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Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

economist.com

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Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#41

Post by Rebelgecko »

Retric wrote: post #35
Symmetry wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only about five people. But there's also an economy almost unrelated to those people that brings in $330,000,000,000 a year via satellites of various sorts. And if more of the internet starts getting routed through LEO that number is likely to go up a lot.

Satellites and rockets have a lot of regulation. SpaceX for example needed FCC approval before launching test satellites for it’s internet project. Satellites seem largely unregulated because they impact such a small number of things. It’s not not like the FDA is relevant when it’s all photons being sent back and forth.

>Satellites seem largely unregulated

Also, because when a company like Swarm launches even after their licenses are denied, all they get is a slap on the wrist.

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#44

Post by nine_k »

georgeburdell wrote: post #38

I can’t read the article due to a paywall, but don’t laws need an ability for someone to enforce them (police, military, etc.)

There are means to enforce things in space. But they all constitute an act of war, under current agreements.

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#45

Post by Symmetry »

Retric wrote: post #35
Symmetry wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only about five people. But there's also an economy almost unrelated to those people that brings in $330,000,000,000 a year via satellites of various sorts. And if more of the internet starts getting routed through LEO that number is likely to go up a lot.

Satellites and rockets have a lot of regulation. SpaceX for example needed FCC approval before launching test satellites for it’s internet project. Satellites seem largely unregulated because they impact such a small number of things. It’s not not like the FDA is relevant when it’s all photons being sent back and forth.

There are a lot of regulations but if you read the article it's about ways in which current regulation of space are proving inadequate.

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#47

Post by crsv »

whatshisface wrote: post #5

Law doesn't come from (or shouldn't come from) unqualified legislators guessing about what the future will be like and what problems will be there. Law comes from when somebody has a grievance against somebody else, and society steps in to resolve it. Could you imagine how bad it would be if Congress got excited about the potential for internet crime in 1985, tried to guess the form of the problems that would arise,…

Could you imagine how bad it would be if Congress got excited about the potential for internet crime in 1985, tried to guess the form of the problems that would arise, and then wrote laws banning and permitting things that they thought would lead to trouble? There is no way somebody back then could predict which situations would lead to trouble decades later.

You mean like everyone who's talking about AI policy right now?

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#48

Post by QuotedForTruth »

L_226 wrote: post #42

Pretty sure as soon as there is permanent human habitation in space, any "Space Law" as determined by Earth lawyers is going to become wishful thinking really quickly. Good luck trying to enforce mining rights or even copyright on Ceres, using Earth law.

Its pretty easy to enforce if the disputes are between two parties that are at all Earth based. There will be a significant period of permanent habitation before there is self sustaining habitation. And you really cant afford to tell earth to screw off until you're self sufficient.

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#49

Post by ls612 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #36
whatshisface wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws aren't so easy to sunset even if they have sunset clauses. Whoever benefits from the legislative mistakes will grow to be more powerful than whoever is being pinched by them, and then they'll lobby like nothing else to keep the laws the same. One example would be H&R block, which was created by a complex tax code and works very hard to keep it that way. As for the tragedy of the commons, if your mining operation…

> As for the tragedy of the commons, if your mining operation negatively impacts mine by messing up a shared resource, I can sue you right away. The lack of a legal framework doesn't mean that everything is legal, at least under US tradition; it means that the civil courts decide. This is only true though for direct damages that ideally are measurable in a monetary value. Are there cases where it helped keeping goods…

The good news is that most of these commons issues are related to ecosystems on earth, which are blissfully absent in space.

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#50

Post by ajmurmann »

ls612 wrote: post #49
ajmurmann wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for the tragedy of the commons, if your mining operation negatively impacts mine by messing up a shared resource, I can sue you right away. The lack of a legal framework doesn't mean that everything is legal, at least under US tradition; it means that the civil courts decide. This is only true though for direct damages that ideally are measurable in a monetary value. Are there cases where it helped keeping goods…

The good news is that most of these commons issues are related to ecosystems on earth, which are blissfully absent in space.

I'm curious to see if or how long that will hold true. We already have been seeing outcry over light pollution caused by SpaceX massive satellite formation.
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