LibertyCon After Action Report

LibertyCon last weekend was super fun.  The travel wasn’t, but the con was.

You know when you get to the airport for your 8 a.m. flight and they tell you at the gate that your plane’s “been downgraded”–which is not a sentence you ever want to hear about an aircraft in the first place–that things aren’t going to go smoothly.  Who wants a downgraded aircraft?  I knew they meant it was smaller, but it didn’t create a great impression.

But wait! There’s more.  They needed to get 67 of us to give up our seats.  I almost laughed.  An hour and a half after our scheduled departure, I would have made my connecting flight to Chattanooga had it been on time.  It wasn’t.  Instead, they gave us pity snacks for two hours.

By a miracle, I made it in time for my author table, and unloaded my heavy backpack of books and set up.  Author tables are good.  You hand out bookmarks and get to meet nice people, catch up with old friends, and even sell a book or two.

Opening ceremonies featured silly songs and awards.  All good. I had several meetings with my fellow board members for the Interstellar Research Group.  We’re trying to figure out how to expand awareness of our scholarship efforts as well as how to expand membership.

On Saturday, I gave my talk on property rights in space.  It comes in two parts.  The first addresses why the Outer Space Treaty doesn’t ban private property in outer space.  Objects are easy.  The treaty openly acknowledges that just because you put something in space doesn’t mean you’ve abandoned it. For U.S. citizens and those of other countries who’ve followed suit, there is recognition that you get to keep what you mine.  (Congress passed the Space Resources Utilization Act in 2015 clearing this up).

Then there’s land.  That’s more controversial.  The treaty only bans “national” appropriation of land, not private appropriation.  There are several other arguments that go along with this, but I’ll let you know when my paper comes out in the fall.  With the treaty stating that no country who signs the treaty may claim sovereignty in space, how can we figure out who owns what land?  Adverse possession!  Time tested by brutal people in days of yore over the centuries, it could work.

I went to some cool panels, including one on young adult literature.  One of the panelists now writes harem fiction, which she struggled nobly not to talk about. I got to meet the other writers in The Ross 248 Project on a panel for the anthology.  Their stories were so good, and really filled me with that sense of wonder I had about space as a kid.  I can’t recommend Mona Lisa Foster’s story, with its great world building, strongly enough.

Happy Independence Day to all!

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