Right now, the resource that everyone’s after is ice. Deep craters on the lunar south pole, shielded from the heat of the sun, are thought to be brimming with the stuff, and most of 2024’s missions are designed to establish this once and for all. Ice is made of water, which is a compound of oxygen and hydrogen. All three are essential resources for any long-term occupation of the moon.

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Once you have these basics, you can start looking for treasure. Precisely what this treasure might consist of is unclear, but Grayling reminds us that our species has never been squeamish when it’s come to extracting wealth from wilderness.

His title poses the question “Who owns the moon?“. Surely, it’s obvious, at first blush. No one owns the moon. It’s another world. Nobody’s “property”. Then again, we all do, right? The moon has been there for much longer than we have, and we’ve marvelled at its beauty, power and constancy. It is clearly part of the heritage of humanity; indeed, of the earth itself and every creature that lives here.

Well, yes and no, and this is where Grayling’s work cuts through both romantic sentiment and the call of the wild frontier to have a close look at the legal minefield that awaits us, if and when the moon does host the 21st century’s free-for-all gold rush.

There are treaties, such as the flimsy UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which has never been ratified by any of the wealthy, space-capable nations who might benefit by ignoring it. Unfettered exploitation of the moon (and the asteroids, even Mars; they’re all in the same legal too-hard-basket, really) need not be inevitable. The protection of Antarctica is an oft-cited example.

But Grayling makes the point that the Antarctic’s status as an international wilderness park, while a fine state of affairs for now, is largely a matter of historical accident and good luck. The only force with the authority to police it is public opinion.

And as for other worlds, here we have the doctrine of terra nullius writ large. There are those who, while acknowledging the beauty of our massive satellite, also know it for what it actually is. A huge lump of lifeless rock, with no pesky indigenous population, just waiting for the shovels and spades of folks with a bit of gumption to get out there make a go of it.

Grayling is no optimist here, pointing out that while there may be no local inhabitants to worry about, that won’t prevent fights between rival claimants. “A space Wild West is coming into existence,” he glooms. “The consequences for peace and stability on earth, already tenuous … could be, and too likely will be, as petrol on to a fire.“