30 Dec The Business Of Space & Protecting Cultural Heritage On The Moon With Hoyt Davidson And Marlene Losier
Cohosts and space lawyers M.C. Sungaila and Michelle Hanlon discuss the economics of Moon exploration and settlement and the protection of cultural heritage on the Moon with experts Hoyt Davidson and Marlene Losier. Together, they explain what it means for the future of humanity to send people back to the moon and how it intertwines with our collective history. They also discuss the ideal laws to be implemented on the Moon and the entire outer space to ensure the total protection and preservation of its heritage and save it from falling prey to selfish interests.
—
Listen to the podcast here
The Business Of Space & Protecting Cultural Heritage On The Moon With Hoyt Davidson And Marlene Losier
This is a limited-run capsule show, exploring cutting-edge issues in space law and ethics through conversations between leading experts from a diverse array of disciplines. This is a show for those who apply their innate curiosity to the world and an invitation to the general public to be part of the conversation as humanity expands into space.
First, in our series of discussions, we’ll be focusing on expanding out into space, particularly to the moon, and some of the concerns and implications of that move for humanity. We’re grateful to NASA for a seed grant to the University of Mississippi Center for Air and Space Law to fund these conversations. I’ll turn it over to you, Michelle.
Thank you so much, M.C. Thank you for putting together this incredible show. I’m honored to be here with these two very special guests. What we are trying to do with this show is bring all of the world into this amazing space journey with us. I hope that you start to learn why we’re returning to the moon and what those implications might have for humanity.
We’ve brought together, in a sense, competing interests. We have the financial guy who’s going to tell us what is the financial purpose. Why are we going back to the moon? What’s there? We’ve already been there. Why are we going back? President Obama said, “Been there, done that.” We have Dr. Losier, who is a heritage law expert and an international law expert. She’s going to talk about what is already on the moon and what it means to have so much history with the moon.
Dr. Marlène Losier is a legal expert in international law. She advises private and public clients on international and national laws relating to culture and space policies affected by maritime, terrestrial, and beyond-earth considerations, often resulting from the succession of states in the post-colonial context, particularly those relating to title and proprietary rights.
She advises on the United Nations treaty system and its auspices, counsels on bilateral and multilateral agreements, and assists in developing corresponding domestic rules. Her background is in sociocultural anthropology, governing structures, and state-to-state/investor-state arbitration. She is the lead heritage counsel at For All Moonkind, a non-profit near and dear to my heart, which is focused on preserving cultural heritage on the moon.
Hoyt Davidson is the Founder and Managing Partner of Near Earth LLC, a Connecticut-based investment bank and advisory firm focused on the commercial satellite industry, aerospace, and marvelous telecom. Near Earth’s clients include major satellite companies, private equity, and hedge funds, small to medium-sized aerospace companies, and early-stage entrepreneurial firms seeking private capital.
Why Are People Interested In The Moon
Mr. Davidson received his MBA from MIT Sloan School. Before entering Sloan, Mr. Davidson worked as a Senior Research Engineer at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company. I’m so delighted to have both of you with us. Thank you for joining us. I’m looking forward to this very interdisciplinary conversation. Hoyt, I’m going to jump right into it and start with you. Why are people interested in the moon? Is there an economic case for returning?
Thanks, Michelle. First, let me make the obvious point that it’s not all about economics. The world’s missions to the moon have been about science and exploration. We, humans, are a curious bunch. There are all the geopolitical issues that have driven our expenditures in space exploration. We’re very competitive. My favorite non-economic reason is what JFK said in his famous speech, “We go because it’s hard.”
We humans love a great challenge, both for the glory and the inspiration but also because of all the things we learn along the way. I doubt the US would have the technological, economic, and geopolitical position it has in the world if we had not gone to Apollo. There are a lot of good economic reasons why we go into space but let’s talk about economics and where we are now.
Thanks to a rapid decrease in launch costs in the last several years and significant gains in the preceding decades in computerization, robotics, software, and AI. We can go back to the moon for a fraction of the cost we did back in the Apollo days. We are spending 4.5% of our total federal budget per year back in the Apollo era. NASA’s budget for 2024 was 0.3% of our total budget. We can do even more with commercial space companies involved.
The first good news is that we’re going back to the moon this time in a far more sustainable fashion. It’s not just about flags, footprints, and geopolitical grandstanding. We’re going to go back for the future of humanity. That means we need to do it sustainably and have markets and economic reasons that can sustain human presence forever. We’re going to do that by relying on the commercial sector but we’re also not going back alone. That’s the other great news.
We are going back to the moon in a far more sustainable fashion. It is not just about flags, footprints, and geopolitical grandstanding. It is also about the future of humanity.
We’re bringing the world with us. Was it 46 or more signatories to the Artemis Accords? That number keeps growing. We’re going to go back as an international community this time. That’s wonderful. To be sustainable, we do have to create a cislunar economy. There are already hundreds of companies that have been financed by the venture capital community to create this cislunar economy.
