The Future of Space Governance

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Citation: Vol. 48 No. 3
• Publication year: 2020
• topic: Aeronautics,Military Law

The Future of Space Governance

Melissa J. Durkee^*

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The international legal framework governing outer space developed under the conditions of a bi-polar, Cold War world, where the United States and the Soviet Union were the only spacefaring nations, and were engaged in a feverish race to space.¹ The space treaties reflect the concerns of the time, primarily to prevent the militarization and colonization of outer space.² The two great powers wanted to keep the cold war out of space, and to keep that war from turning hot. Ultimately, the United States made it to the moon and the two nations moved on, leaving space governance effectively frozen in Cold War terms.³

Exactly half a century later, the world has changed, and so has space. A bi-polar world has become multipolar, and an optimistic period of multilateralism has given way to a decline in robust international cooperation. Meanwhile, developments in outer space have exploded in complexity, ambition, and commercial promise. The number of entrants and potential entrants has proliferated: at the time of this writing, seventy-two nations now claim they have space agencies, and fourteen have orbital launch capabilities.⁴ One of the key new entrants is China, which is busy exploring the dark side of the moon and plans a permanent Chinese lunar colony as early as 2030.⁵ India, too, is

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broadening its ambitions, planning an imminent moon lander trip, and manned spaceflight and a space station launch soon thereafter.⁶ The SpaceX program is making rocket launches available for bargain basement prices, bringing space activities within the reach of a gaggle of startups keen to grab their piece of the commercial pie.⁷ Other commercial actors imagine space tourism, colonies, and missions to Mars.⁸ At the same time, the United States, still the dominant player in space, has recently launched with fanfare a "Space Force," aimed at defense of U.S. military interests from space.⁹

Fifty years after the first moonwalk, the prospect for a new set of multilateral agreements governing outer space is remote, yet the legal questions raised by activity in space are mounting. With little prospect of new treaties, nations will need to make do with existing treaty law, generate customary rules to govern new applications, or develop forms of sublegal understanding and cooperation.

This special conference issue of the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law addresses these questions headlong. The issue chronicles a conference on "The Future of Space Governance," which the Journal convened in concert with the Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law on October 28, 2019. The conference brought together a diverse array of experts to address emerging questions of outer space governance. It featured specialists from NASA and the U.S. Air Force, the private sector, and academic institutions and think tanks in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Africa. The conference invited participants to consider space governance from the perspective of the array of stakeholders who are its producers, consumers, advocates, reformers, or antagonists. It sought to understand the perspective and concerns of classic space powers, new entrants, and non-space faring nations, as well as civilian space agencies, national militaries, and commercial actors. It sought views on the sufficiency of existing law and governance structures, and probed the legal needs of new and existing stakeholders. Ultimately, the conference set out to explore the

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various agendas of this growing...