Progress,
I’d like to point out that the U.S. Senate (thank goodness!) never ratified the Outer Space Treaty. It was an amazingly close vote, but some very forward thinking folks got together and did a massive campaign with their local senators and convinced them that there was some opposition to the concept. Pissed off the U.S. State Department to no end as well, and I should point out that NASA treats the document as if it was an enforced treaty even though it isn’t.
There is the “Moon Treaty” that governs the use of the Moon itself that was ratified by the Senate, and it is nearly as bad as the treaty that you are quoting. Still, there is a “back out” clause in that treaty where with only one year of prior notification the USA can simply tell the world “forget about it, we don’t care about this treaty anymore!”
The situation isn’t nearly so hopeless as it may appear, and private development of outer space can happen. The only real problem for U.S. Citizens is trying to fight the Sierra Club and other environmentalists who decry the pollution of the Lunar atmosphere. I kid you not on this last point, and that is the future of debate about space, not about how we are going to be getting there.
