Extraterrestrial Accountability: Applying the Stakeholder Management Approach in Space Mining

Corporate secrecy is not a new phenomenon. Companies routinely take steps to ensure that prized information is secured and kept from competitors. Securing intellectual property as trade secrets keeps the information confidential for as long as the owner employs reasonable measures to guard the information—unlike patents, which offer term protection of certain types of intellectual property in exchange for public registry. Geographical and geological location data are especially lucrative for mining and petroleum companies, which target mineral resources for extraction and production. So, it is not unexpected that space mining companies would want to do the same. But should they be able to do the same is another question.