University of Macau / Faculty of Law

1 Legal regime of natural resources of celestial bodies Abstract The aim of this thesis is to describe the legal regime of the natural resources of celestial bodies. In recent months and years, there has been an increase in debates regarding mining on the moon and asteroids and this thesis dedicates its seven parts to the legal regime of such activities. In particular, whether such activities are possible from the point of view of international law, how are they regulated and what are the potential future developments in this area. In order to understand the legal regime governing the natural resources of celestial bodies, it is necessary to first become acquainted with the essential concepts of space law, including outer space, celestial bodies and outer space resources, whose definition is the subject of the first part of the thesis. The second part describes the development of international space law, from the first mentions in legal commentary to the creation of two important international documents in this area, the Outer Space Treaty and the Moon Agreement. Both international treaties are analysed and compared in individual chapters both in terms of their international acceptance and in terms of the regulation of activities in the field of outer space resources. Subsequently, their possible future...

The politics of outer space has in recent years been given attention from political elites and scientist due to increasing usage and reliance on space based assets, and due to increasing numbers of actors trying to utilize the benefits of space. Concerns have been raised if the increasing military usage of space will lead to a future weaponization of space, making some political leaders and scholars claiming the inevitability of space weaponization.  In this thesis I investigate why the United States of America this far has chosen not to weaponize space based on the strategical setting of outer space politics. The research question guiding this thesis reads: What strategic considerations explain the US decision not to weaponize outer space? In order to evaluate the strategic setting and US strategical considerations I apply Game Theory and Non-Formal Rational Choice Theory to highlight what is causing the greatest space faring nation not to weaponize space. I empirically base this study on official space policy documents and one report written by an official commission to asses US national security space management.  Based on the strategic setting of outer space politics and US strategical considerations it is found that the US has not commenced a process leading to the weaponization of space since such development would not increase its national security, but rather in several ways decrease it. I conclude that a process of space weaponization is not likely to be initiated by the US in the current strategical setting.

The temperature-programmed desorption profiles of water from three lunar analogs were measured. These experiments showed that glassy materials were hydrophobic, that water on multiphase materials occupied a continuum of adsorption sites, and that feldspar exhibited significant chemisorption of water. The competition between photodissociation and photodesorption of amorphous solid water (ASW) was investigated on three substrates: copper with a thin oxide coating, an impact melt breccia from Apollo 16, and a mare basalt from Apollo 17. The rotational temperature of desorbing H₂O did not vary significantly with substrate, but the H₂O time-of-flight spectra were broader on the lunar slabs than on copper. Additionally, the cross sections for water removal at low coverages were higher on the lunar slabs than on copper. O(³PJ) produced by 157-nm irradiation of ASW on the same three substrates was measured as a function of spin-orbit state, H₂O exposure, and irradiation time. The same Maxwell-Boltzmann components were present in each case, with translational temperatures of 10,000 K, 1800 K, 400 K, and the surface temperature, but the relative intensities of these components differed widely between substrates. Evidence for diffusion out of pores in the ASW and in the lunar slabs was observed for H2O exposures of at least 1 Langmuir. Cross sections for H2O and O(3PJ) depletion due to 157-nm irradiation of ASW were applied to icy grains in the rings of Saturn, and corresponding cross sections on the lunar substrates were used to estimate the flux of water desorbing from the Moon and the density of oxygen atoms in the lunar atmosphere.

<p>In the context of today's global mobility, information, bodies and goods are circulating across the globe, and even further into outer space. However, we face a paradox: the more we move, the more we become sedentary. The modes of transportation that enable our global mobility are working against us, insidiously dwindling our psycho-physical mobility. Globalization is thus not the world becoming bigger (or too big), but the world becoming immobile. Taking the body as the central non-place of political space, Architectures of Aliveness: Building Beyond Gravity interrogates the possibility of inhabiting circulation as a pragmatic form of resistance to the contemporary immobilization of life. In an era in which bodies and goods are ever more constantly in global circulation, architectures of aliveness ask, what would an experience of weightlessness do for us?</p><p>Biotechnology serves as the current dominant model for enlivening architecture and the mobility of its inhabitants. Architectures of aliveness invert the inquiry to look instead at outer space's modules of inhabitation. In questioning the possibility of making circulation inhabitable --as opposed to only inhabiting what is stationary--architectures of aliveness problematize architecture as a form of biomedia production in order to examine its capacity to impact psychic and bodily modalities toward an intensification of health. Problematized synchretically within life's mental and physical polarization, health is understood politically as an accretion of our capacity for action instead of essentially as an optimization of the biological body. The inquiry emerges at the intersection of biotechnology, neurosciences, outer space science and technology, and architecture. The analysis oscillates between historical and contemporary case studies toward an articulation that concentrates on contemporary phenomena while maintaining an historical perspective. The methodology combines archival research, interviews, and artistic and literary analysis. The analysis is informed by scientific research. More precisely, the objective is to construct an innovative mode of thinking about the fields of exchangeability between arts and sciences beyond a critique of instrumentality. </p><p>The outcomes suggest that architectures of aliveness are architectures that invite modes of inhabitation that deviate from habitualized everyday spatial engagements. It also finds that the feeling of aliveness emerges out of the production of analog or continuous space where the body is in relation with space as opposed to be represented in it. The analysis concludes that the impact of architecture on our sense of wellbeing is conditioned by proprioceptive experiences that are at once between vision and movement and yet at the same time in neither mode, suggesting an aesthetic of inhabitation based on our sense of weightedness and weightlessness.</p><p>These outcomes are thus transduced to the field of media studies to enchant biomediatic inquiry. Proposing a renewed definition of biomedia that interprets life as a form of aesthetic relation, architectures of aliveness also formulate a critique of the contemporary imperialism of visualization techniques. Architectures of aliveness conclude by questioning the political implications of its own method to suggest opacity and agonistic spaces as the biomediatic forms of political space.</p> / Dissertation

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T14:55:43Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Leandro Alberto de Paiva Siqueira.pdf: 11537130 bytes, checksum: a8323afe02aa8163c883de8083f56f2e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-10-16 / Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo / Beginning with the second half of the twentieth century, rockets, satellites, probes, spacecraft, and space stations have allowed for the occupation of Earth's orbit and achievement of space travel to nearby locations to Earth. Driven by the arms race, space technology projected war and politics into orbit, establishing the first planetary monitoring systems, initially used to spy on missiles. Interested in contemporaneity, this thesis aims to contribute to the study of societies of control showing their outer space proveniences and stressing the importance of the space event for the configuration of exposed power relations belonging to such societies. Besides being taken from its ascendant perspective, in the sense of abandoning the planet, the outer space event should also be analyzed according to its downward movement, in other words, taking into account its drifts, especially the spin-offs that it produces and that can not be reduced to products or socio-economic benefits, but also imply political resizing of the governing of the planet and life. Among the political spin-offs arising from the outer space event we focus on the emergence of the planet-body, which becomes the aim of ecopolitics investment for control societies. The outer space event was decisive to the point that societies of control configured an intelligibility of Earth which understands it as a planet that is fragile when managed. From the administration of state violence to the management of climate change, we present the functioning of a planetary governmentality which seeks to guarantee the safety of transterritorial flows established with the expansion of neoliberalism also on a global scale / A partir da segunda metade do século XX, foguetes, satélites, sondas, espaçonaves e estações espaciais permitiram a ocupação da órbita terrestre e a realização de viagens espaciais a localidades próximas da Terra. Impulsionadas pela corrida armamentista, as tecnologias espaciais projetaram a guerra e a política para a órbita, instaurando os primeiros sistemas planetários de monitoramento, incialmente utilizados para se espionar mísseis. Interessada na contemporaneidade, esta tese pretende contribuir para os estudos sobre as sociedades de controle evidenciando suas procedências siderais e ressaltando a importância do acontecimento espacial para a configuração das relações de poder a céu aberto próprias a estas sociedades. Além de ser tomado em sua perspectiva ascendente, no sentido de abandonar o planeta, o acontecimento espaço sideral também deve ser analisado segundo o seu movimento descendente, ou seja, levando em consideração suas derivas, principalmente os spin-offs (derivações) que produz e que não se reduzem a produtos ou a benefícios socioeconômicos, mas também implicam em redimensionamentos políticos do governo do planeta e da vida. Dentre os spin-offs políticos que derivam do acontecimento sideral destacamos nesta tese a emergência do corpo-planeta, que se torna o alvo de investimentos da ecopolítica das sociedades de controle. O acontecimento sideral foi decisivo para que as sociedades de controle configurassem uma inteligibilidade da Terra que a toma como um frágil planeta a ser gerenciado. Da administração dos estados de violência à gestão das mudanças climáticas, apresentamos neste trabalho o funcionamento de uma governamentalidade planetária que procura garantir a segurança dos fluxos transterritoriais instaurados com a expansão do neoliberalismo também em escala planetária

