Well this week we spent an enjoyable 4 hours with the 2 guys from New Yorker magazine … mainly as part of a recorded interview for the influential New Yorker Radio Hour (and podcast). This was a great opportunity to get our message out:
Come on people!… Join in our Mars Land Claim and Save The Space Treaty!
Simon Parkin is a great journalist and non-fiction writer (simonparkin.com) and has already done a piece about us last year in HWGTN. He visited our favourite astronomy site (with laser firing). He was blown away by the strength of our class 4 blue laser! (3500mW – dont worry, he wore his laser goggles!). He was intrigued by the use of lasers to support our Mars land claim. He was interested to know how such a claim could be used to save the Outer Space Treaty. Indeed, he was keen to find out why the 50 yr old Outer Space Treaty was in dire need of rescue.
We hope he’s got enough to form a great 12-15 minute piece on our claim/campaign and our “Save The Space Treaty” message.
I think he is going to try to get a response from a UN committee (COPUOS) member. He already has had informal contact which largely confirms my impression that we have already pricked them into agitation and some turmoil. Unfortunately, the draft releases from the latest session at COPUOS show plenty of spiky debate and argument but no significant end product as usual.
I think Simon may also try to get a brave high profile international/space lawyer to appraise our Mars land claim … perhaps we can demonstrate the gaping holes in the Space Treaty and emphasise the need to update it. Remember, it is still the only significant barrier to “nukes in space” … so we need to keep it relevant across all space issues, especially commercial space exploration and exploitation. If we dont update it soon, then nations will continue to develop their own rules, all of which degrade the strength of the Space Treaty.
The interview should go out in the next couple of weeks…