Space Rush Treaty
The Agreement Governing the Commercial and Industrial Activities in Space, the Moon, Mars and Other Celestial Bodies, referred to in the media as the Space Rush Treaty, is a World Council-sponsored multilateral convention that provides a legal framework for commerce and economic exploitation out of Earth, mostly opening spacefaring to private companies. It was first signed on 8 December 2010 by all spacefaring nations (at the time, Germany, United States, Russia, China, Japan, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Bharatavarsha, Italy, Korea, Iran and Brazil) and has since been ratified by 128 members of the World Council.
A brainchild of United States President Sam Brownback, concerned with the ongoing Space Rush and the prospects of private companies being able to follow sovereign nations in spacefaring and help exploit the resources out of Earth, the Space Rush Treaty was first discussed at the 2009 Major Powers Forum and received an immediate approbation from all members : since 2001 and the launch of the first manned mission to Mars, more and more nations had joined the small club of spacefaring nations (then Germany, United States, Russia and Japan) and gave themselves the means to develop efficient space programs, launch satellites, orbital space stations, manned missions to the Moon and even, in the case of China, established a new moon base, thanks to the advance in technologies. The costly nature of such endeavors and the prospects of extraction of natural resources, mostly Helium-3 from the Moon, sought after for its nuclear fission capabilities, interested more and more private companies ; by then, space law had only be concerned by international agreements forbidding the installation of military bases and nuclear arsenals in outer space or delimited the borders of established moon bases.
The treaty authorized private funding for commercial spaceflight, building of space stations for private use (such as research or hospitality) or moon bases, with extraction of resources from celestial bodies being subject to allowance by government-owned moon bases.
As of 2023, many companies, mostly based in East Asia, Europe and North America, have become integrant parts of the space rush : while many offer suborbital flights and private stays in governmental space stations and moon bases, some companies are going way forward : the Virgo Space Station, funded by Virgin founder Richard Branson, is scheduled to be completed in 2025 and offer hotel stays in Earth orbit ; Vulcan Aerospace, founded by former Microsoft CEO Paul Allen (now deceased) studies plans to capture an asteroid and attract it to Earth’s orbit for private mining ; Moon Express, led by Bharatavarshan American entrepreneur Naveen Jain, schedules the construction of its moon base, in the Lunar South Pole, for 2040; Chinese businessman Jiang Feng and his company Space Adventures is watching the possibility of suborbital flights to accelerate international freight.
Even if it is considered as a breakthrough with allowing for private entrepreneurship in outer space, the Space Rush Treaty has been heavily criticized, notably for opening up outer space to unbridled capitalism, providing more interest in an already costly and unuseful industry or withdrawing outer space exploration from nations or just scientific research. Legal scholars have also criticized the Space Rush Treaty for providing a loophole to militarization of space along with space warfare : while using lethal weapons or building military bases on the Moon and space stations is still forbidden, the Space Rush Treaty recongizes “the right to protect one’s physical integrity out of Earth and the right for private companies to ensure their own security.”
