Harold Flores Dr. Mitcho SOCI 320-003 2/15/2015 One Small Step for Man, One Giant Step for Commercialization of the Moon In “One Small Step for Man, One Giant Step for Commercialization of the Moon” Dominic Basulto discusses the treaties and regulations that restrict nations from taking sovereign claim of the moon. In his article he points out several arguments that come to play when talking about the commercialization of the moon, but fails to mention some kind of legal binding terms and precedents needed to be established. Although the debate in Basulto’s article seems to be the economic motif, there isn’t much information as to any guarantees of return on investment for corporate profit driven ventures. To understand how globalization is …show more content…
2). But this space exploration isn’t making the world any flatter, if anything its expanding opportunity. The spark that lit the inspiration to go back to the moon was introduced by Google Lunar X Prize awarding private teams a grand prize of $20 million. The regulation is that each private team must have no more than 10 percent in government funding, land a robot on the moon, move 500 meters above the surface of the moon, and send data back to earth. As also stated by Friedman, “The core meaning of globalization reflects a change in scale and size” (p. …show more content…
Private companies would be wrong to waste money in trying to set-up, and creating space stations on the moon let alone mine it. Instead of investing millions of dollars on missions to the moon, they should look into economic stability and how that could help support for a later space commercialization. Another thing that Basulto mentioned was a “loophole” around the second treaty signed in the 1979 Moon Treaty, a treaty the U.S. did not sign. The 1979 Moon Treaty said that no “sovereign” ownership rights to the moon is banned, but not private ownership rights. However, this loophole hasn’t actually been proven to be reliable, so the next move is to take on the Google Lunar X