🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C0MBCs.EIA.1@cs.cmu.edu> roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov (John Roberts) writes:
>...Your complaint is that US citizens can't circumvent US safety
>regulations by going overseas. I don't see why they can't launch and also
>conform to the safety regulations.

John, are you under the impression that safety is the only reason why the
US government can refuse permission for a launch?  Would that it were so.
If you want to fly a plane, that's more or less true.  But if you want to
launch a rocket, they can refuse permission because it is "not in the
national interest", they don't have to explain, and there is no appeal.
For example, for some years it was government policy that any private
remote-sensing satellite with ground resolution better than 30m would
be denied launch permission.

One of the more interesting provisions of the late, lamented Commercial
Space Incentive Act was a clause exempting launches carried out under it
from DOT regulation *except* for safety.

>... And consider human rights issues - suppose
>US citizens set up a colony on the moon, and decide to revive the
>institution of slavery - would you say the US would have no legitimate
>interest in the matter?

Suppose we stack the deck the other way.  US citizens set up a lunar
colony.  The US then gets involved in a nasty little war in a country
named, say, Nam Viet, and reinstates the draft.  Some of the residents
of the lunar colony are draft-age, and they are ordered to report to
an induction center.  They refuse, noting that slavery was abolished
in the US over a century ago, and that the constitutional amendment
which did it made no exception for the US Army.  The colony's government
backs them, noting that the Neocommunist revolutionary movement in
Nam Viet presents no threat to the colony.  Does the US have a legitimate
interest in *this* matter?

The war gets worse.  Some of the colony residents were formerly members
of the Neocommunist party.  The US government decides that having such
people on the Moon is a security risk, and orders them returned to Earth.
The colony government refuses.  Does the US have a legitimate interest
in *this* matter?

The war becomes increasingly brutal.  A visiting US astronaut, who happens
to be a USAF officer, declares his opposition to the tactics being used
(on the grounds that they are illegal) and requests political asylum in
the colony.  The colony grants it.  The US demands his return for trial.
Does the US have a legitimate interest in *this* matter?  (Note, regarding
John's comments about "governments that ignore international laws and
agreements", that the colony is doing just that!  The Outer Space Treaty
requires return of astronauts, and makes no provision for political
asylum.)
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry