Space Tourism and the Law
Eighteen months from now, space tourists may be taking a two hour suborbital trip for $200,000 a person on a Virgin Galactic, LLC rocket. They will travel 62 miles above the earth, experience weightless for some minutes, and then return to earth. See Space Tourism Boosted by Tech Figures Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, More, Mike Swift, San Jose Mercury News,. 11/30/2010 (reprinted in this Sunday’s Plain Dealer business section). The legal issues involved in space tourism are discussed in the following article – Steven Freeland, How Will International Law Cope with Space Tourism, 11 Melbourne Journal of International Law (May 2010). These issues include:
- Where does airspace (to which nations have territorial rights) end and space begin (space not being owned by any particular nation)? Should space law apply to the entire journey, or only the part where travel occurs out of airspace, and air law apply to the part occurring in air space?
- If an accident occurs in space, what laws apply? What are the rights of space tourists? What about falling debris which causes damage to people/property on the earth? Who is liable – the nation where the launch occurred? The company involved? The tourists? What about insurance?
- Will safety restrictions, regulations of release of liabilities in space tourist contracts, and other laws governing the space tourism industry vary from country to country or will a uniform body of law be created?
- If someday a company wants to build a hotel on the Moon, how will the company obtain property rights, given that current law specifies that no nation has rights to the Moon or outerspace?
The legal implications of space tourism, as well as many other space law issues will be explored in Professor Mark Sundahl’s Space Law Class this spring.
Photocredit: Photo by Mark Greenburg, courtesy of WikiMedia
