Article 2 relates to acquisition of national sovereignty with the consequence that the sovereign would have the ultimate power to dispose of property rights in outer space. Article 2 denies such exclusive rights to a national sovereign. In rejecting such a possibility the Treaty accepted the res communis principle, thereby allowing for competing users, but not owners or potential owners of property, to exploit the available resources. Thus, the national appropriation concept has no relevance to the legal freedom of legal persons to capture and use high altitude solar energy. Article 2 does not constitute an exemption from an arguable prohibition against the use of such energy. Article 2 is irrelevant and therefore inapplicable. Up the the present, space objects have relied upon solar energy for the power required for their functioning. To date no one has advanced the notion that the capture and use of such energy is in violation of any of the provisions of the Principles Treaty, of international law generally, or the U.N. Charter. While this specific practice need not necessarily be the basis for a customary rule of international law allowing for the wholesale capture and use of high altitude solar energy, it does reinforce the view that the permissibility of such use from a legal perspective will depend very materially on the needs, wants, and practices of the space resource States and ultimately the larger world community. The United States has from the very beginning of the space age linked the space environment to its use exclusively for peaceful and scientific purposes. The United States also has often associated the objective Statement of Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge to the Political Committee of the United Nations, January 14, 1957. 36 Department of State Bulletin 227 (1957). Section 102 (a) of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 states: "The Congress hereby declares that it is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind." Public Law 85-568, 72 Stat. 426.
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