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Recognizing the right of the first permanent settlers on the Moon or Mars to claim and trade private ownership of the real estate around them. This would create an incentive "prize" for the private entrepreneurs of Earth to risk their lives and fortunes developing affordable space travel for all, and transporting the settlers to their new home - at zero cost to US taxpayers.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE
This Act may be cited as "The Space Settlement Prize Act", or "The Space Real Estate Act" or "The Land Claims Recognition Act".
SECTION 2. FINDINGS
The Congress finds that  -  (1) The expansion of the human habitat beyond Earth, through the establishment of a permanent Lunar settlement and a space "airline" enabling ordinary people to travel there, is a normal continuation of the age-old human drive to explore and settle unknown territory and will be of inestimable value for America and all mankind; (2) Privately financed space exploration and settlement is preferable to taxpayer financing, because the government needs to limit its own expenditures;
(3) Space exploration and settlement, if financed by private companies and investors, will produce a huge boost to the economy, space industry employment for thousands, and new tax revenues for the United States; (4) A new, additional, incentive is needed because the potential short-term profit sources are currently much too small
to attract the billions of dollars of private capital necessary;
The potential value of land on the Moon, Mars,
or an asteroid can provide an additional economic incentive for privately
funded space settlement at no cost to the government;
Prizes such as the Orteig Prize and the
Ansari X Prize have an excellent record of promoting privately funded
innovation, so Congress wishes to establish a "Space Settlement Prize"
to promote the human settlement of the Moon and Mars.
At some time in the future Congress may
be in a position to add an appropriately large monetary award, but, for
now at least, the tremendous economic value of land claims recognition
should be more than sufficient.
There is currently no international law on
private land ownership in space, because most major nations have deliberately
refused to ratify "The Agreement Governing the Activities of States
on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, 1979, (hereafter called the
"Moon Treaty"). The U.S. Senate's refusal to ratify means that the
Moon Treaty's provisions are not "the law of the land" in
U.S. courts, and therefore do not inhibit the actions of U.S. citizens
or legislators;
(9) More importantly, the framers of the Moon Treaty found it necessary to attempt to write a rule forbidding private ownership of land on the Moon, clearly confirming that such an objective had not already been accomplished by "The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities
of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies", 1967, (hereafter known as the "Outer Space Treaty"), nor by U.N. resolution GA/res/1962;
The ratification failure of the Moon Treaty
means there is no legal prohibition in force against private ownership
of land on the Moon, Mars, etc., as long as the ownership is not derived
from a claim of national appropriation or sovereignty (which is prohibited
by the Outer Space Treaty);
Presumably it is only a matter of time until
new treaties are negotiated, establishing a functional private property
regime and granting suitable land ownership incentives for privately
funded space settlements. The U.S. will, of course, abide by such new
international law when it has ratified such a new treaty. But, given the urgent need for privately funded human expansion into space, as soon as possible, something must be done immediately, on a provisional basis, to correct the present inefficiencies in the international standard on property rights in space and to promote privately funded space exploration and settlement;
For property rights on the Moon, Mars, etc.,
the U.S. will have to recognize natural law's "use and occupation"
standard, rather than the common law standard of "gift of the sovereign",
because sovereignty itself is barred by existing international treaty;
U.S. courts already recognize, certify, and
defend private ownership and sale of land which is not subject to U.S.
national appropriation or sovereignty, such as a U.S. citizen's ownership
(and right to sell to another U.S. citizen, both of whom are within
the U.S.) a deed to land which is actually located in another nation.
U.S. issuance of a document of recognition of a settlement's claim to
land on the Moon, Mars, etc., can be done on a basis analogous to that
situation;
This legislation concerns only the issuance
of such a U.S. recognition and acceptance of a settlement's claim of
private land ownership based on use and occupation, regardless
of the nationality of the owner, and nothing in it is to be considered
a claim of national appropriation of, nor sovereignty over, any outer
space body, or any part thereof;
The U.S. does not claim the right to "confer"
private land ownership, and the U.S. states it is most definitely not
making any claim of "national appropriation by claim of sovereignty,
by means of use or occupation, or any other means" as prohibited
by the Outer Space Treaty.
SECTION 3. DEFINITIONS Space settlement: A permanently occupied facility, base, or city situated at a specific geographic location on an extraterrestrial body such as the Moon, Mars, or an asteroid. Private entity: A company, a consortium of companies, and/or one or more individuals that are not controlled by any sovereign state or government. Examples of state control of a company include, but are not limited to, a government, government agency, or another government-controlled company owning or controlling an effective majority of the voting shares and/or having the ability to select the Board of Directors or executives. Merely being subject to normal government regulation, however, does not make a private company government controlled in this sense.
