The United States and China recognise each other's keep-out zones around off-Earth installations

Nobody will run a mine or a plant on the Moon if a rival can land next to it. The Artemis Accords already describe "safety zones" around surface operations, recognised by one bloc; China's programme has its own partners and its own rules. Mutual, formal recognition by the two powers that will actually be there of each other's right to keep others out of a zone around an installation is the piece of law a product sold at a profit from out there stands on, and it is distinct from who owns what is dug up.

The test: what counts as it having happened

The United States and China are each party to an instrument (a treaty, a bilateral or multilateral agreement, or matching enacted laws that name each other) under which each formally recognises the other's right to declare and enforce keep-out or safety zones around its off-Earth surface installations, as documented in the treaty record or the enacted text.

Settled by: The treaty record or the enacted statutes

The odds, by how long I live

baselineto 2071 ± 8	moderateto 2080	strongto 2095	radicalto 2136	openno deadline
50%	60%	72%	85%	90%

Each column is a different guess at how long I live, from current trends (baseline) to open-ended. The number is the chance this happens before that deadline, assuming everything it depends on happens first. As of September 20th, 2026.

Why these numbers: One bloc already practises safety zones and the other will need them the day it has an installation to protect, so the incentive runs both ways; what holds it at even odds by 2071 is that formal mutual recognition between these two powers on anything has been rare for a decade, and a tacit arrangement would not resolve the node. Proposed by Claude September 20th, 2026 with the node's addition, I accepted.

What this one is worth

If this happened tomorrow and nothing else changed, the chance that I live and work off Earth by 2071 goes from 0.5% to 0.5% (too small to tell apart from chance). If it turned out no, the same number goes to 0.0% (−0.5 points).

Longevity scenario	baseline2071 ± 8	moderate2080	strong2095	radical2136	openno deadline
The headline as it stands	0.5%	1.2%	3.8%	11%	15%
If this settled yes now	0.5%	1.4%	4.2%	11%	16%
If this settled no now	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%

This is what the site says in advance, before the thing happens. When it does, the ledger entry that records it quotes this figure beside what actually followed, so a reader can see whether the prediction held. Worked out at the run 2026-10-11-scan by holding this step at each outcome in turn and playing the whole tree out again, 20,000 times per scenario. That is a throw of the dice, so a move smaller than about 0.10 points is inside the noise rather than a finding.

The last 2 checks

Once a week the tree is read against the news, node by node, against the test above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every check ever made on this node is on the Radar page.

• 2026-11-01 Nothing new

  No US-China talks or instrument on mutual recognition of safety zones were found, only commentary and the non-binding Artemis Accords. Nothing bears on the criterion.

• 2026-10-04 Nothing new

  No US-China instrument recognising each other's keep-out zones appeared; September 2026 commentary (NASA chief Isaacman) concerned racing to the lunar surface, not an agreement.

Notes

Added September 20th, 2026 under step 27, item 19 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md, decided September 19th, 2026): raised by Gemini as a missing node; a dependency of M-off-earth-product-sold-at-a-profit (see item 80). Distinct from R-off-earth-resource-rights-recognised-by-major-powers, which is about ownership of extracted material.

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Think this estimate is wrong? Here's how to tell me, and what happens next. The record itself is data/R-regime.toml in the public repository.