Passage A
The Outer Space Treaty (OST) of 1967 remains the foundational text of international space law, declaring space the "province of all mankind" and expressly forbidding national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means. Some contemporary legal theorists argue this prohibition extends only to the assertion of territorial sovereignty over celestial bodies, leaving a lacuna regarding the extraction of resources. This interpretation is dangerously permissive. The overarching normative framework of the OST—particularly its insistence that exploration and use of space shall be carried out for the benefit of all countries—precludes unilateral commercial exploitation. To argue that a private corporation may mine an asteroid and assert ownership over the extracted materials is to engage in a semantic evasion that violates the treaty's spirit. Until a comprehensive international regime, analogous to the International Seabed Authority, is established to equitably govern and distribute the benefits of space resources, unilateral private extraction constitutes an illegal appropriation of the global commons.
Passage B
Recent domestic legislation in several space-faring nations has formalized the right of private entities to own, transport, and sell resources extracted from celestial bodies. Critics often charge that such laws violate the non-appropriation principle of the Outer Space Treaty (OST). However, this critique conflates territorial sovereignty with property rights in extracted goods. In customary international law, particularly the law of the sea, there is a long-standing distinction between claiming sovereignty over the high seas—which is strictly forbidden—and harvesting resources from those waters, which is permitted. Similarly, while a corporation cannot claim sovereign title to an asteroid, the act of extracting minerals does not constitute a sovereign claim over the asteroid itself. As customary international law evolves through state practice, the increasing consensus among space-faring nations demonstrates that private resource extraction is entirely compatible with the OST, provided it does not interfere with the peaceful exploration by other states.
Based on the passages, evaluate the following statement:
Author A would most likely concede to Author B that the Outer Space Treaty contains a lacuna (a gap or missing part) regarding the specific issue of resource extraction, but would argue that this gap must be filled by an international regulatory regime rather than by customary state practice.
Answer: Answer