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von der Dunk, Frans --- "Legal aspects of private manned spaceflight" [2015] ELECD 258; in von der Dunk, Frans (ed), "Handbook of Space Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015) 662

Book Title: Handbook of Space Law

Editor(s): von der Dunk, Frans

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781000359

Section: Chapter 12

Section Title: Legal aspects of private manned spaceflight

Author(s): von der Dunk, Frans

Number of pages: 55

Abstract/Description:

The two most visible and revolutionary events in the past two decades in terms of space activities highly relevant for space law no doubt were the orbital flight of Dennis Tito, the first space tourist, on board the ISS in 2001, and the sub-orbital flights of Scale Composites’ SpaceShipOne in 2004 winning the Ansari X-Prize, triggering several projects about to send space tourists by the hundreds into the lower areas of outer space anytime soon. These events also triggered a major discussion on the possible desirability or need to overhaul the current space law regime or at least to fundamentally adapt it to the impending realities of private manned spaceflight. These discussions have already led to adaptations in the legal regime applicable to the ISS to accommodate, respectively, further orbital tourists and amendments to the US Commercial Space Launch Act handling the building of commercial spaceports for sub-orbital flights as well as such flights themselves. Most of the discussions have focused so far on liability and certification issues, borrowing essentially from existing space law but also from air law and high-adventure tourism law, as well as on the status of astronauts and (other) spaceflight participants. With plans to start offering similar sub-orbital flights from various places around the world, moreover, the above legal questions obtain a distinctly international flavour as well, ranging from discussions in the aviation sector (the International Civil Aviation Organisation, ICAO, and the European Aviation Safety Agency, EASA) on adapting aircraft certification processes to discussions in the space sector (the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, UN COPUOS) on the risk of ‘flags of convenience’. ‘Private commercial human spaceflight’, also often loosely and imprecisely known as ‘space tourism’, is quite likely the type of space activity having raised most enthusiasm with the public at large ever since the Apollo moon landings of 1969 through 1972 – and at the same time may present the largest challenge to the existing body of (international) space law yet. As early as 1990 a Japanese journalist, the first professional non-career cosmonaut, visited the then-Soviet Mir station to write daily newspaper reports of what it meant to be in orbit, soon to be followed by an English engineer. Yet, it was the launch of Dennis Tito to the Russian part of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2001 which gave birth to the phenomenon of ‘space tourism’ – he flew for no other reason than his desire to fly in outer space and happening to have the money privately available to pay the price quoted to him (some US$ 20 million) for fulfilling that desire. So far, Tito has been followed to the ISS by another six orbital tourists, including one woman, Anousheh Ansari, and one of the others actually taking the trip twice – against, generally, rising prices. While at the time of writing such space tourism adventures on board the ISS are temporarily halted due to the prioritization of other ISS flights, they have not been banned in principle and may be resumed at any time once new extraordinarily wealthy individual clients show their interest in such flights.