At a meeting on October 10, 2017, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Dr. Ahmad Belhoul al Falasi, UAE’s Minister of State for Higher Education and Chairman of the UAE Space Agency, met with Luxembourg’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy, Etienne Schneider, to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) initiating bilateral cooperation between the two nations on space activities, with particular focus on exploitation of space resources.<\/p>\n
The working alliance is indicative of the Grand Duchy’s continued push to lead the European Continent in pursuing space exploration and the privatization of space resources, and of\u00a0UAE’s recent massive investments<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in technologies useful to such endeavors.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>While billed as being the pursuit of\u00a0 “peaceful activities<\/span><\/a>,”\u00a0 given the financial stakes, one should probably instead recognize that\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Europe and UAE must be motivated by an anticipation of economic profit and technological superiority from space exploration.<\/span><\/p>\n It is not frequently reported in the American press, but UAE has been making large investments to transition from a petroleum-based economy to a\u00a0knowledge-based economy<\/span><\/a>\u00a0similar to Singapore.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>These investments have made the technology and military technology sectors of the economies of UAE and other\u00a0Gulf Cooperation Council<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(GCC) members among the very best in the world at this time. Council members work closely together, and Saudi Arabia recently announced plans to build a fascinating knowledge-based city called\u00a0NEOM<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that is planned to be\u00a033 times larger than New York City<\/span><\/a>, and which Mohammed bin Salman envisions as a place “not for conventional people or conventional companies, … [but] for the dreamers for the world.”<\/span><\/p>\n The MoU between UAE and Luxembourg is a five-year agreement to cooperate and anticipates the sharing of resources and the exchange of information and expertise in space science and technology, human capital development, and space policy, law and regulation. The MoU emphasizes that it is a natural extension of the collaborative and consensus-building efforts that the countries consider a guiding principle of their efforts.<\/p>\n