ABSTRACT
Space law is maturing. As it does it is bifurcating. Fifty years from Sputnik I and forty after the Outer Space Treaty there is much to satisfy in what has been accomplished. Principles have been established, and in general states have complied with them in their own space activities and required compliance with them by those non-state entities which they have licensed to engage in space activities. Many issues are now considered as settled. Other formerly contentious issues appear dead. Some are reappearing in altered form. In the early days of the space age only states were the actors. Now we have the emergent commercial uses of space and their requirement of regulation, whether national and international. Just as there is the Law of the Sea and Maritime Law so there is a body of space law that regulates inter-state relationships and an increasing mass of law regulating commercial activities. This last is shaped and constrained by the public international law of space which is the product of international agreement. Yet ultimately commercial space law is a creation of national legal systems governing such as launch contracts, insurance, copyright and intellectual property which must be the subject of another book.1 In the meantime we can look forward to identify areas that require international development and agreement. The temptation, to which we will succumb to occasionally, is to have recourse to analogy. When considering new problems lawyers have an ingrained tendency to analogise from the known to the unknown, but for the future requirements of space that tendency
1 See K.-H. Böckstiegel, ed., ‘Project 2001’ – Legal Framework for the Commercial Use of Outer Space (Cologne: Carl Heymanns Verlag, 2002) together with the product of the Workshops that underpinned the Project (published by the Institute of Air and Space Law, Cologne University) on 1. Privatisation, 2. Launch and Associated Services, 3. Remote Sensing, 4. Telecommunications, 5. Space Stations, and 6. National Space Legislation. Project 2001+ continues under the direction of Professor S. Hobe.