I won’t go into all the different wonderful things and technologies they’re developing but know that billions of dollars of venture capital money from all over the world have gone into the last several years to begin creating the cislunar economy. What are they going to do? I would briefly summarize it into five broad categories. Initially, it’s going to be supporting government missions, science, and exploration. That includes transportation, landers, rovers, habitats, logistics, setting up power and telecom infrastructure.
A good bit will be government contracting like the space program has been forever but then we’re going to move into a phase where the focus is on the extraction and processing of water and oxygen from lunar regolith and water ice from the permanently shadowed regions at the lunar poles. These are places that are continuously in the dark. The ice has been able to form and has been there for billions of years.
That water and oxygen can be used to support life and any astronauts we have on the moon. Mostly, it’s for things like rocket propellant, for cislunar transportation to and from the moon, on the moon but eventually to support our Moon to Mars program to provide the propellant to get us to Mars. The good thing about water as a propellant is you use sunlight, which is free, to break it into hydrogen and oxygen. When you recombine it, that’s the energy that propels the rockets.
Water is burnt hydrogen. It’s a very environmentally friendly fuel. If it’s readily available in these polar regions, it’s going to be a boon time for the moon. Think of water ice at the poles like a West Texas Intermediate crude. It’s going to be the driving force for the initial economy. Once you’ve processed regolith for water or water ice for fuel, it turns out for a rather modest percentage increase in infrastructure.
You can also extract and process a dozen or more useful metals like iron, aluminum, titanium, silicon, magnesium, and a whole bunch of things that may not be necessary immediately on the moon but can eventually help with in situ resource utilization. That means living off the ground as opposed to bringing everything you need from the surface of the earth, which is very expensive. You’re learning to use materials on the moon to make habitats, infrastructure, and everything else on the moon.
Eventually, the people who are living and working on the moon are going to need everything that we humans use on Earth. One of my friends used to say, “They’re going to need toothpaste and toilet paper.” You want to bring as little of that up from the earth as you can. In situ resource utilization is the key. Once you start processing regolith and ice to get water, you can get a lot more things for a little investment.
Fourth is helium-3. I barely mention this one because no one knows yet its true future value. Helium-3 is one of the potential feedstocks for fusion energy but it’s only one. There are a dozen or more companies in the world chasing different types of nuclear fusion reactions to get to fusion energy, which is maybe the ultimate clean source of energy. Only some of them are even looking at helium-3 as that feedstock.
We don’t know if it’s going to be important but if it is important, the helium-3 is dispersed throughout large portions of the lunar surface and could serve as a reason to do mining operations away from the poles and ice. Lastly, the fifth category of the economy is supporting the population that will be there and hopefully grow over time. That may initially be the astronauts doing science and the people mining the ice but it’ll eventually include space tourism.
A longer-term support of the growing settlement of humans on the moon that may end up living a good part of their lives on the moon, those humans will get what they need and everything we want to need here on Earth. The more that we can produce a moon, the lower the cost and the more sustainable the settlement. It’s about sustainability.
Hopefully, those humans will also represent every nationality, ethnic group, tribe, religion, and race on the planet. We’re taking the whole world. The vision of space settlement is to have everyone eventually participate to reserve areas for late Earth spacefaring nations, and most importantly, to benefit all humanity, even those not directly participating in space development. I’d be happy to go into examples of that if you like.
Sources Of Power In The Moon
Hoyt, I had a couple of questions when you were talking about power through the mining for the ice and the water on the moon. There are other ideas about power in space from solar power, space solar power, and also from nuclear. Will those, do you think, play some role on the moon or not?
Those are the two leading sources of power that people talk about. At the South Pole, there are crater rims that are always in sunlight. They’re called the Peaks of Perpetual Light. Those are going to be prime real estate on the moon because you can set up a solar tower there and have 24/7, 365 days a year of solar power. You need to get it to wherever you’re living and working. That might be through power beaming or laser or microwave beaming to rovers or outposts. It could be by running wires but that’s probably not going to be that economical so probably power beaming of some sort.
Nuclear power is also another option. It’s things like radio isotype thermal generators. You can put those. The good thing about those is even if you’re in an area of the moon that goes through the lunar cycle, half 14 days of sunlight and 14 days of dark, that’s a long two-week period to survive with energy. If you don’t have solar power, then you need something like nuclear power to provide that continuous source. Otherwise, everything freezes up. It gets cold during that two-week period. Those are the two primary means of getting power.
Benefits Of Moon Settlements To Humanity
I was going to follow up on what you had mentioned to Hoyt. We have this economy and potential settlements on the moon. We say, “That kind of exploration is for the benefit of humanity writ large.” If I never go to the moon and never have any participation in this lunar economy directly, how does that impact me and the folks back on earth? What are some of the positives from that?
It’s several factors. First of all, only a handful of people went to the moon during Apollo but all the technologies we developed to get there. Some of the earliest microchips, computer technology, and software development that all went into getting to the moon ended up creating the technology era that we’ve lived in. There are going to be more technologies like that developed to do these hard things like going to the moon and Mars.