SECTION 4. RECOGNIZING EXTRATERRESTRIAL PRIVATE
(1) All U.S. courts and agencies shall immediately
give recognition, certification, and full legal support to land ownership
claims based on use and occupation, of up to the size specified in Sections
6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 below, for any private entity which has, in fact,
established a permanently inhabited settlement on the Moon, Mars, or
an asteroid, with regular transportation between the settlement and
the Earth open to any paying passenger. (2) For a land claim to receive such recognition
and certification, the settlement must be permanently and continuously
inhabited. The location and the population of the settlement may change,
as long as there continues to be an inhabited settlement within the
original claim. (3) Deliberate abandonment of the settlement
shall be grounds for invalidating land ownership recognition derived
from that settlement, but there shall be no penalty for brief unintentional
absences caused by accident, emergency, or aggression. (4) Recognized ownership of land under this
law shall include all rights normally associated with land ownership,
including but not limited to the exclusive right to subdivide the property
and sell portions to others, to mine any minerals or utilize any resources
on or under the land, as long as it is done in a responsible manner
which does not cause unreasonable harm to the environment or other people;
(5) If the requirements of this law continue to be met, all rights, privileges, and responsibilities shall be immediately transferable by sale, lease, or other appropriate means to other private space companies, individuals, or any other private entity. In order to facilitate that, all U.S. courts and agencies shall accept the validity of land ownership deeds issued by the settlement for portions of it's recognized land claim.
(6) As long as the required conditions continue
to be met, U.S. recognition documents shall remain valid for 100 years
or until the U.S. ratifies a treaty that establishes an international
property rights regime which gives comparable reward to privately funded
settlement, whichever comes sooner; (7) The U.S. pledges to defend recognized
extraterrestrial properties by imposing appropriate sanctions against
aggressors, whether public or private. It pledges never to allow the
sale to U.S. citizens of any extraterrestrial land which was seized
by aggression. But it makes no pledge of military defense of recognized
extraterrestrial properties.
(8) If, after ten years, these limits prove to have been insufficient to
get privately funded settlement efforts started, Congress, or some national
or international authority it delegates, shall consider whether the
maximum size of claims should be enlarged. SECTION 5. CLAIMANTS' OBLIGATIONS
The claimant must commit to consistently
make good faith efforts to promptly offer, or arrange for, safe and
reliable transportation to and from the settlement to all, regardless
of nationality, who are willing to pay a fare sufficient to cover expenses
and a reasonable profit. (2)
The claimant may not unreasonably deny
landing rights, and the right to transport passengers and cargo, to
any other safe and peaceful vehicle willing to pay a reasonable fee
for such landing rights.
The claimant may set appropriate standards
of behavior and safety, etc., for passengers and cargo and the use of
its facilities, but it may not act in an anti-competitive manner. (4)
If demand for transport exceeds supply,
and the claimant is making a good faith effort to increase the availability
of transport, it may give preference to passengers and cargo offering
the largest financial inducement.
SECTION 6. RECOGNIZED CLAIM SIZE
On Earth's Moon: (1)
The private entity that establishes the
first such settlement on the Moon and meets the other conditions of this
law shall be entitled to receive full and immediate U.S. recognition and
certification of its claim of ownership of up to 600,000 square miles
in a contiguous, reasonably compact shape which includes its base. On Mars: (2)
Given the greater distance, higher costs
and larger amount of available land on Mars, the private entity that establishes
the first such settlement on Mars shall be entitled to receive full and
immediate U.S. recognition and certification of its claim of ownership
of up to 3,600,000 square miles in a contiguous, reasonably compact shape
which includes its base. On
Asteroids: (3)
The private entity that establishes a
permanently inhabited base on an asteroid shall be entitled to receive
full and immediate U.S. recognition and certification of its claim of
ownership of up to 600,000 square miles in a contiguous, reasonably
compact shape that includes its base, or the entire asteroid if its
surface area is smaller than 1,000,000 square miles. SECTION 7. SUCCESSIVE CLAIMS
No entity (nor two entities which are
effectively under the same control) shall receive recognition for a
controlling interest in two land claims on the same body; (2)
Each successive settlement on a body may
receive recognition for a claim of up to fifteen percent less than the
preceding one was entitled to;
An entity in control of one settlement
may sell services, such as transport, to a genuinely independent entity
which establishes a different settlement and makes a second claim on
that body.
SECTION 8. CONCURRENT CLAIMS
In the event it cannot be established
which of two settlements on the same body was established first, each
may claim seven and one half percent less territory than it would have
been entitled to if it were clearly the first of the two. (2)
If, in such a case, the land claims of
the two settlements overlap, and the claimants are unable to divide the
land between them through negotiation, a U.S. court shall allocate the
land between the two settlements as seems fitting, before recognizing
the claims. SECTION 9. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
The U.S. urges other countries to adopt
similar laws, and the State Department is hereby instructed to try to
negotiate a new multi-lateral treaty, or bi-lateral treaties with individual
like-minded nations, making the same land claims recognition rules into
international law. (2)
All rights and privileges conferred by
this law shall be available equally to the citizens (individual and/or
corporate) of any nation which passes laws or ratifies a treaty offering
similar rights to U.S. citizens. (3)
If need be to secure international agreement,
the State Department is authorized to agree to treaties which require
that all claimants must be consortia which include companies or citizens
from several different countries. It can even be required that at least
one of the partners in each consortium be from a developing country.
Alan Wasser
Updated: April, 2012
For the background, purposes and answers to frequently asked questions about this law, please visit:
the Space Settlement Initiative
For a fully detailed, footnoted discussion of the many legal questions, opinions and precedents involved, as published in SMU Law School's Journal of Air Law & Commerce, the oldest and most respected law journal in its field, see: Space Settlements, Property Rights, and International Law: Could a Lunar Settlement Claim the Lunar Real Estate It Needs to Survive?.
For more on the group sponsoring this effort, please visit:
The Space Settlement Institute. Please send your comments to: