Purposeful governance of lunar resources.
Breaking Ground is a Perpetual Purpose Trust which has a legal obligation to steward and demonstrate new ways of managing lunar resources for the benefit of all.
Breaking Ground is a Perpetual Purpose Trust working on lunar resource management.
A Perpetual Purpose Trust (PPT) is a legal form distinguished from companies or non-profits. The PPT is designed to benefit the "purpose" as described in the trust agreement.
What are the defining features of a PPT?
The trust's beneficiary is its purpose.
Historically, “trusts” originate from the need to have a structure to hold assets governed by one or more parties for the benefit of designated other parties named as the beneficiaries. But the main advantage of a perpetual purpose trust is that its sole beneficiary is its purpose as defined in the trust agreement.
The trust is governed by stewards.
The trust agreement is the legal document that creates the PPT. This document shapes how the trust stewardship committee is organized which allows to create a balanced set of voices to govern the trust. Multiple viewpoints and stakeholders are represented through the trust stewardship committee.
The trust enforcer provides acountability.
A PPT has a trust enforcer who serves as an independent arbitrator. The trust enforcer can be called upon whenever any interested party has a grievance regarding the decisions made by the trust stewardship committee. They decide whether or not the purpose was respected.
To steward and demonstrate formal and effective institutional management of lunar resources between different stakeholders.
The trust agreement outlines the purpose, and it also incorporates the following clarifications to support complex decisions.
1. Create a replicable model
The trust intends to create a prototype open for others to use. The open sourced process will aim to role model transparency and knowledge sharing for the common good.
2. Demonstrate multiple models generated with stakeholders.
The trust affirms the need for and value of multiple and diverse approaches to lunar resource management, and will explore and support the demonstration of multiple approaches to cooperative and peaceful resource management.
3. Act for the collective benefit
The trust aims to benefit the communities investing in, building, developing, working and living on the Moon, as well as all life on Earth, now or in the future.
4. Stewardship
To “steward lunar resources” should be understood as managing the resources in a responsible and stakeholder-informed way.
5. Bring all actors to the table
The trust affirms and acknowledges the breadth and diversity of pursuits on the Moon and seeks to incorporate and include views and interests of science, engineering, policy, politics and other issues.
6. Create and demonstrate multiple forms of resource management.
The trust aims to demonstrate the viability and the efficiency of multiple forms of resource management depending on criteria including, but not limited to, scarcity, geographical region, economic and scientific value.
Deep subject matter expertise will guide the substantive work of the trust.
The work of the trust requires meaningful input from experts of the international space community, resource management specialists and beyond. We will host processes to draw inputs from the different stakeholders in order to help us define our line of work.
Breaking Ground is led by its trust stewardship committee.
The trust stewardship committee is composed of trustees who are chosen according to their field of expertise and serve as individuals. Their main goal is to ensure that the trust respects and fulfills its purpose by making decisions aligned with it.
Civil Society Seat
Jessy Kate Schingler
Jessy Kate Schingler is the Director of Policy and Governance with the Open Lunar Foundation. Open Lunar works on policies and institutions for the emerging Earth-Moon system, in support of peaceful and cooperative futures driven by open values.
Jessy Kate is an affiliate researcher at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard and the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). She achieved a B.Sc. in Astrophysics from Queen’s University, Canada, and an M.Sc. in Computer Science at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.
Lunar Policy Seat
Alex Gilbert
Alex Gilbert is a complex systems researcher with expertise in nuclear innovation, space mining, energy markets, and climate policy. He is the Director of Space & Planetary Regulation at Zeno Power, leading regulatory approvals for space launch, maritime, and terrestrial applications of radioisotope power systems.
Previously, Alex was a Project Manager at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, catalyzing advanced nuclear energy development for climate mitigation. He is a fellow at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines and Adjunct Faculty at Johns Hopkins University.
Alex is a PhD candidate in Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines, researching space resources governance, space environmental policy, and space nuclear regulation.
Science Seat
Dr. Hannah Sargeant
Hannah is a post-doctoral researcher at the The University of Central Florida investigating lunar resources. She is currently working on a number of projects investigating the lunar surface properties and methods to extract oxygen and water on the Moon. Hannah obtained her BSc in Physics at the University of Sheffield, her MSc in Space Exploration Systems at the University of Leicester, and her PhD in Planetary Science at the Open University.
Hannah has developed lunar water production experiments to be performed with the ProSPA instrument, and interned at the Lunar and Planetary Institute where she worked on projects investigating the lunar poles and their regolith properties. Hannah is an award winning researcher and outreach ambassador, and is passionate about inspiring the next generation of space scientists.
Co-Founder and Manager of Breaking Ground Trust
Héloïse Vertadier
Héloïse is the manager of the Breaking Ground Trust and Breaking Ground LLC. She is a former fellow at the Open Lunar Foundation. After training in cyber and aviation law in France, she completed the MSS program at the International Space University and is currently doing a Ph.D. at Otago University in New Zealand. Her thesis is focusing on the future of the law and governance for lunar settlements and is supported via a grant by the Luxembourg Space Agency.
Héloïse’s work is turned towards the relationship between the law and new technologies and how to find innovative solutions using existing tools. She has worked as a research scholar at NASA Ames Research Center on the legal and ethical questions regarding artificial intelligence and is a published author for her work on blockchains.
International Diplomacy Seat
Dr. Thomas Cheney
Thomas Cheney is Lecturer in Space Governance within AstrobiologyOU, at the Open University. He is active in researching space law, policy and governance. His research focuses on planetary protection and taking an environmental approach, grounded in legal geography and environmental humanities, to space governance. He researches space resources and property rights, the use of outer space, and arms control in outer space.
Previously, Thomas was Executive Director of the Centre for a Spacefaring Civilization and a co-lead of the Space Generation Advisory Council’s Space Law and Policy Project Group. He was a member of the Hague International Space Resources Governance Working Group and participated in the development of Building Blocks for the Development of an International Framework on Space Resource Activities. He has also participated in Open Lunar/Breaking Ground Trusts Deliberation on Our Resource Rights (DOORR) process.
Thomas has a PhD in space law from Northumbria University, where his research focused on space resources and the associated issues of the relationship between property rights and sovereignty.
Trust Enforcer
Dr. Peter Martinez
Peter Martinez is the Executive Director of the Secure World Foundation. He has extensive experience in multilateral space diplomacy, space policy formulation and space regulation. He also has extensive experience in capacity building in space science and technology and in workforce development. Prior to joining SWF, from 2011 - 2018 he chaired the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN COPUOS) Working Group on the Long-Term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities that negotiated a set of international consensus guidelines to promote the safety and sustainability of space operations. In 2012 and 2013 he was South Africa’s representative on the United Nations Group of Government Experts on transparency and confidence-building measures for space activities. From 2010 – 2015 he was the Chairman of the South African Council for Space Affairs, the national regulatory authority for space activities in South Africa.