Those technologies, a lot of which may be robotics and AI-related, are going to come back to earth. Another whole sector of technologies that will have to be developed is life support because when you’re on the moon, Mars, or going between the moon and Mars, you’ve got to keep the humans alive in a self-contained habitat, module, or vessel. That’s not easy but if we can learn to do total sustainability within this enclosed environment, where we’re growing food and processing the water and the air to keep everyone healthy, we’re going to be able to translate a lot of that science that we learned back to creating sustainable environmental systems and processes for Earth.
The best way to do it is you solve the hard problem that you have to do to do the mission, bring that technology back, and solve some of the simpler problems that you never would have got around to doing, had you not done the hard problems. One of the biggest impacts that’s hard to quantify is the inspirational impact.
The number of students who decide to study STEM fields or other technical fields because they’re inspired by humanity going into space are not all going to end up working in space or space applications. They’re going to go off into medicine, cure cancer, and do a whole bunch of other things but providing that inspiration to energize our young people is another great spinoff.
That’s great. I like that last point in terms of inspiring people to pursue building skills in areas that could help with space but perhaps they end up applying them. Like the tools that we create for space, we bring them back to earth. I feel like that’s the corollary to human skills and the best of humanity, bringing it back here and applying some of that on Earth, even though they may have initially been inspired to do it by space.
We have real-time data on this. At The National Space Society, we hold this international design competition for students. There are thousands of students.
It’s amazing how many people participated in that.
We get feedback from these students. Almost universally, they say that competition is what inspired them to become an engineering major. Most of them end up saying that they decided not to go into aerospace engineering. They went into some other engineering. It was that space competition that inspired them to become an engineer. It does work.
I have proof from this experience. Michelle?
History Of Human Moon Explorations
Space is inspiring. It has been since the Apollo era and before even. We thought about why we went and I liked what you talked about Hoyt. It’s no longer about boots and flags. It’s about sustainability but we have already been to the moon. There’s a lot of stuff up there. It’s not just lunar regolith and water ice. Marlène, can you tell us a little bit more about the history of our exploration of the moon and what things we might need to consider as we move into our future on the moon?
Thank you very much, M.C. and Michelle, for having me. It’s very exciting to hear all that Hoyt had mentioned. It’s inspiring. I very much appreciate knowing all of your scientific discoveries and where we have to go because that does influence my work with respect to the cultural aspects and more collaborative aspects of what to do on the moon and for whom, and then getting to the idea of safe protecting and safeguarding, as Michelle was alluding to, perhaps sites.
In my view, although we are at a very exciting stage in terms of further space exploration, we are humans after all and humans share some very basic traits over time. Part of that is being able to preserve things that are important to us like objects and places and preserve collective memories. Those also are very inspiring for humanity, despite where we come from and what era we’re living in. In that respect, it is good to be introspective and to look back, not to keep us from moving forward but to understand what our tendencies have been.
It is good to be introspective not to keep us from moving forward but to understand what our tendencies have been.
It hasn’t been too long, and I would say several decades, that humanity has come together and created a series of conventions or international laws. The UN treaty regime does exactly that. They identify objects, sites, and practices that humans have come to appreciate and have created methodologies, not only to identify them but to safeguard and preserve them for our benefit in reverence for the past and also for inspiration for the future and to celebrate this idea of being stewards for those to come.
Given these patterns of human behavior that go from the family structure, community level, national level, and international level, it is important to take that into account and see how that may extend even beyond Earth. We’ve seen that that perception and those philosophies do already extend. We do have some sites and objects on the moon that we could already start to discuss.
Even with Apollo landing, there were rituals that humans certainly have taken part in. For example, the planning of the flag on the moon, the footsteps on the moon, and the recording of that process. This had a tremendous impact, not only on the astronauts or NASA but all of humanity if they could get a glimpse also on the black and white screens to see it and what this meant of what was happening.
We know that there’s an interest. The work we’ve done as humans and society is to go beyond the interest and start to create methodologies to formalize protection and safeguarding measures. With respect to objects on the moon, even those that have been re-imported, they have come to take a very special place, whether at museums or with national governments where they’re elevated to what we call a stage of a national treasure.
There are some countries like the US that are taking active steps to identify and create, for instance, rights of first refusal to be able to maintain possession of those objects. France as well. This is a pattern that has followed decades of a UNESCO treaty. The cultural branch of the UN has formalized rules in that respect. In terms of the historical landing sites, there are objects and artworks on the moon.
Beyond that and similar are also sites of scientific interest that likewise are worthy of identification and safeguarding, not necessarily for the cultural component but for the future scientific benefit of what they may bring. One thing that is not often part of the discussion is the excitement of getting to the moon and taking the next steps, which is very inspiring and can bring many benefits to many.
The idea perhaps is maybe we’re not the generation that can create that benefit. It’s being able to identify what it is that we’d like to do to safeguard what we have done and to also, in a sense, take in the sense of humility for what we may not be able to accomplish but what future generations can. It doesn’t mean that we should stop ourselves but recording the process and safekeeping is important.
How we do that becomes quite complex, however, because these safeguarding and protecting mechanisms that we’ve created on Earth do not apply beyond Earth. They are practiced more on a territorial or sovereign basis, which we don’t have available on the moon. This is part of the larger discussion within Artemis to create practices and rules to determine how we move forward as a collective community.
