Okay, I think you need to have mentioned this in your OP. This is because I don't think most people would assume there would be colonies on the moon in the absence of the Outer Space Treaty. This is because the cost of travelling to the moon is so high it is cheaper to pay for land on earth even if there is free land on the moon.

Well that was my original point and since you side-stepped it I guess I'll take that as confirmation that you agree with me.

Dude, you've completely lost me. I don't have a clue what your point is here, unless it's that my writing style is unclear. . . .

Do you actually have a substantive point?

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin

Okay, you said that if the US owned the moon back in the 60s it would have provided free grants of land and there would be thriving incipient colonies on the moon now. I am saying that I don't think free grants of land would be enough to start colonies because the high cost of getting to the moon makes it cheaper to buy land on earth. This makes me think that the Outer Space Treaty probably hasn't made a difference in practical terms.

Well, it´s fine for me [though it would be a backwards motion, imo], once it is voted by all interested parties. But caution here: How about the criterium for sovereignty over space were precedence [having arrived there first]?

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"As truth is gathered, I rearrange,
Inside out, outside in - Perpetual change." - A British rock band

Your point is a non sequitur: it's cheaper to buy land in South Dakota than it is in Manhattan; yet Manhattan has a thriving real estate market.

In addition, my conclusion regarding the status of hypothetical Moon colonies was a wargaming of the highly implausible and artificial scenario you devised where the rest of the world willingly handed over the Moon to the US "as a present". It could have turned out differently if the OST was never signed and the USSR decided to continue the space race and challenge US dominance of the Moon.

Moreover, you still ignore my point regarding the Saturn V lawn ornaments. I think the historical record is quite clear that they were contracted out during pre-OST space race; once the OST put an end to the space race, the Saturn V's were retired because the strategic goals they were intended to achieve were rendered moot by the OST.

If you have an explanation as to why the retirement of three perfectly fine Saturn V boosters as a result of the OST was not a hindrance to space exploration, I would love to hear it.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin

Quite right. Our dear fellows are probably thinking about mining the Moon or something.

This whole discussion is a bit disconnected from reality. The US generously did the enterprise of landing on the Moon on behalf of all the mankind. That was wise. The conquest of space was a mankind´s collective achievement. It began with the first thinkers, poets, writers, and continued to the airplane inventors, rocket scientists, the Russians starting the real thing...on a long chain of events. Putting the US flag on the Moon was the culmination of a process [Bravo!].

Space can only give us science [and hopefully a shelter in the worst case scenario if we´re ready enough], hence my argument about intangible benefits. If it is hard to sell science as a sufficient motive for going to space, well, it´s time to educate people on the facts of reality.

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"As truth is gathered, I rearrange,
Inside out, outside in - Perpetual change." - A British rock band

My question is, why would free land on the moon starting in the 1960s result in thriving incipient colonies today?

So owning the moon isn't what's important then? It is a space race and a challenge that would have caused a difference in space exploration? So US ownership of the moon wouldn't have made a difference then?

"If you have an explanation as to why the retirement of three perfectly fine Saturn V boosters as a result of the OST was not a hindrance to space exploration,"

Three perfectly fine Saturn V boosters were not retired because of the OST. They were retired because the NASA budget was reigned in from it's unsustainable level of the mid to late 60's due to a change in presidency. 'Ownership' of any territory they would have visited has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Doug

That's not true at all:
As you can see, the decline in NASA's budget was well underway for two years before Nixon took over in January 1969. The peak was 1966, when discussions and policy statements argued that money from NASA could be transferred to help fund the Vietnam War if the USSR could be persuaded to end the space race. The OST was signed by the US in January 1967. It's true that the last three Apollo missions weren't scrubbed in 1970; but the Nixon administration merely continued a policy started under the Johnson administration (p. 35).
As for NASA's budget being unsustainable, by my own calculations, NASA's peak budget in 1966 used up only about 0.77% of the total US GDP. That's chump change.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin

Argos,

"If it is hard to sell science as a sufficient motive for going to space, well, it´s time to educate people on the facts of reality."

