My space

If we really want to explore space, maybe we should sell it off to the highest bidders

By Drake Bennett

IF THE PAST few years have taught us anything, it is to not underestimate the intoxicating allure of property. Real estate, it turns out, brings out the adventurer in all of us.

It's unsurprising, then, that a few enterprising thinkers are hoping to harness that power in a more exotic neighborhood: space.

No one, of course, owns space - not even the relatively tiny portion of it within humankind's reach. While the space race may have been kicked off by Cold War politics, its rhetoric has always been fastidiously communal, eschewing talk of ownership. "We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people," President Kennedy intoned in a famous 1962 speech laying out the rationale for putting a man on the moon.

In other words, while exploring space has been a race, a mission, and an adventure, it has never been a business.

Recently, however, there's been growing interest in changing that. In the small community of people who think seriously about space exploration, a few are arguing that exporting the idea of private property into space is exactly what we need to do to launch a bold new space race.

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