Moon Hopes

India's getting some nice press coverage over it's launch.

As to what it's real chances at getting to the moon before the US I'm going to leave up to smarter people than me. But one this that does interest me is the possibility that as more and more third world nations emerge and develop space travel technology, what happens if one of them never signed the Outer Space Treaty? That treaty prevented among other things ownership of objects in outer space, like the moon, as property.

Imagine if a nation that never signed the treaty gets to the moon - would they claim it in their own name? I can imagine that if that happened the whole treaty would unravell. It would interesting to think that the first colonists of our nearest satellite might end up coming from a nation that is small poor and unknown today.

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