Aside from what’s on the moon, there’s also an important consideration of those who are still here on Earth that have utilized space on a terrestrial basis. There are groups, whether they’re local or indigenous communities that have always utilized space for cultural practice, navigation, and agriculture. That is a legitimate economic use or cultural use. To take into account their continued benefit of being able to use outer space is important.
When we start to talk about the orbits, satellites, and the effects of the moon, that can also influence their historical use, traditional use, and future use. It’s a very interesting topic in my respect. That conflicts at times with some of the economic interests but it’s an exciting opportunity also to put on the table the varying human interests and ensure that they’re standing for not those that are just spacefaring or that could be spacefaring in the future but that do have an interest at this time that could evolve but that they should also be part of the discussion. That is key to the type of conversations that we’re having.
Applicable Heritage Laws In Outer Space
Thank you. That’s very poignant the way you framed out all of our relationships with the moon. As you were noting, there is an entire terrestrial body of law dealing with heritage protection and safeguarding but that does not apply to the moon and other areas of outer space. Space is not itself lawless. We do have an outer space treaty.
Article 1 of the outer space treaties seems to entirely support Hoyt’s vision for the moon. “The space, moon, and other celestial bodies shall be free for exploration and use by all.” The benefits will be shared by all humanity. We know that happens not necessarily immediately but every scientific breakthrough is a benefit for all humanity. We have Article 2, which states, “No state party can claim territory on the moon by sovereignty or any other means.”
Think about the very idea of creating either an installation on the moon on the peaks of eternal light that are able to mine the lunar regolith or the lunar ice, or even thinking about trying to safeguard a site. Both of those immediately seem to me to violate both Article 1 and Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty. How do you start a business if you can’t own the property on which it is built?
I don’t think owning the lunar land that you’re operating on or claiming any sovereignty over that land is necessary in itself, provided that we do follow what the US Luxembourg, and a few other countries have already adopted or proposed. While you can’t own the land, you can own what you extract and produce. If you extract water from this water ice, you can own that water and sell it. If you extract some metals on the moon and build a habitat, a vehicle, or a rocket ship with those materials, you can own and sell them.
That’s the key to success. However, there is an issue that if you don’t have some form of governance, and that’s what you get from sovereignty, whoever the sovereign power is bringing the governance, investors want to invest in locations that are well governed and not the Wild West. That lack of clear governance is what I’m more concerned with as opposed to actual ownership of the land. I can go into more of that if you like to.
If there isn’t ownership of the land, where do you get that governance from?
For instance, the site is being run by NASA and its Artemis partners. Those governments, whether it’s led by NASA or they create some governing document like we had with the International Space Station to provide governance, or China and Russians and others want to set up an international lunar research station, in those instances, the world would expect those nations to provide the governance. You would have to still abide by the Outer Space Treaty.
In the longer term, you may have things like a company. SpaceX or Blue Origin set up its site. Are they the corporate governance like it’s a mining town? Is it like a captain on a ship in international waters and they have control? Are they subject to the jurisdiction of their headquarters, in this case, the US? What is that corporate governance? Ideally, in the future, what you would want, say at the South Pole, is something equivalent to a free port where you have dozens of countries and nations all sharing infrastructure and working together.
What’s the governance model there? No one can own the land but someone’s got to provide that governance model to protect the investments people make. One of the interesting solutions that I’ve seen and been part of is a concept called The Lunar Development Cooperative, which Michael Castle-Miller originated years ago. That’s a whole new episode but that’s worth exploring in terms of a cooperative governance model that could work.
I’d love that. I’d also love that you’re pointing out that if you are interested in space, you don’t have to be a STEM person or an engineer. You can be a lawyer, policymaker, or the people who are thinking about that lunar governance. I also want to point out to our audience that you mentioned the Artemis program and the Artemis Accords. The Artemis program is the US program to put the first woman and the first person of color on the moon. Originally, it was by 2024. We’ve slipped to 2028 but this is an effort.
This is the first step toward creating that sustainable existence on the moon that Hoyt alluded to. The Artemis Accords are a political commitment. There are principles that are signed by the companies that have joined in this collaborative effort to reach the moon. For the record, it will be 50 when Panama and Austria sign in December 2024. Speaking of the Artemis Accords, Marlène, Section 9 of the Artemis Accords talks about protecting cultural heritage on the moon. Can you speak a little bit about that and what we might see come out of that section?
Section 9 is an exciting clause within the Artemis Accords, in which the Artemis Partners have agreed to develop the concept and practices of what cultural heritage would mean beyond Earth and on the Moon. It’s a great initiative because it recognizes that there are different rules that would necessarily have to apply on the moon since the terrestrial rules do not apply. However, because of sovereign and territorial reasons, the principles, though, which have been developed are important.
My anticipation for the group of Artemis partners working on Section 9 is to get a very good understanding of what the principles have been in terms of safeguarding identification and cultural heritage sites if this is what we’re discussing sites, and then to see what some of the practices have been with those sites and safeguarding, as well as, interestingly, the experience that we’ve had on earth with building and extraction around sites.
