ABSTRACT
Since 1990, the space tourism sector has transformed itself from a government-controlled revenue-generating Russian enterprise for a few multimillionaires into an industry in which competing private and commercial ventures have been offering trips into low Earth orbit for potentially less than one million US dollars. The “billionaires’ space race” at the beginning of the 2020s only fuelled both imaginations of adventurers and concerns from international lawyers. Remarkably in a sector of such a rapid pace of technological development, the existing legal principles concerning state responsibility for space activities have remained unchanged since 1963. This chapter considers the relevant customary principles of international law, their codification by the International Law Commission in the Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts; analyses how the substantive effect of such principles are affected or modified by Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty; and considers the adequacy of this framework of state responsibility on the practical and legal realities of private and commercial human spaceflight.
