Abstract
Commercial Human Spaceflight – a new addition to the commercial activities in outer space – is attracting the ultra-rich section of the society. It has enormous potential to accelerate the economic aspect of commercial spaceflight since with the development of reusable technologies it is expected to become cheaper. At the same time, it poses a severe threat in various ways to the status quo of the existing regime of space regulation. Taking humans to outer space as a passenger affects the current social, psychological, political, and legal setup. The paper highlights the legal issues that are arising from commercial human spaceflights. Therefore, in section one, the article discusses applicable international law to this emerging activities. Part two details specifically on the international space law that is relevant to regulate these activities. After analyzing the existing international law on space activities in sections one and two, which are essential for the commercial human spaceflights, part three identifies several legal challenges that are not sufficiently addressed by the existing laws. Section four examines the role played by the regulatory organization to develop the space law, and the role of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has been discussed in detail. As the ICAO holds good experience in handling air transportation, many believe that the ICAO is naturally well placed to regulate commercial space transportation. This aspect has been elaborated in detail in this part. In the fifth, i.e. the last section, the authors conclude by arguing to develop a new international convention to regulate it.
Highlights
Since ages, Moon, stars, and other celestial bodies have been a matter of great attraction for humans
Due to the absence of definition under international law, a workable definition could be derived by examining the common usage of the term “commercial,”“human,”“space,” and “flight.”5 The Commercial Human Spaceflights (CHS) is conducted for diverse areas of human activities such as exploration, entertainment, transportation, or extraterritorial resource acquisition in outer space
The broad discussion took place at the Subcommittee, as observed from its reports. It could be divided into three aspects based on the attitude of the delegates:68 (a) There are views from certain delegates that the increasing commercial activities in outer space require “improvements or mechanisms to strengthen the existing legal framework”; (b) Some delegates opined that the new regulatory mechanism is needed to comprehend the commercial realities of space activities
Summary
Moon, stars, and other celestial bodies have been a matter of great attraction for humans. The CHS is the transportation of “persons to, from, or through outer space for compensation.” It is different from other forms of carrying humans to space as it involves the commercial nature of transportation.. Companies such as Virgin Group, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Orion Span, and Boeing has made a significant investment for the human-crewed missions These CHS, in terms of its conducting body/ies, could be of two kinds: public manned spaceflights and private manned spaceflights.. Public manned spaceflights are predominantly a state or group of states’ activities of carrying a human to space. There are limited countries that have mentioned about human spaceflights .15 In this connection, it is necessary to explore the viability of applying existing international law in general and outer space law in particular to the CHS States have started to enact national space legislation to involve the private entities in launches and operations of space objects/crafts. Yet there are limited countries that have mentioned about human spaceflights . In this connection, it is necessary to explore the viability of applying existing international law in general and outer space law in particular to the CHS
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