A DIFFERENT KIND OF MOON CONSPIRACY: As if Bart Sibrel and his Apollo revisionism weren't bad enough, TransOrbital's recently approved commercial lunar venture is being attacked by lefties as a plot to annex the Moon.

(Thanks to Mark Whittington for the above post on Space Policy Digest BBS.)

I'll not waste my time on the ad hominem remarks -- they're not worth responding to.

TransOrbital Just Like Bush - Long on Grandiosity and Corporate Schemes, Short on Real Science

The company that Bush turned the moon over to as its personal corporate playground is a chip off the old Blockhead.

False premise -- Bush did not turn the Moon over to anyone, his Administration issued a license under the fedgov's permitting and regulatory role as defined under the Outer Space Treaty (Section VI).

Check out this home page: http://www.transorbital.net/index.html - notice the ad at the top of the page, where the company brags that it will make it possible to display commercial messages on the surface of the moon.

Misrepresentation -- the URL offered refers to the TransOrbital home page, which (when I checked it just now) had no advertisement promoting the display of commercial messages on the surface of the Moon, in the sense that this sentence is clearly intended to convey: billboards (or the equivalent) visible from Earth. TransOrbital does offer to take along business cards and other items, for a fee, aboard the crasher probe they plan to send to the Moon in the next year -- I have my doubts that these will be visible from Earth. Note that this page also proclaims the company's plans to finance their activities through commercial sponsorships and sales of video and photographic imagery along the lines of Jacques Cousteau's outfit...I don't hear anyone crabbing about the Cousteau Society planning to turn the world's oceans into billboards for their corporate sponsors.

Now check this site out for the Artemis Society - the group that is behind TransOrbital. It reminds us of those rghtwing [sic] front sites that lead to multiple front sites and nothing is what it seems. You'll notice that their web host calls itself the "Illuminati" and is based in Texas. How Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney can you get!?

Guilt by association, poisoning the well -- they point out the link between Artemis and TransOrbital, as though it is something suspicious, and go on to suggest that both as "right wing front sites". Thus, everything they do or say are somehow "suspect".

Paranoia -- the "Illuminati"? Oh come on now. LAMS' web host is named "VerveHosting"...does that mean we are secretly in cahoots with a defunct one-hit-wonder alt-rock band with a flair for hospitality?

Here's another one of their "subsites": Project Leto, a moon tourism outfit based in Las Vegas to attract the glitzy crowd.

Appeal to envy, guilt by association -- if they're aiming at the rich crowd, well, they must be wrong somehow, since we know that rich people are bad...

Factual error -- Project Leto is not a "moon tourism outfit", any more than the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is a "tyme sefari outfit". It is a "full-scale simulation of an initial lunar exploration base" which looks to exploit the tourist market. On Earth. They are not sending tourists to the Moon (any time soon, anyway).

U.S. Military Control of Space from the Moon: The Real Plan behind TransOrbital's Permission to 'Develop' the Moon?

Everyone by now knows with painful clarity that the Bush administration does not do a single thing without having something in it for them, and usually something big and juicy.
Now put two and two together: Bush gives a wacko commercial company with a scheme called the Artemis Project the green light to be the first to commandeer the moon, commercially - that means patents and legal privilege of a sweeping and unprecedented nature.

Factually incorrect -- "commandeer" means to "take arbitrary or forcible possession of", and there is no attempt to take possession of any part of the Moon on the part of Artems or TransOrbital (and these being commercial entities, the military aspects of the word do not apply), whether by fiat or force. They have been licensed under the Outer Space Treaty (Article VI) to send a photographic "crasher" probe to the Moon. There is no grant, claim, or seizure of land or resources involved or implied here.

Now add to that the USS [sic] Space Command's long range plan - military control of space. It doesn't take more than two neurons to figure out that once the Artemis Project gets its foot in the lunar door, the "state-sponsored" construction of a military space base will follow.

Red herring -- Artemis is an organization, TransOrbital is a commercial entity, neither is affiliated with the military.

