The Artemis Accords: repeating the mistakes of the Age of Explorationby Dennis O’Brien Monday, June 29, 2020
NASA’s approach to international cooperation, the Artemis Accords, rejects alternatives like the Moon Treaty, and an implementing agreement for it, that could be more viable in the long term. (credit: NASA)“Space is a warfighting domain… It is not enough to have an American presence in space; we must have American dominance in space.”
- US Vice President Mike Pence, 2018[1]
In the spring of 1493, the King and Queen of Spain sent an envoy to the Pope in Rome. Along with Portugal, Spain had just used its advanced sailing and navigation technology to reach “new worlds,” areas of the Earth that had not been previously discovered by Europeans. But they had a problem: they wanted to establish sovereign property rights in the lands they had discovered, but they weren’t sure they could do so under their own authority. So, they turned to the only international authority in Europe at that time, the Catholic Church, which held sway over governments from Portugal to Poland, from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. If the Church would establish a legal framework that granted them sovereignty, then those nations would be bound to recognize it.[2] (...)
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3975/1