This would not be a new challenge but understanding how we’ve dealt with it on Earth could facilitate the process on the moon or could caution us to perhaps take alternative avenues. What I had mentioned in terms of extraction, resources, and legislation in the US and Luxembourg is that the domino effect that happened years ago certainly opens up a lot of possibilities when there are investments and more activity.
We see that on earth. In the work that I do with underwater, that certainly was what had happened. There was treasure salvage that was very eager to go into the waters and identify sunken colonial vessels because of the potential, and the findings of what were in those cargoes. The money was invested. Part of the reason why we were able to get into such deep areas of the ocean and see what was there and then do the extraction was based on the law of salvage and fines, which in many countries is called a universal law of the sea.
Similarly, when we have a group of countries that are looking to identify resources, extract them, and use them, I see some similarities there. That is on Earth that had happened for a long time until the ability to access that technology became more widespread of the understanding that the technology was being accessed. Where we got into trouble was then the idea of title rights over those cargos because some countries didn’t adhere to the finder’s keepers or the finder salvage policy.
This is one of the reasons that in the drafting of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, we had something like Article 2 because this was an issue that we had been running into. In my work with the salvaging of colonial wrecks, what I’ve seen in the last several years is that treasure salvers have been able to create the technology, invest, and be able to extract $500 million of gold, silver, emeralds, and so on.
They’ve brought it to the surface and then there are claims against those resources and issues of sovereignty of jurisdiction with the idea of lack of abandonment come into play. At the moment, we haven’t gotten in the courts to the stage where we’ve been able to make a decision on the merits. It’s gone into questions of jurisdiction.
When I understand this, it does make me a little bit nervous about what might happen on the moon and beyond, especially because it’s very important for investors to have a stable environment with rules that they can rely on to make investments, which the treasure salvage did have but because of the advances of technologies, the idea is that there was no abandonment of these objects. In a sense, archeological, cultural, and historical links to these objects, given the advancement in international laws that created those links like the 1982 Law of the Seas Convention and the 2001 UNESCO Convention.
We’ve gotten to a spot where investors are having some difficulty and had many losses because of evolution in those various respects over time these decades. It’s important to see what’s happened when we’re thinking about extraction, given that there are other states perhaps that are not in a place at a time. Those are some thoughts but in terms of extraction, cultural heritage, and sites, there have been many cases around the world where companies have wanted to extract in particular areas but those were areas of cultural interest.
There was a conflict between the investor and also the state that was inviting the investment and then the cultural community. Sometimes, that becomes a big conflict, for example, with Bears Ears a few years ago with the oil pipelines in the US. It doesn’t always have to be extraction. For example, McDonald’s and Walmart wanted to create new businesses near the temples in Mexico City but we come into questions of investors and state type of relationships, including one test to underwater that’s at the ICC between Columbia and American Treasure salvage company.
The whole concept of what we’re discussing veered towards an investment treaty. That’s where everything is hinging at the moment but with time, what some states have seen is that preserving those sites has become quite important and does bring a tremendous amount of financial investment into the country, perhaps not from mining but from tourism.
If we do have this idea of space varying capacity and long-term sustainability of humans on the moon, it’s very probable that humans will bring our culture or develop a culture and also have sites, cultural traditions, and so on. Ultimately, we’re at a stage where preserving sites, traditions, and objects that have become a financial resource for states. In terms of an economic point of perspective, it is one that we might keep in mind.
We are at a stage where preserving sites, traditions, and objects has become a financial resource for states.
Protecting Heritage In The Moon
It sounds to me, Hoyt, that your lunar cooperative ought to start with protecting heritage because then you can bring tourism to the moon based on that protection.
There’s a general agreement that there are important heritage sites for all of humanity on the moon and they need to be protected. For the moon, that tends to mean creating some exclusionary zone, safety zone, buffer zone, or whatever you want to call it around that site. How big that needs to be, we don’t know yet. A problem for the audience is that the moon only has 1/6 of the gravity of Earth. It doesn’t have an atmosphere.
If you’re vigorously excavating at a mining site or a rocket comes down and lands and its rocket plume stirs up a cloud of regolith, that regolith can go a very long way. There’s no air resistance to stop it and it’s going to slowly fall because gravity is only 1/6. This human activity can stir up this regolith, which is very nasty stuff. It’s like tiny shards of glass and minerals. You don’t want it destroying these pristine heritage sites that you want to keep forever. We got to figure out how big these exclusionary zones need to be and that’s going to depend on the operations that we allow around them.
The geography of the site, is it a lunar plane or is it within a crater that has crater rims to buffer? Is it a lava tube? It’s also going to change over time as we develop new technologies and find better ways of shielding or creating rocket plumes less disruptive. Talk about the need for lawyers. There are going to be a lot of arbitrations, lawsuits, and stuff coming down the road that will have to develop case law over time on how to handle all these different situations to protect not only heritage sites but also one operator site from another operator site.
There’ll probably be more lawyers and astronauts for a while. We’ve got a lot to figure out. As the Artemis Accords have already put into it, I believe there’s an agreement by these 50 nations that we are going to protect heritage. What I would recommend is that we either open up the Artemis Accords or create something like it that the corporations will sign directly. The corporations are going to say right up front, “We know this is important. We’re not going to do anything to harm these heritage sites.” Not just rely on the nations to police the companies but have them agree to it upfront.
For All Moonkind is right there.
It’s an exciting thing that you said, Hoyt. Exclusionary zones are important but one thing for sure that we’ve learned on earth is if there aren’t a large number of all states that agree to it, they are very vulnerable. It becomes, “What’s the point?” We saw this Titanic example. The Titanic is in international waters with a very close agreement that was signed.
The idea is that there should be permission to go to the Titanic and there’s a team in the US that does give the permissions. If a non-US entity, non-British, or Canadian French decides that they’re going to go beyond national jurisdiction to visit the site, they have no obligation to follow those rules. This is like all of their sites, whether they’re in international areas or even domestically.
There needs to be an all-on-board mentality to ensure the protection of the site. There can be years and billions invested in protecting this site but if there’s someone who’s not obligated to follow those rules, then everything falls through the cracks. That is one issue that we should put our heads together. Also, consider the idea of regolith and so on.
We also don’t want to have sites all over the place. Just because we have heritage sites or cultural objects that are of interest, not all of them are of interest. Part of what makes them so special is their unique nature so that they’re not like millions of them. What makes 1 or 2 unique is something that we would have to define collectively but also we should use the sites within the principles of cultural heritage theory.
Using sites for strategic, political, and economic uses is also something that we humans have done and are capable of. For example, in maritime waters with the law of the seas, a part of the sea extends from the land boundary. You have some rights depending on the distance from the land boundary or a known site where the state had established itself. A few years ago, we saw in the South China Sea that identifying underwater cultural vessels created an impetus for our Chinese friends to say that the extension of their territorial sea was not on the land but where they had originally been able to get to. They were proving that through the wrecks and where those wrecks were landing on the sea floor.
That is a controversial approach to cultural heritage and it’s used in a political way. We do want to avoid that type of usage of cultural heritage, which would preclude some of the ability and excitement of investors and scientific communities to move forward and do some of the work that we’d like to do on the moon. It’s almost like having a community. You can have a community that pops up. From traveling, we’ve all seen many communities where there’s a home, a dry cleaner, and a supermarket. There’s everything going on everywhere.
If it’s an area that’s more planned and zoned, that permits for more organization and also more agreement initially. When we move forward, there isn’t not only an inability to effectively safeguard cultural heritage sites or even objects but also the ability to collaborate on the site, what those sites will be and not to allow those sites to be used for other alternative purposes that could create more political or legal conflict.
Getting Incentives For Heritage Protection
In a salvage situation in the ocean, there’s an incentive for companies or private individuals to work hard and get those valuable items. Is there any scenario where a private company would have some incentive to do this protection to be a heritage protection company or something like that on the moon?
Can you explain to me what you mean by heritage protection company?
Their job. If we reach a certain consensus or agreement that certain sites are meriting protection, who protects that? I’m trying to figure out if there’s an intersection of economic interest and business interest in saying, “This is a great job for a company to do, protect, and implement the protections that we’ve decided.”
What we’ve seen that’s worked more effectively is this collaborative mechanism, which was established in the 1982 Obstetrics Convention, which has a provision that says any state that has a cultural, historical, or archaeological link to that site is able to collaborate and decide what to do with that site. This is something that we can use this mechanism on the moon.
However, what becomes more complicated is who exactly would be those and those communities. To get to the moon, some of the work that we’ve done with For All Moonkind is to look at what communities have collaborated and participated over time and space to be able to get to that point. The historical archaeological link can be much broader than what we see simply in the law of the sea.
What also limits that mechanism or structure is the interest or the ratification of some states to some of these agreements. Preliminarily, we have this sea convention but it evolved more in the 2001 UNESCO convention, which obligated this state party. It’s not all UN state parties of the 2001 convention. That means that although there may be some states that have that link and are ready to collaborate, it could be that another state found the vessel in its territorial and jurisdictional waters and has no obligation to collaborate with those states.
They can do as they wish with that object not in line with the 2001 convention. We have a very real example of this off the coast of Columbia where Columbia actively has not partaken and not become part of the state parties to the 2001 convention, specifically because their coastline has many sunken vessels. Those vessels, if they sign on to the 2001 convention, will need to collaborate with some states.
For example, Spain, which is a flag state, claims title over those objects. It also gets into complications with other states that may have been where the cargo originated. To keep control over what happens to those vessels in their territorial waters, they have avoided those agreements and so far has worked well. However, the flaw was that they introduced an investor, treasure hunter, and treasure salvage company some decades ago. They made agreements and changed those agreements. It’s been quite a mess.
What can you say? Sovereign rights and the sovereign rule within its territory would prevail. The problem, however, is because we live in an international world, the US and Columbia have an international trade agreement. There’s a claim that Columbia breached that international trade agreement, although it has nothing to do with the vessel and cultural heritage because it’s based on another system of law, investment, and economics. They’re able to use that provision to go into arbitration and force the Colombians to collaborate and decide what’s going to happen with those vessels.
