Word: national
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Sputnik, but spending has already declined from its 1966 peak of $5.9 billion. Wernher Von Braun, whose team was responsible for the Saturn boosters, argues that unless the nation embarks on another Apollo-size program, the U.S. stands to suffer a "tragic loss of a national asset." He fears that NASA's skilled engineers and scientists may be dispersed after the last of the nine remaining Apollo missions is flown in 1972. The space team has already shrunk from 400,000 in 1966 to 140,000 today, and the group might be difficult to rebuild. "To continue to attract...
Concern about the future of the space program could well provoke a useful debate over the nation's priorities. The severest critics of space tend to cast the issue in terms of a hard choice between space and social tasks. Jerome Wiesner, John Kennedy's scientific adviser, says typically that "it would be a mistake to commit $100 billion to a manned Mars landing when we have problems getting from Boston to New York City...
...present, the moon's legal status is determined by a 1967 U.N. treaty on outer space that has been signed by 92 nations, including the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Communist China, North Viet Nam and North Korea, none of them U.N. members, have not signed the treaty. The treaty provides that the moon cannot be claimed by any country, that lunar military bases may not be established, and that visitors from the earth are to be considered "envoys of mankind." The U.S. observed each of these provisions last week. Though Neil Armstrong planted his nation's flag...
Similarly, the U.S. can probably maintain exclusive use of Tranquillity Base, even though such an act might seem the equivalent of appropriating part of the moon. NASA could claim that admitting any other nation's spacemen might interfere with scientific investigation. The "appropriation" of 60 Ibs. of moon rocks is also legitimate under the treaty, a point not likely to be contested in view of the fact that the U.S. will share the information it gleans from the samples with scientists of all nations. But the U.S. is prohibited from making a profit on the rocks. If commercial mining...
...space plunge to earth. To settle any claims that might arise, lawyers probably will look to the precedents offered by existing aviation law. They may also turn to even older legal guidelines. The laws of the high seas, for example, call for freedom of navigation even while they allow nations to exploit specific areas for commercial, scientific, and-in the case of nuclear tests-military purposes. Maritime laws generally use "reasonableness" as the criterion for how much benefit one nation may derive from the sea-a standard that will probably apply when the question arises of how big a slice...