is in an orbit of some kind, whether around a moon, planet, or the sun, or some combination thereof. Even an object falling towards a planet is still orbiting the sun. To change orbits requires acceleration (effort,) just as on Earth to change positions requires effort. In the same sense that one should not be required to move ones home or business to allow another to build in that location, a space station or craft already occupying a particular orbit should not be forced to change orbits in order to allow a newcomer to use an intersecting orbit. This means that a particular orbit may be owned in space, rather than a particular location.
As an example, consider the popular geosynchronous orbit around Earth. It is a fairly high orbit, but allows a satellite to remain in a fixed position over the planet’s surface. The ownership concept above does not mean that the owner of the first satellite in geosynchronous orbit may exclude all others from using a geosynchronous orbit. Orbital property rights merely exclude all others from that particular geosynchronous orbit and from any orbit that will intersect that orbit in both time and space at some point in the future. Clarified: It’s the right to not get hit.
The number of satellites that could orbit geosynchronously under this system is staggering. The orbit has a height of 35,785 km above the surface of the planet. The diameter of the planet is 12,700 km, so adding half that (the radius) to the height gives an orbital radius of 42,135 km. The circumference of the orbit is therefore 2 * PI * R, or nearly 265,000 km. That means at a generous orbital spacing of a kilometer, nearly 265,000 satellites could orbit together geosynchronously.
Orbit violations
If a ship or space station occupies an orbit that will intersect an orbit that is already owned, one party or the other will have to accelerate to avoid collision. If the offending party accelerates, no harm has been done and property rights have not been violated. If the owner of the orbit must accelerate, either because there is little margin, or because the offender cannot or will not accelerate, the owner will incur costs in fuel, energy, labor, and possibly damage. These costs should be paid for by the offender, who caused them to be incurred.
On the other hand, those occupying an asteroid, moon, or planet whose orbit is found to intersect one already owned, but who have never changed the natural orbit of the body they occupy, are under no obligation to pay the costs of collision avoidance. If the body they are going to collide with is man-made, then the “owners” of the orbit simply chose one that was unfortunately already occupied, similar to choosing to build a home in a flood plain on Earth. If both bodies are natural, their occupants will need to figure out how to prevent the collision and share the costs, or they’ll end up playing a game of “chicken” that no one wins.
If an occupied body is going to be struck by an unoccupied body, an additional option is to destroy the unoccupied body. This would be done if the costs would be less than burning fuel to cause a miss. One caveat would be that, in breaking up a large body, those who destroyed it may be held accountable for any damage that the fragments may cause by intersecting orbits owned by third parties. This liability may be limited by pre-existing contracts.
Defensive perimeters
Next, consider a space station in Jupiter orbit. Jupiter is enormous, so we can effectively ignore the orbit sharing calculation and focus on defense from purposeful attackers. Presumably, it is at some risk of attack, because it will be cheaper to steal finished goods and raw materials than to purchase, manufacture, or mine them. As such, the space station has the right to defend itself. On a planetary surface, the owner of a building could put up a fence to keep out undesirables. In space, the fence would probably be electronic, and would be used to defend space out to a distance chosen to provide a good level of security. Warnings would be broadcast on common frequencies, and unwelcome spacecraft entering the controlled area would be dealt with, most likely with some sort of escalating series of warnings and attacks.
An objection to this is that it is just “might makes right” and there is nothing to stop a space station from claiming a controlled radius of a million kilometers if there were no one within it at the time of the claim. This is not so, because each station would rely upon others’ respect of its property rights. A station or ship that defended a volume of space larger than customary (and I don’t pretend to know what that will turn out to be) would be answered in enough of its challenges to stand a statistically low chance of winning them all.
A terrestrial comparison would be to rights at high seas. A ship captain does not have to allow a pirate ship within yards before warning him off. A suspicious ship within gun range could be warned, and fired upon if the challenge went unanswered. On the other hand, a ship that tried this with every ship on the horizon would soon meet its betters. In essence, the ship sails the waters surrounded with a buffer zone of “territory” that moves with it. The diameter of this territory is decided by custom, and influenced by the range of commonly available weapons.
Ownership of celestial bodies
In the case of existing celestial bodies, traditional property rights come into play. Most bodies in the asteroid belt are a few hundred yards across, most significantly smaller. Clearly an individual or group who landed on one intending to mine it could claim one in its entirety, comfortable in the knowledge that they could exploit it, and not have the effort they put into it initially taken from them legally.
Moons and planets, on the other hand, are large enough that standard property rights would probably apply. It would most likely be unacceptable for the first person to land on a well-known body with a diameter of 100 kilometers, which would have a surface area of over 31,000 km2 to claim it simply by virtue of landing on it. This does not, however, mean that they would have to share the improvements that they made with newcomers at no cost, or at all.
A special case arises in the case of terraformed planets or moons. An uninhabitable body with a suitable orbit has its atmosphere modified (or has one created) probably at enormous expense and over the course of at least a good part of a century. With highly advanced technology, the body may even have its orbit shifted closer to or further from the sun. Do those who paid for the terraforming effort get to keep the spoils? I think that the answer must be yes. Assuming that the body was previously uninhabited, the benefits from the terraforming effort, meaning all land made more habitable because of it, would be owned by those who invested the effort. From a utilitarian point of view, this would encourage terraforming by allowing the investors to recoup their costs from those who eventually benefit from the effort, by selling property rights (fee simple or otherwise) to future inhabitants. This is not Georgist theory, where the improvement value is charged via rent, but Lockean theory, where the terraformers have mixed their labor with a good portion of the entire planet.
Conclusion
Property rights away from a rigid body are more complex, but general principles can still be successfully applied. Property rights on rigid bodies, other than Earth, can be identical in principle to those on Earth. Hopefully, when mankind moves off this planet into the solar system, the State can be left behind and those rights can mean something.
August 13, 2002