We can’t hide away and keep that power over what we will do on our own. In essence, what the Colombian example is showing is that because we’re so intertwined as nations and histories, in one way or another, there will have to be a collaboration. What form that takes once we’re on the moon, we’re yet to see. We’re in a good place where we’re trying to plan ahead. If we don’t have all states on board, the risk is that it cannot be for sure yet.
We are so intertwined as nations and histories in one way or another that there needs to be proper collaboration in space exploration.
M.C. has such a lot to take in. We started this conversation by talking about all the possibilities that we have on the moon, lunar mining, and using the moon to support governments and then to come in, mine, and inspire. I love the way Marlène opened her perspective saying humans are humans. Humans need some guardrails. Hoyt said investors want some framework. It seems to me that it’s talking about collaboration and this needs to be collaborative, international, and universal, if you will.
Business Opportunities In Heritage Protection
Think about how easy it is to politicize cultural heritage in ways that would damage the opportunity to create a thriving and sustainable cislunar economy, which is somewhat frightening. I’m going to ask you two questions before we let M.C. close with the lightning round. This is a lot to take in with what it means. What you touched on a little bit is about somebody reading who is worried about what their kid is going to eat for dinner. If you piggyback on that, where the audience can learn more about your work and what you’re doing.
Can I briefly go back to the last question? Protecting these heritage sites could be a business opportunity in itself. We’re not going to have astronauts at gates walking the perimeter. You’re going to need some on-the-ground monitoring so there are sensor companies. You’re going to need satellite imaging flying over and monitoring to see if someone’s setting up operations nearby that might be harmful and see if rovers are going through that heritage site or landers are landing in the heritage site.
You need constant situational awareness of what’s happening in and around these heritage sites. That’s a business. You might also have people creating protective berms around certain sites. Companies with excavation equipment come and create these protective berms. It’s one example of how you can create businesses on the moon to do what you want to do.
Going back to your question, Michelle, the average American citizen doesn’t care that much about space. They may go to a sci-fi movie or something but they are focused on the bread-and-butter topics that are around the kitchen table. Remind our citizens that NASA is 0. 3% of our expenditures. It’s the flea on the tail of the dog. It’s not the dog. Even at that level, the goal is to make the funding of space a commercial private investment matter.
While the government needs to help prime the pump as they do with any new frontier, the goal is to transition government funding out of the picture and have the markets and the economies that we set up take over and fund it. That’s the only way it’ll ever be sustainable. You can’t rely on anyone or a few governments to do this. It’s too expensive. They’ve got much more important priorities to fulfill for their population. That’s the goal. The benefits long term will justify these near-term government expenditures and then we’ll let the private sector take over.
For reading suggestions, where can people learn more about your work and what you do?
I do a lot of policy work as part of the National Space Society. Their website is Space.NSS.org. There’s a policy section where you can go to look at all the papers that they have published. Beyond Earth is also a great source of materials. They came out with 5 or 6 new publications, including some on the lunar development corporate that I mentioned before.
Why People Should Care About Moon Heritage
Thanks, Hoyt. Marlène, do people care about this heritage that may or may not need safeguarding on the moon?
That seems like a simple question. They should care because it’s part of our collective memory. It’s reverence for all of humanity that has come before. If we do the nitty-gritty, it’s fascinating how people over time have contributed to our capacity for space exploration, which has ultimately resulted in insight. It’s the idea of flight, meteorology, astronomy, use of materials, and mathematics. If we look at it in that respect, that’s fascinating.
People should care about space exploration because it is part of our collective memory. It is reverence for all of humanity that has come before.
We like history and history books. We learn history in school. This is something that we should preserve in our collective memories. It’s also very important for humans to achieve because it serves as inspiration. It also recognizes and celebrates what we’re capable of. Being able to identify those sites on the moon and celebrate, a lot of people would be very happy. Who doesn’t want to go to the Eiffel Tower?
To go back to what Hoyt was saying at the beginning of our discussion, it’s inspiring. Think about our first visit to the moon. The level of technology we had was quite different from what we have now. It’s the bravery, courage, and curiosity that nonetheless took us there and back. It’s very inspiring about the best of humanity.
We need to be very forward-thinking about this as well. Once we have our safeguarding mechanisms for whatever sites that we decide to preserve on the moon, which also includes objects, that’s going to serve, in hindsight, hundreds of years from now of where we did get to on the moon if we’re already on Mars. We have to give ourselves the allowance for future generations and to be able to appreciate this part of humanity, which we have demonstrated is an important part of our species.
That’s why people should care about sites. As a legal expert, we should care about it because it’s also very exciting to see the evolution of legal theory, laws, and extension into areas beyond national jurisdiction. That’s an academic, practical, and natural evolution that is also fascinating. That links also very well with how technology prompts and supports that extension of the legal regime. Ultimately, like what Hoyt had said, we need a governing structure for the moon and beyond.
It should be part of it because it’s not just cultural heritage that we look at for these reasons but there are, for example, rules of law that are also involved. Not that we should talk about beyond earth or whatnot but there are ways to preserve. If there are conflicts, there are also ways to facilitate collaboration in terms of language, tradition, and also around investments. Investments gravitate towards cultural objects and cultural sites. It also gives those of us who may never get the moon something to look towards, even from the territory terrestrial basis.
