BBC: Why do everyone now want to go to the Moon as in the time of the Cold War?

For decades they have been promising a base on the moon.We set a foot, and stayed in that, a footprint on our natural satellite.

What we have become experts is in orbit the land aboard the International Space Station.

However, for a while here, there are more and more state and private initiatives that not only announce a return to the moon, but ambitious colonization plans.

China plans to alunize on the dark side of the moon in 2018, while Russia announced that by 2031 it will set foot there.

The United States has not ruled as a government.Although in July of this year he gave permission to the private company Moon Express to go to the moon and more recently NASA called to private companies to send suggestions about experiments that can be done up there.

Why so much interest?

For the specialist in aeromechanics at the University of Texas in Austin, Leon Vanstone, the main reason remains the same as in the Cold War: Power.

"We must remember that the Russians (then Soviet Union) were the first to put a man in space - they wanted to militarize the space - so the United States hastened and put a man on the moon," he told BBCWorld.

This demonstration of power cost millions of dollars, and the then powers - Vanstone continues - realized that the best thing for all was to carry out joint initiatives in which both costs and responsibilities were shared (as it happens now at the International Space Station).

But the geopolitical board has changed.

China is growing as a spatial power, the United States no longer has the Shuttle - for what depends on the Russians to move forward its space program - and, according to the spatial law expert Jill Stuart, "there are tensions between the US andRussia".

"So there is always a complicated policy behind," he said to BBC Mundo.

In addition, unlike most of the world's space agencies, such as NASA (USA), ESA (Europe) or Roscosmos (Russia), the Chinese space program is directed by military.

And here is the difference between the Chinese and the American government: "the United States does not mean that its program is state, in its capitalist policy they prefer to say 'we are going to let our private companies are on the front of the space program", "addsStuart.

On the other hand, Vanstone points out that for the US, "it is easier to pay a private company, and that runs with responsibility, than to launch an initiative from Congress."

"If everything goes wrong, Congress will not look bad - Challenger's memory in the 80s is still present - all they have to do is cancel the company's contract."

And the private company believes to be part of this project is "Cool" (great).

Or as Naveen Jain, one of the founders of Moon Express, explains, "it is about giving power to companies so that they have a spirit of innovation."

For Jain, the business possibilities are unlimited, as an exploration and exploitation permit on the moon would allow them from starting a mining activity, to offering tourist trips or selling pieces of the satellite as precious stones.

But Stuart and Vanstone make it very clear that in the background, these private companies are not entirely private, as they are financed with state money and must operate under NASA's coat.

Because right now?

Here we move on to the next reason for the renewed interest: lowering technology.

"The first time the man arrived at the moon, he required some giant rockets that cost hundreds of millions of dollars," Jain tells BBC Mundo.

"We are using a smaller 3D printed rocket that costs us less than US $ 5 million," adds this businessman who plans to send next year a probe valued at other US $ 5 million to the moon.

"Who was going to think that a business that was not profitable (in the past) for requiring billions, now it was going to be?"

For Jain, "each of the advances that makes cell phones faster, more economical, thin and intelligent, makes our technology faster, more economical and small."

And it is this technological advance that leads us to the third reason for this "fever" for the moon: minerals and natural resources.

The development of intelligent devices is possible thanks to the rare minerals on Earth, such as tantalio or tungsten;Superconductors that make technology precisely that: faster, thinner and economical.

"We know that there are rare earth concentrations on the Moon," he said in a blog by NASA Carle Pieters, a planetary scientist of the Department of Geological Sciences of the Brown University, in the US.

"We also know that the samples we have (of the moon) have no direct concentrations of these elements; but we can easily detect it in a line of samples we have."

Jain does not hide that this is his main interest in the satellite.

"The moon is extremely rich in resources, all for what we fight on earth, it is in abundance in space," he says."We fight for land, water and fuel, without realizing that we are a tiny blue point in space."

Vanstone agrees that this is an important commercial and geopolitical interest."More and more people are interested in rare metals, and that is the interest of making mining on the moon.

The question is that it would be much more expensive to bring those minerals back to earth than to continue exploiting what we have here.

What if we don't bring them back?