Following the work of Conant and Vogtmann on determining the homology of the group of outer automorphisms of a free group, a new nontrivial class in the rational homology of Outer space is established for the free group of rank eight. The methods started in [8] are heavily exploited and used to create a new graph complex called the space of good chord diagrams. This complex carries with it significant computational advantages in determining possible nontrivial homology classes.Next, we create a basepointed version of the Lie operad and explore some of it proper- ties. In particular, we prove a Kontsevich-type theorem that relates the Lie homology of a particular space to the cohomology of the group of automorphisms of the free group.

Why are some high-technology sectors trans-nationally integrated while others are sites of interstate competition? This dissertation explores this question through a comparison of China-U.S. relations in two strategic, high-technology sectors: civil-commercial aircraft manufacture and civil-commercial spacecraft manufacture. Between 1989 and 2009, China-U.S. relations took strikingly different trajectories in these two sectors. In the aircraft sector, the two countries&rsquo; industries traded and integrated their activities and their civil agencies cooperated. By contrast, in the space sector, their industries did not trade or integrate, their civil agencies did not cooperate, and the two countries engaged in a form of technological competition. The divergent trajectories taken by China-United States relations in these two sectors are puzzling because both sectors present similar incentives and disincentives for both transnational integration and interstate competition. Theories of international relations do not fully explain this sectoral variation. This research indicates that this variation is traceable to underlying differences in how specialists in each sector, including technical and policy experts, implicitly reason about and represent technologies in general. In both countries, the air and space specialist communities each hold distinct understandings of the relationship between humans and technology. Performing representational practices that reflect these distinct assumptions, aeronautic and space specialists discursively constitute each sector and its technologies as distinct objects of policy, requiring different forms of state action. In air, these include policies adopted by both countries to enhance bilateral trade, industrial partnership, and technical cooperation. In space, these include measures to inhibit bilateral trade and cooperation while preparing for a coming bilateral confrontation.

Why are some high-technology sectors trans-nationally integrated while others are sites of interstate competition? This dissertation explores this question through a comparison of China-U.S. relations in two strategic, high-technology sectors: civil-commercial aircraft manufacture and civil-commercial spacecraft manufacture. Between 1989 and 2009, China-U.S. relations took strikingly different trajectories in these two sectors. In the aircraft sector, the two countries&rsquo; industries traded and integrated their activities and their civil agencies cooperated. By contrast, in the space sector, their industries did not trade or integrate, their civil agencies did not cooperate, and the two countries engaged in a form of technological competition. The divergent trajectories taken by China-United States relations in these two sectors are puzzling because both sectors present similar incentives and disincentives for both transnational integration and interstate competition. Theories of international relations do not fully explain this sectoral variation. This research indicates that this variation is traceable to underlying differences in how specialists in each sector, including technical and policy experts, implicitly reason about and represent technologies in general. In both countries, the air and space specialist communities each hold distinct understandings of the relationship between humans and technology. Performing representational practices that reflect these distinct assumptions, aeronautic and space specialists discursively constitute each sector and its technologies as distinct objects of policy, requiring different forms of state action. In air, these include policies adopted by both countries to enhance bilateral trade, industrial partnership, and technical cooperation. In space, these include measures to inhibit bilateral trade and cooperation while preparing for a coming bilateral confrontation.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 106-110)