
Space: A Major Legal Void - lelf
https://phys.org/news/2019-10-space-major-legal-void.html
======
raxxorrax
Indeed, slightly different point of view: My government justified surveillance
because it was done from space and therefore the local law wasn't applicable.
If that sounds like something a smart-mouthed preschooler would throw at your
head, I would agree.

But while the preschooler wouldn't be able not to put on a wide grin, these
people were dead serious.

~~~
reacweb
I think it is a bad mindset. Laws shall not be seen as hindrance, but as
beneficial for all.

~~~
ossworkerrights
Depends on the law. Chinese style surveillance laws are probably a hindrance.
Also, space doesn't really belong to any one country. It belongs to all of us,
and will probably be dominated by whoever has most guns and is willing to use
them.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Devil's advocate: And yet, even with strict surveillance and (internet)
filtering / propaganda, China's economy is booming and if they manage to
continue this growth, their GDP will overtake that of Europe and the US within
the forseeable future. Their internet companies already handle a multiple of
what their US counterparts do, for example.

But the humanitarian cost is high. The US is a bit better, maybe, but is also
severely lacking on the humanitarian front (think poverty, homelessness,
crime, substance abuse, suppression / lack of democracy, health care,
education, debts, etc). The US could be doing so much better for their own
people but because they choose to spend so much on the military and have tax
laws that prevent the rich people and businesses from contributing, nothing is
left for their own people. Mid- to long-term it means the country will be left
behind.

(disclaimer: I'm no economist nor an American, I'm sure someone else knows all
the nuances)

~~~
raxxorrax
There are 1,3 billion people in China so the overtaking of the GDP would be
expected if they reach a certain developmental level.

If often hear the economic growth must be due to surveillance and an
autocratic regime, a laughable suggestion, although often shared by my
unimaginitive government (Europe).

The third reich also had a booming economy. War creates massive economic
opportunity. Slavery too. But somehow increased governmental control is the
key for economic success? Doubtful at least.

The success of China is pretty straight forward. They had very cheap workers
and hungry foreign consumers. I don't see how you wouldn't get any profit out
of that situation. But no, it certainly must be due to complete systemic
differences instead of economical ones.

~~~
friendlybus
The Chinese gov did play a big part in keeping the economic boom going. They
continually propped up the housing bubble even though it was generating new
construction well over demand and could have crashed multiple times. They did
a bunch of currency manipulation to keep exports going. Whatever that was
keeping shipping costs in and out of China so low worked very well.

I don't think you can rule out the government as a factor, there's plenty of
cheap workers in the world that want money.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
It's a bit rich to criticise China's approach to currency after 2008.

Their government should be given credit for basic competence, which our
leaders don't seem to have.

Their government has consistently put major support behind key industrial
sectors and built out infrastructure that enabled industrial growth.

Just as an example, China now has more high-speed rail than the rest of the
world combined. They are the world's leading manufacturer of solar panels,
electric vehicles, etc. There are several countries with equal or better
starting positions, yet no achieving equivalent economic growth.

Meanwhile holders of the highest office in US/UK are busy with Brexit,
building a wall, and denying climate change exists.

~~~
friendlybus
I fail to see the lack of basic competence once you look outside of hot button
issues, or even inside those issues. It is trivial to make both China and the
west look good or bad with a selective view.

I was not seeking to criticize China (though I will if it makes sense to) but
to make the observation for parent's sake that the Chinese gov does in fact
play it's hand in the economy.

------
api
Let's see you try to enforce your laws Terran!

~~~
TeMPOraL
Hah.

In reality though, enforcement on individuals will, for the foreseeable
future, be done through waiting for them to come back down. Enforcement on
countries and companies will continue to be done with threat of nuclear
strike.

------
kartikkumar
There's a massive, evolving body of work on space law and a lot more than
meets the eye. This article doesn't really canvas the extent to which the
community to working towards tackling the long-term issue of space
sustainability.

Every IAC, there's a space moot court run by the International Institute of
Space Law (IISL) [0]. This is an excellent opportunity for space law young
professionals to engage in pressing issues like Space Traffic Management
(STM).

The issue with space debris is much like the climate change challenge: it's
serious and nuanced. A few years ago, I co-authored a paper on the
applicability of the IADC's 25-year guideline ,mentioned in the article, for
Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites [1] (happy to send anyone a copy of the full
manuscript if interested).

I've also done some work on the technical side of Active Debris Removal (ADR),
and published a paper on figuring out how to target solutions to the
Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) for multi-target missions using low-thrust
transfer trajectories [2] (likewise, happy to share the full paper if
interested).

I'm sharing this is to highlight that the problem of space debris is not
trivial. I find that it's often trivialized in articles intended for a general
audience, when the devil really is in the details.

For instance, the article misses the important topic of addressing object
ownership. There are no salvage laws in place for space assets. What's more,
the fundamental definition of what is considered "junk" is in the eye of the
beholder. Russian rocket bodies are often cited, however what's missed is the
fact that Russia continues indefinitely to retain full ownership of these
objects: hence, you can't touch them even if you could safely and economically
remove them, without Russia giving explicit consent. This speaks to how
intractable space law actually is: it's a massively complex geo-political
maze.

The article also fails to mention that despite space being big, we witnessed
the effects of a collision back in 2009 [3]. I had the pleasure of grabbing a
drink with TS Kelso, the genius behind CelesTrak, last week during the
conference. Fact is that we're hampered on all side (technical, economic,
legal, political) to deal with the space debris problem.

There's an idea being floated to develop a Space Sustainability Rating (SSR),
recently announced at the World Economic Forum [4]. I'm currently working on
an idea with one of the participants in the consortium (Prof. Moriba Jah at UT
Austin). He's got this quote that he loves to use to describe the right
approach to Space Situational Awareness (SSA): "to know it, you must measure
it; to understand it, you must predict it!" To that end, we're looking at
connecting our global space supply chain database [5] to the knowledge of the
space debris population, to better assess risk and enable lawmakers to
understand what needs to be regulated (disclaimer: I'm one of the co-founders
at satsearch).

In short, this article only skims over a highly complex topic with many
dimensions.

[0] [https://iislweb.org/iac-2019-technical-programme-iisl-
colloq...](https://iislweb.org/iac-2019-technical-programme-iisl-colloquium-
on-the-law-of-outer-space/)

[1]
[https://iafastro.directory/iac/archive/browse/IAC-15/A6/IP/2...](https://iafastro.directory/iac/archive/browse/IAC-15/A6/IP/27687/)

[2]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027311771...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117716307190?via%3Dihub)

[3]
[https://www.celestrak.com/publications/AAS/09-368/AAS-09-368...](https://www.celestrak.com/publications/AAS/09-368/AAS-09-368.pdf)

[4] [https://phys.org/news/2019-05-space-sustainability-aims-
amou...](https://phys.org/news/2019-05-space-sustainability-aims-amount-
debris.html)

[5] [https://satsearch.co](https://satsearch.co)

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TomMarius
How do you actually enforce law in space?

~~~
stronglikedan
I would think they would be enforced similarly to maritime law.

~~~
TomMarius
I think that can't work in space after someone builds a habitat.