Space needs lawyers. Here at Ole Miss, we have the premier program to train both JD and LLM attorneys. You can find out more about us at Law.OleMiss.edu. Marlène, where can we learn more about your work and what you do?
I have a few articles that we can find and read about. I’m more active in the discussions on panels for the moment. We see certainly a lot of discussion about cultural heritage on the moon through some organizations, specifically For All Moonkind. Michelle has done an excellent job at leading that discussion, making it more available for people all over the world, and giving them an opportunity to partake in those discussions. The other thing too is to not necessarily only think about sites but there are other related aspects of culture, utilization, and manifestations in space.
For example, those could relate to dark and quiet skies. The skies are not a patrimony of humanity, which have their legal mechanisms of protection but that’s one aspect. The consistent use of the sky from a terrestrial basis for local communities. Also, the idea of the importation of cultural objects and their placement in museums at auctions. There are a variety of ways to understand the complexity and the growing nature of cultural heritage on the moon but it’s not necessarily only sight. As time goes by, we will see exactly how that develops.
Lightning Round And Episode Wrap-Up
Thank you so much for this discussion. It’s been interesting. It got me thinking about different ways of thinking about these questions and how we might solve them. As Michelle mentioned, we are going to end with a quick lightning round. It’s word association questions after our discussions. It is what comes to mind when I say each of these words. We’ll try to keep some order between this so you’re not talking over each other. I’m going to start with you, Hoyt, on these ten words, and then Marlène, you’ll be the second for them. That way, we’ll keep order. The first one is space.
Future of humanity.
Universe. Hoyt?
Unlimited and infinite.
Marlène, what do you think about the universe? What comes to mind?
The humility of our species and the extraordinary capacity we have to achieve but even more than that, it’s the amazingness of some human minds to have conceived of things like this. We’re doing it, whether centuries or decades later. Who knows? It’s humbling but inspiring to know that those amongst us will achieve great things in the universe.
That’s cool. I like that one, the humility one in particular. It gives you perspective on ourselves and everything else, something bigger than us. Hoyt, the moon.
It’s the next step for humanity.
Marlène?
Collectivity.
I was almost thinking when you were saying Marlène, that it’s some kind of a communal aspect to it.
There’s another word that can’t come to my mind but the moon’s drawing us to it and that is calling for us.
It is unique in that way. We see it constantly every night. We’re so tied to the cycles, too. Explorer.
Roamer. An aspect of our DNA is that we are natural roamers and explorers and that’s how we’ve survived.
Marlène’s trying to boil it down to one word.
I get close but extraordinary human.
That’s good, Marlène. What do we think about the law?
Safety or protection.
You might agree with that, Marlène, or do you have a different view?
Survival.
I guess the natural word is law and order.
Like the show, it’s the little theme song for it. The last question would be culture.
Joy.
Unavoidable.
Thank you so much both of you for this discussion. That was fun at the end to get the word association going and think about it. It gives a kind of a view into broad and inspirational thinking, even thinking about issues involving space and cutting-edge things like this can bring and the type of curiosity that those who are interested in it bring to these explorations. That’s the key driver and the common ingredient of everyone who’s involved in space, whether it’s law or business. As an astronaut or whatnot, there’s an innate curiosity and interest in exploring that’s fun. Thanks so much for sharing that.
Thanks for inviting me.
Thank you. I love the game. It’s so fun.
I’m so glad. Thank you so much for joining us and having this discussion, especially the fun word association at the end. It’s great. Thank you so much.
Hopefully, you’ll ask the other podcasters the same ones.
We’re going to ask some of the same ones and some different ones depending on the topics. I’m curious to crowdsource. Thank you so much, everyone.
Thanks, everybody.
Important Links
- For All Moonkind
- Near Earth LLC
- National Space Society
- Beyond Earth
- The University of Mississippi School of Law
About Hoyt Davidson
Hoyt Davidson is the founder and Managing Partner of Near Earth LLC, a CT based investment bank and advisory firm focused on the commercial satellite industry, aerospace and wireless telecom. Near Earth’s clients include: major satellite companies, private equity and hedge funds, small to medium sized aerospace companies and early stage entrepreneurial firms seeking private capital. Mr. Davidson received his MBA from MIT’s Sloan School. Before entering Sloan, Mr. Davidson worked as a Senior Research Engineer at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company.
About Dr. Marlène M. Losier
Dr. Marlène M. Losier is a legal expert in international law. She advises private and public clients on international and national laws relating to culture and space policies affected by maritime, terrestrial and beyond Earth considerations often resulting from the succession of states in the post-colonial context and particularly those relating to title and propriety rights. She advises on the United Nations treaty system and its auspices, counsels on bilateral and multilateral agreements and assists in developing corresponding domestic rules. Her background is in socio-cultural anthropology, governing structures and state-state / investor-state arbitration. She is Lead Heritage Counsel at For All Moonkind, a nonprofit focused on preserving cultural heritage on the Moon.