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Commercialization

Helping Buck Rogers Make Some Bucks In Space

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
July 12, 2017
Filed under
Helping Buck Rogers Make Some Bucks In Space

What You Need To Know About The Space Law Congress Is Considering, The Federalist
“Want to make money in space? It appears that Congress wants to help. It also appears from what Congress has so far proposed that their help will have only a limited value. The heart of the problem is twofold. First, the regulatory framework that American companies must navigate to get projects off the ground is difficult and complex. They must deal with multiple government agencies whose conflicting needs cause delays and increased costs. Sometimes this bureaucracy kills projects entirely. Second, there is significant worry in the investment community about the uncertainty of property rights in space. Article II of the Outer Space Treaty forbids countries from claiming territory in space, which means it is difficult for capitalist countries like the United States to establish secure property rights for its citizens on any territory in space.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

7 responses to “Helping Buck Rogers Make Some Bucks In Space”

  1. ThomasLMatula says:
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    It is good folks are starting to notice this proposed law. Its basically good, but I see creating a separate regulatory agency to license payloads and missions in the Department of Commerce as unnecessary. I believe it make more sense to just expand the powers of the existing FAA AST to include all aspects of commercial space flight and missions. By creating a new regulatory agency they are just setting up an unnecessary turf war.

    The other issue is the author makes the common mistake many make about Article II of the OST, believing it applies to Chattel Property rights when it only applies to Real Property. This distinction is clear in the Senate Hearing on the OST and the literature in the COPOUS Proceedings from that era. The experts that testified at the Hearings on the Space Enterprise Act by contrast demonstrated they had done their research on Article II.

    • cynical_space says:
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      I disagree about FAA vs DoC. I would hope that as business in space matures, it will be more about business (commerce) than about actually flying around. I understand about creating more bureaucracy, but DoC seems more logical to me for regulating business.

      Regarding the OST, the arguments from American experts, in front the American Congress, about American style entrepreneurship is great and all. However, I am skeptical that the rest of the world will be in lock step with that opinion. Especially, if some country or entity gets a jump on everyone else and is spectacularly successful, some other country or entity will want in on the action, but won’t want to go to the trouble/expense of doing their own exploration, so they’ll just invoke the treaty with their own interpretation. We shall see I suppose, and, at the end of day, people being successful in the space business is a good problem to have.

      • fcrary says:
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        That’s an interesting point about other countries, with other interpretations of the Outer Space Treaty. I’m not familiar all of the Treaty. What sort of arbitration clauses does it have (if any)? If two countries have contradictory interpretations, do they just yell at each other? Some treaties specify an international body to act as an arbiter in the event of those sorts of disagreements.

  2. Bill Housley says:
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    The treaty itself also needs to be updated to take into account the International nature of modern space activities and the new paradigm of non-government agencies with a potentially international clientele having space launch capability that can reach another planet or moon.

    Currently, if I understand correctly, the national soil from which a mission is launched is responsible for its activities. So, an employee of an India company, working as a subcontractor at an EU facility located on the moon, who was transported to the moon on a vehicle launched from the southern coast of Texas by SpaceX, puts on a space suit and walks next door to a Chinese facility and kicks someone’s cat. Who pays the vet bill? The U.S. government. Right? So some kind of entity that arbitrates legal liability for private interests needs to be clarified. It can have its roots in Earth-based business ownership for example, so that the India company that employs and sponsers the above cat-kicker is liable for damage done by their employee.

    • fcrary says:
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      Well, you’re right that this is a legal mess. It isn’t even entirely clear on Earth. Jurisdiction and responsibility are territorial in most cases. If your cat-kicker were in the United States, whether he or his employer were liable would depend on US and/or state laws (and it would be him.) If it happened in Singapore, it would depend on Singapore law, and I have no idea what that says. For places which are not territories of any nation, we’ve got maritime law, which gives authority to the nation in which the vessel is registered, and Antarctica, which has always been ambiguous.

      A real concern for space commerce, is that every nation which might be liable could insist on its own form of oversight and regulation. In your example, it could mean Indian, EU, US, and Chinese involvement. That’s the sort of thing that could scare off investors.

  3. Donald Barker says:
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    I hate to be able to say this (getting old?), but the “Buck Rogers” illustration and zeitgeist disappeared over 20 years ago and is so far out of the pop-culture mindset that we need to come up with a new one? Most of the younger people these days probably dont even know who he was.

    • fcrary says:
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      Which could mean it’s time for a remake of Buck Rogers. Around 1998, a friend was upset when she was teaching intro astronomy and said Saturn’s moon, Mimas, looked like the Death Star. Most of the 18 year old freshmen in the class had no idea what she was talking about. They would have been three when the last Star Wars movie came out, and the next cycle of those movies was still a year in the future.