I see space colonisation as vital to the continuation and survival of our species. Its not just about intangible benefits or even science, its about so much more from a naturalistic evolutionary point of view. Lets not forget we are at most an advanced animal species with a parasitic relationship to our home planet. We will have to learn how to cleverly exploit the solar system or we will probably die out slowly or end up having huge wars because of scarce resources on earth.

We MUST get out there. This is why i dont see why altruistic ideals or earthcentric sensitivites should play a serious role in space regulation. I do think in this case, our successful colonisation of the solar system would justify the means for having achieved it. Of course neither you nor I will live long enough to see the day - unfortunately.

For the fifth time, I'll mention how giving away free land was instrumental in opening up the American West and the Australian Outback. So you tell me, why wouldn't free land on the Moon result in thriving incipient colonies?

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin

Agreed!

I strongly disagree. We´re are an intelligent, sensitive, species that can be in charge of its destiny through science. I don´t see why we should act upon a darwinist determinism, like scorpions or spiders. We can afford to be altruistic in this field, and being altruistic does not conflict with our goals.

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"As truth is gathered, I rearrange,
Inside out, outside in - Perpetual change." - A British rock band

The Russians tried that when they left coins on the Oregon coast, and they tried it again when they sent coins on their unmanned lunar landers. The "use and occupation" standard is much stronger, and more desirable, because the potential claimant must "improve" the land he or she is trying to appropriate.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin

I can think of several reasons. Apollo cost about $135 billion dollars in today's money and landed a total of 12 people on the moon. That's a cost of over $10 billion per person for a temporary stay of up to three days. Now if we assume that launches after Apollo could cut costs per person, including all the equipment they need to survives, down to $10 billion dollars then only about 78 people in the world today would be rich enough to pay for their own trip and they would probably be reluctant to give up their billionaire lifestyles to go and live in cramped conditions on the moon. For $10 billion dollars they could buy a lot of very nice land and very nice living quaters on earth.

If somebody else paid for your trip, how would you pay them back? What could you do in your lifetime to earn $10 billion dollars plus interest? Future advances in technology might bring down the cost of colonizing the moon, but I don't see how free moon land in the 60s would have resulted in thriving incipient moon colonies today.

By the way, the Australian outback is, for the most part, uninhabited.

The Moon is not the Wild, Wild West.

You can walk to the West.

Manifest Destiny was a 19th century excuse for massive land grabs and genocide.
The product of a mode of thinking that would eventually lead to Dachau and Birkenau.

It has no business in the 21th century.

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Where did you pull those figures out of? The paper I cited above shows that at the end of the Saturn program, launch costs per kilogram had dropped by an order of magnitude in a decade. So why not extrapolate that trend? In that case, we'd be looking at something like ~$1 million for a round trip ticket to the moon.

If I owned the Moon, I could easily raise $10,000,000,000 by selling the whole place for $1 per acre.
The idea that the world would give the Moon to the US in the 1960's "as a present" without the US doing anything to secure its sovereignty was your idea. This thread isn't about that. The thread topic is whether the OST has been, is, and will continue to be a drag on space exploration. You have yet to defend your claim that the OST allows private property rights over lunar real estate. I do believe that if NASA's budget had been sustained at 1966 levels up to the present and had NASA been allowed to carry on the ambitious plans it formed during the early to mid-1960's there would be thriving, permanently manned lunar installations on the Moon today, and there would probably have been a manned mission to Mars by now. Those installations might have been government run in part, but I believe that private enterprise in space would have been much further along than it is now, because the large number of government contracts would have resulted in an economy of scale that we don't have now.

Bottom line: Private companies today are working on plans to get to the Moon; the promise of massive land grants would be an incentive for such private enterprise; however, land grants are not a tool we can use even today because of the Outer Space Treaty.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin