The Next Space Race
The space race between the US and the USSR was a source of national pride, led to important scientific advances, and spurred critical technological developments with widespread applications. Expansion on that frontier is currently stalled, since the costs to push towards Mars are (apologies) astronomical. There's a frontier closer to home that is almost equally unexplored, that offers the potential of enormous resources: the world at the bottom of the oceans. Our competitor in this race is Russia, and we're already losing.
The allotment of natural resources within the oceans is governed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea , which protects the territorial right of countries to their own coastal waters and provides guidelines for exploitation of non-national deep sea waters. This last part proved a sticking point here at home; the US initially refused to ratify the agreement because of concerns over what they viewed as excess power granted to the International Seabed Authority. Even after the treaty was revised to accommodate US objections, a handful of anti-UN Republicans (led by everyone's favorite global warming skeptic, Jim Inhofe) prevented ratification. Some other counties on the short list of those that have not ratified the treaty are Iran, North Korea, and Libya -- great company.
Surprise, turns out another section of the treaty was more important: countries are also given sole rights to areas upon the continental shelf extending out from their above-land territory. Russia conveniently discovered an underwater ridge extending deep into Arctic waters, and recently planted a flag (with a sub) under the North Pole in an attempt to solidify their claim. The US was suddenly left with restricted options to counter this move:
In May, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Russia claiming the hydrocarbon-rich area would be to the detriment of U.S. interests. Unless Washington ratifies the U.N. Maritime Convention, pending since 1982, the Senator explained, the U.S. will have no say whatsoever in the dispute — it won't even have a seat on the International Seabed Authority that monitors nations' compliance with the U.N. Maritime convention, controls activities beyond the national jurisdiction limits and currently administers the area around the pole.
The reactionary anti-UN politics of a few extremists cannot be permitted to further harm our national interests. Opening this new frontier could be tremendously important for the US and the world as we exhaust the land-based resources that are so plentiful beneath the waves. Like the space race, there is an element of national pride here, and there are also tangible scientific benefits. The latest edition of Nature has an editorial calling for ratification of the UNCLOS that notes:
[The treaty] includes a right to conduct scientific research anywhere on the immense swathe of ocean that is not controlled by any country, as long as the work is peaceful, noncommercial and disseminated freely. The treaty's scope can expand as fresh issues arise: at the convention's most recent meeting, in May in New York, a framework for dealing with marine genetic resources was discussed.It is up to Senator Joseph Biden (Democrat, Delaware), chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, to bring a resolution of ratification through his committee to the Senate floor. He should do so at the earliest available opportunity.
Yes he should. Senate Democrats back this, Bush backs this, environmentalists and oil companies back this. It's time for the US to join the world in taking an active role mapping out the borders of our newest frontier.
missliberties had a nice summary of this topic in the weekend open thread.
Comments :
While we were distracted
by the GWOT and Iraq, Russia makes inroads on the 'last frontier', the ocean floor.
The Law of the Sea Treaty
The irony of this story is thick and dynamic.
While US political gurus have been holding the American public hostage with a laserlike focus on divisive political debate, are you 'with us or against us'...
.... the Russians have been busy riding in submarines and have planted a Russian flag at the bottom of the oil saturated Arctic Ocean.
Russians Plant Flag Under the North Pole
The ideologues that insist on the politically crippling notion that the US is above pesky international laws and treaties have not ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty.
This treaty was first rejected by the Reagan administration saying it violated free market principles (can you say Iran).
The US stands alone as not ratifying the Sea Treaty. I wonder how this will play in the International Community, that has Denmark, Russia, Canada, the US and others who are clamoring to claim rights to the oil rich seabed.
Has the US been sideswiped by Russia?
Russia's eagerness to secure the rights to Arctic energy worries many policymakers in Washington, who argue that the U.S. is powerless to intervene while it remains mired in a 13-year debate over ratification of a United Nations treaty governing international maritime rights.
