If you saw the live video of billionaire Jason Isaacman popping his head out of a SpaceX spacecraft (see “Polaris Dawn Mission is a Giant Leap for Private Space Exploration”), your first thought probably wasn’t, “Who can sue if something goes wrong?” But as private spaceflight expands, these questions will have to be addressed.
International space law is a collection of treaties dating back to the Space Race, most importantly the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. One of its key principles is that activities in space are the responsibility of nations alone, even “non-governmental entities” like SpaceX. Because Isaacman and his crew launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, that makes the U.S. government responsible.
But the US government found a way to avoid responsibility. While the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has strict rules and regulations for commercial air travel, commercial spaceflight has always been treated more loosely, most recently by the Space Act of 2015. The act extended a “learning period” that prohibited the FAA from issuing regulations for astronaut safety on private spaceflight. In other words, any safety concerns Isaacman may have had were resolved between him and SpaceX.
This learning period is scheduled to end on January 1, 2025, so we may soon see legal clarity on who is responsible for private astronauts, but that’s not the only area of space law that requires careful consideration. There is growing concern about the number of satellites in orbitpotentially ruining observations (see “Astronomers Concerned About Launch of Five New Super-Bright Satellites”). Elon Musk’s SpaceX is a big player here too, controlling two-thirds of the operational satellites, and there are currently no regulations preventing him from launching as many as he wants.
So what’s next? As policy researcher Thomas Hale puts it (see “A Manifesto on Future Generations Could Bring About Necessary Change”), our political system isn’t designed to solve “long-term problems” and is unlikely to do much more than conquer the final frontier. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. And a revision of the aging Outer Space Treaty to address these more modern issues would be very welcome.
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