The fact that there are so many resources on the Moon gives rise to another motivation: build lunar bases.

With the advance of technology and the possibility of going further, the moon has only stayed in a small step towards the exploration of deep space.

But for this you have to solve a problem: the fuel to travel.After all, a good part of the weight of the ships we throw into space is combustible.

Más sobre Luna

So the goal is no longer our satellite, it is Mars;And if we get there one day, then the challenge will be to go further.

To do this, the Moon is an excellent supply stop.

Not only in the US they see it like this: China also has its eyes on Mars and recently announced that in 2020 you plan to visit the red planet.

"You can make the moon a base because it is made of exactly the materials we need," says Vanstone.

But private companies do not see it only as a supply base.

"To paraphrase JFK.Moon Express, who sees the marketing of the moon as a "immensely great" business.

"It is not a lie that there is a lot of money involved in space," says Leon Vanstone."And the first to do business will be the ones who make more money."

"The first billionaires will be those involved in the space economy," says businessman Jain.

Jain has a whole business plan, from exploiting the minerals that are found there, until moving and selling lunar rocks such as jewelry.

But can the moon explode?

This is where the risk of investment increases.

According to the Treaty on the principles that must govern the activities of the states in the exploration and use of the ultra -rester space, even the moon and other celestial bodies, signed by 103 countries in 1967, "the ultra -resort space, even the moon and other celestial bodies, may not be subject to national appropriation due to claim of sovereignty, use or occupation, or in any other way. "

If this is so, how can it be possible for governments to plan operations on the Moon and grant concessions to private companies if in principle no one has power for it?

While the international agreement establishes that space is a neutral territory and no one can appropriate celestial bodies, it can be lent to interpretations.

"The first place specifies that no nation must proclaim ownership of any celestial body," clarifies the space law specialist Jill Stuart."But there are doubts about whether non -state entities can make these claims."

Second, the fact that property cannot be claimed does not mean that space cannot be occupied.

"It's like Antarctica," explains the expert."You can have a base there, as long as you say that what is at your feet is not yours."

So private states and companies are looking for small leaves in the legislation of almost 50 years, to have a slice of the space business.

In this regard, the United States Department of State explained in writing to BBC Mundo that the permission given to Moon Express is based on the fact that it is these "private activities that unlock the new space applications and allow us to advance in our understanding of the solar system, and that can be under appropriate supervision that in the long term benefit all countries. "

The US government does not ignore the treaty, on the contrary, it considers a responsibility to legislate on national activities in external space.

"The basis for this jurisdiction is more national than territorial," they wrote."Among the objectives of the authorization process for private American activities in exterior space is to ensure compliance with the outdoor space treaty."

Stuart what worries them are other initiatives taken by the US government to promote spatial activity.

In November 2015 in that country, the Commercial Competitive Space Act (the legislation on competitive spatial trade) was approved in which "commercial exploration and commercial recovery of spatial resources by the citizens of the United States are facilitated."

As the founder of Moon Express points out: "Anything we bring back from the Moon we can have."

"This disturbs me a little," says Stuart, "because he has the potential to undermine the international agreement that is already in force for external space."

For its part, Sa'id Mosteshar, of the London Institute for Policies and Laws of Space, considers that this legislation breaches international treaties.

"The United States is exercising, or at least it seems that it is recognizing a right granted to its nationals that the country itself does not have," he told BBC Mundo."You can't give your nationals a right that you can't exercise."

In 1979, providing future lunar exploitation, the United Nations drafted the Luna Agreement, in which the conditions for this activity were stipulated.

The problem is that only 13 countries ratified it, none of which has the means to participate in a space race.

For experts, part of the problem is that these laws were written many years ago and have not been updated.

Perhaps an exploration on the moon is inevitable, and the one that we have bases from different countries - as in Antarctica - is not so far from that it happens.

However, for Jill Stuart, the question we should ask ourselves is who do we want me to represent us in space?

"Soon we will have different entities landing in celestial bodies, and I think we must ask ourselves who wants those people, who we want to go to space and represent ourselves."

"I don't want to get up in 100 years and discover that the moon is from Coca Cola," he adds.

And would you like to be outside the US, Russia or China?

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