Slippery slope -- The author asserts that the militarization of the Moon will inevitably result from private commercial activities, without drawing a connection between the two or explaining why such an outcome is inevitable. Or undesirable, for that matter. Assertion is not argument.

Factually incorrect -- While it remains a party to the Outer Space Treaty, the United States may not establish a military base on the Moon or any other celestial body (see Article IV, specifically).

While Nation Looks the Other Way on 9/11 Anniversary, Bush Gives Moon to Private Corporation for 'Industrial Development'

Like all the other international laws, Bush is now ignoring those pertaining to space.

Factually incorrect -- The permission granted to TransOrbital is pursuant to the Outer Space Treaty (Article VI). Treaties form the bulk of international law. An action which complies with the rights and responsibilities spelled out in a ratified treaty is by definition in compliance with international law.

As America is distracted by 9/11 remembrances and warnings of new threats, His Heinous has turned the moon over to a private, for-profit corporation called TransOrbital that has a far-reaching, frigthening agenda for the corporate domination of space.

Factually incorrect -- Bush has not "turned the moon over" to anyone (see above). The federal government has licensed a commercial imagery mission to the Moon. As for TransOrbitals alleged agenda...where exactly are these heinous "protocols" published? All I see on their website are plans for orbital, lander, and rover missions to the Moon. Did I miss a "Dateline for Dominance" somewhere in the company's bylaws or charter?

Appeal to fear -- the implication is that, if TransOrbital and Bush carry out their plans, there will be some unspecified but unquestionably nefarious consequences. What those consequences might be is not spelled out, however.

All TransOrbital had to do was promise not to contaminate and pollute the moon - yeah, right.

Factually incorrect -- TransOrbital had to go through a great deal of red tape involving several government departments and agencies (State, NOAA, are specifically mentioned, and Commerce, Defense, and NASA likely had some say in it as well), relating to technology transfer (they're launching from Kazakhstan on a Russian booster), liability, imagery regulations, and, yes environmental impact (both to the -- dead -- lunar "environment" and to the historical sites associated with the Apollo program).

That's what the oil companies say about ANWR.

Red herring, guilt by association -- There is no comparison to be made between the two locations and the activities planned for them. The purpose of this statement is to create a moral equivalence between TransOrbital and the oil industry, the Antichrist of the left.

There was no Congressional vote - not even any consultation.

Factually incorrect -- the Outer Space Treaty was ratified by the Senate on April 25, 1967. This is a bogus argument anyway, as the federal government licenses and regulates commercial spacecraft on a regular basis, without a case-by-case Congressional vote on each one.

Bush simply acted as if the moon were his to give away.

Factually incorrect -- see above.

The TransOrbital venture could be disastrous for the globe - no scientist today could predict yet how adding mass to the moon via human infrastructure or removing mass, via mining, will impact the delicate gravitational interplay between Earth and its only satellite.

And here, friends, we have a shining example of pure, unalloyed idiocy...excessively highlighted for your reading pleasure.

Perhaps someone ought to inform the columnists at www.democrats.com that basic physics is not like climatology: the science involved here is clearly understood, so one can't make wild catastrophist claims and have them accepted unquestioningly.

Why do I mention climatology? The sentence highlighted above uses environmentalist phraseology -- "delicate gravitational interplay" taking the place of "fragile ecosystem", "its only satellite" standing in for "endangered species" -- and suggests the same sort of "precautionary principle" for lunar ventures that the green lobby trots out against all new technology.

The moon belongs to all the people of the Earth - not to George. W. Bush or his friends at TransOrbital.

And no one is saying anything different. Yet. But someday that "tragedy of the commons" will have to be dealt with via some sort of private ownership arrangement. One day we will colonize the Moon, and Mars, and other parts of the solar system (and who knows, maybe even beyond). You might as well get used to it now, get behind it and help to influence it along a positive course, rather than using the issue as an excuse for irrational, pig-headed partisan rancor.

Posted by T.L. James on September 16, 2002 07:37 PM