That pact, the Law of the Sea Treaty, is viewed by many as the world's primary means of settling disputes over explloration rights and navigational routes in international waters. Russia and 152 other nations have ratified the treaty.
U.S. lawmakers who oppose the treaty have held up its ratification in Congress since 1994, arguing that signing on to the pact cedes too much power to the UN. Proponents of the treaty say if the U.S. doesn't ratify it, Russia's bid for the Arctic's energy wealth will go unchallenged.
Even more bizarre in the land of irony is that likely this undersea oil reserve underneath the North Pole, would likely not have a Russian flag on it with out the realities of climate change that has melted enough ice to make the ocean more passable.
[reposted my comment from Weekend Open Thread]
I'm only half stupid
Thanks
I must have read that and then forgot I read it, and then I was browsing Nature and came across the editorial and thought hmm, I've heard of this incident! Edited to add hat-tip, sorry for not having it there initially. Nice summary.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Space
is only prohibitively expensive if we insist on sending people to Mars.
We just launched another unmanned probe to the Martian north pole.
The Cassini spacecraft is currently exploring Saturn and its moons. Galileo spent years exploring Jupiter's system. And the New Horizons spacecraft is on its way to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
Even Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still transmitting data from the outer edge of the solar system and will soon enter interstellar space.
That's a lot of bang for the buck.
qui tacet consentire
Yes
That's true.
I personally feel we get even more bang for the buck by looking beyond the solar system -- space observatories like Hubble and Chandra have enabled incredible advances.
As far as getting material resources out of space (mining the asteroids or terraforming Mars or whatever), we're still a long way off.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Moon
If we wanted to make it a national priority we could probably create a functioning moonbase. It'd be hard, risky, and expensive but we probably could pull it off over the course of a couple decades.
It'd be worth it if we did it right. A functioning moonbase could serve as a platform for further space exploration (assuming it develops to the point of having substantial indutrial capacity). The vast majority of rocket fuel is used getting to earth orbit. The moon's gravity is so much weaker that it would be much much easier to launch from there. Might even be able to use alternate solutions to rocketry (which is abysmally inefficient) like railguns/coilguns to launch unmanned space objects.
Furthermore as with previous space work there would certainly be spin off technology and developments from the attempt and the (hopeful) success.
If the moon base were to be made self supporting over time it would provide one last advantage- if a catastrophy were to affect the earth there would be a nucleus of survivors, either to carry on the species were we extinct down here, or to help earth bound survivors rebuild.
I'd much rather see us push for the sea to be environmentally protected and focus our efforts upwards.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
PS
Mars is a pipe dream. There's no concievable way we'll have people on mars in my lifetime unless some completely unforseen breakthrough is made in propulsion. It simply takes too long to get there using rockets and gravity slingshots. The sheer size of a rocket you'd need to launch just one mission to get there (carrying food and water and air for human beings for three months) is ridculous. Mars would have advantages over the Moon in some regards (variety of materials available to the base) but it's just way too far away to be possible.
A functioning moon base would be a good step towards eventual martian colonization.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Agree with the moonbase idea
I think that was NASA's original plan: go to the moon as a stepping stone to Mars. Not sure where all that is at in terms of budget these days.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Did you ever happen to read
The High Frontier? Old 1970s book about how to set up colonies in space using materials from the moon (asteroids are probably easier, I guess) and examining in detail all the technological challenges of having thousands of people living in a massive rotating cylinder out at L5. 30 years later we've made essentially zero progress on that front... kind of sad.
The protection for us as a species to survive a catastrophe on Earth is a big plus, one that might convince governments to work together on something of this scale.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Haven't read it.
Unfortunately the moon doesn't have much of anything useful except just raw rock. You'd have to cart up all your organics and create a really tightly controlled ecosphere. The biosphere projects are invaluable to understanding how to make that work. Getting all that stuff to the moon would be very difficult, but not impossible to a wealthy technologically advanced nation that was really dedicated to the goal.
I have no idea if such dedication exists or could be grown here though.
The idea of a multinational base is nice but I suspect the additional complications make it even less likely to ever happen.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.