Space Policy最新文献

Against the background of rapid advances in space technology and better understanding of the composition of celestial bodies, the utilisation of space resources has become an increasingly important topic; however, the lack of a comprehensive legal framework and the consequent legal uncertainty surrounding legality and conditions under which space resources can be utilised represent a significant barrier for private investors. To be precise, outer space is not unregulated. There are norms of customary international law applicable to activities in outer space, and fundamental legal principles have been enshrined in the Outer Space Treaty. What is more, the Moon Agreement declared space resources the common heritage of mankind and envisages the establishment of an international legal regime; however, the Moon Agreement – the only international treaty explicitly addressing space mining – has been ratified/acceded to by only 18 states, and legal principles enshrined in the Outer Space Treaty are too vague to provide private investors with the regulatory certainty they need. As a result of the lack of progress on legally binding instruments within traditional fora, especially the UN COPUOS, several states decided to address legal certainty unilaterally – via national law. National legislators should take into consideration that national space mining laws are to be applied in an area that is open for access and use to all, an area recognised as res communis omnium. This article analyses regimes governing the utilisation of space resources and aims to identify practical implications for national legislators and diplomats.

This paper examines two first-of-their-kind economic datasets about the United States (US) space sector that use input-output (I-O) frameworks at their foundation. We explain what these data tell us about the impact on the US economy stemming from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) spending and the production of space-related goods and services. Overall, the data show NASA’s total economic output in 2019 was $64.3 billion and supported over 312,000 jobs. Additionally, space-related production was found to represent 0.5 percent of US gross domestic product in 2018. We describe the advantages of using I-O-based data like these over revenue-based economic reports that are commonly used in the space policy arena and that suffer from important measurement issues.

Space exploration has been a source of visions of a positive future development of humanity as a spacefaring species, as well as a possible warring domain of humanity as a nation-faring species. In this way, the post-WWII age was defined by a belief that technology can be the cause of either positive or dystopic futures, respectively. However, the development of political science since then has provided us a different perception of the relation between technology and politics. In this article, we show how large technical systems (LTSs) could overcome the imprisonment of identity in a national straitjacket in interstate interactions and could subsequently enable a more inclusive cosmopolitan global governance. We argue that political reality could be determined by technology; it could be that normative theory, injected into LTSs that existed for decades, determines the available space for political steering. The space domain is specific given its inherently cosmopolitan epistemic space community that has the power through its expertise, ability to mobilize scientific facts, and also policy, to shape not only how LTSs of the future would appear but also on what normative foundations they would stand. The space community should become aware of its political capital instead of continuously asking for a Global Space Agency that would involve all nations. LTSs and the space community, therefore, effectively become two vehicles of the political change. We use three cases for this change that require LTSs to be addressed: orbital debris, planetary defense, and interstellar travel. The principal problem of ambitious activities in space does not lie, we propose, not only in lack of knowledge, lack of technical capabilities, or a lack of funding but also in lack of our ability to enable cosmopolitan ideas in political practice. The novel approach to space policy we suggest in our article builds on the basic principles of cosmopolitan theory, and uses the concept of a responsible cosmopolitan state, and the Welsh School of critical security studies, namely a theory that focuses on security as emancipation rather than security as an absence of an identified threat, to argue that security sensitive LTSs are not a burden but rather an instrument to enable positive political change.

For decades, space activities were the exclusive domain of government agencies and big contractors, delivered indirect benefits such as international prestige and became a genuine expression of political influence and military advantage. Today, we are witnessing a shift of approach as new technologies, industry-driven applications, mission concepts, and business models implemented by private companies are permeating the sector, and a key payoff comes from the exploitation of commercial opportunities. This article analyses to what extent the indirect, structural type of space power that has been exerted historically by a small number of actors may be affected by the irruption of the New Space movement and its alleged democratisation of space access and use. The commercialisation of outer space may impact power structures in a way that benefits some stakeholders more than others, but it is unlikely that the established space power hierarchies are severely affected in the short-to-medium term. Despite the increased number of players involved in low-orbit applications and associated new services, there are reasons to believe that the power of a few space-faring states will endure.

Like the terrestrial international politics after the end of the Cold War, outer space is shifting from the utilisation of geopolitical tools only to the increasing reliance on geoeconomic means of power competition. This article reconceptualizes the New Space era and the heating geoeconomic competition by adding into consideration the Mahanian view on the sustainability of operations in non-land domains by authoritarian and democratic regimes. The article responds to the question of the difference between the approach to the private space companies in the West and in China and of sustainability of the different trajectories taken. It concludes that the Western more indirect model is likely to become more sustainable to the Chinese more intrusive utilisation of geoeconomic tools.

This manuscript presents a high-fidelity reconstruction of the cost of Project Apollo, including year-by-year funding for all major programs and average costs for each crewed lunar landing attempt. According to these data, the United States spent $25.8 billion on hardware, facilities, and overhead directly associated with Project Apollo between fiscal years 1960 and 1973. This represents a substantial improvement over previous cost reporting. Annual cost data enable improved adjustments for inflation, which can account for varying inflation rates throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. This enables comparisons to modern efforts to return humans to the Moon, which display a lower and slower cost profile reflecting their lower political priority.

In light of recent technological advancements in the launch industry and the accelerating development of a private space economy, the regulation of space mining is becoming an increasingly pressing matter. A regulatory regime for space mining must not only provide legal clarity on how to acquire mining rights for certain celestial bodies but must also do this in a way that does not hinder investment in companies in this sector. To encourage a progressive development and prevent the formation of market monopolies, the regime's mechanism for acquiring mining rights must be designed to promote continued investment in new space mining companies, even after first movers have proven the concept. With a strong emphasis on the proliferation of space mining and the establishment of a spacefaring civilisation, this article proposes a regulatory regime and mechanism to acquire rights for the mining of celestial bodies while preserving the information and knowledge contained within these bodies as heritage for future generations of mankind and for science to capitalise on an emerging economy's momentum.

The effectiveness of public-private partnerships (PPPs) has been emphasized in Chinese policy-making discourse in recent years, and policies have been introduced to promote the adoption of PPPs. A 2016 White Paper on China’s space activities advocated for policies that encourage ‘social forces’ (including non-governmental space entities) to participate in space development. The White Paper proposed amending the government procurement process of space products and services and facilitating cooperation with the private space sector. Furthermore, ‘satellite internet’ was introduced into the scope of space policy as a new type of infrastructure, providing opportunities to establish PPPs in space programs. Nonetheless, the military-dominated nature of space exploration has resulted in a complicated administration and strict supervision of non-governmental entities in order to develop space activities, including launching satellites. In addition, government-owned enterprises, commonly acknowledged as ‘public’ parties of PPPs, are counted among the ‘social forces’ authorized to act as ‘private’ parties in the Chinese PPP market. Therefore, favorable PPP policies are applied to public entities. This impedes the growth of underdeveloped non-governmental space entities, and as such, this is an issue that needs to be addressed. From a national space legislation perspective, clear and supportive rules for non-governmental space activities administration and permissions of operation should be established. Concerning PPP rules, based on fully considering existing laws, measures ought to be taken to improve the procurement measures of space products and services. Moreover, rules concerning the ‘value for money’ evaluation criteria and other details deserve to be created or improved upon to ensure non-governmental participants benefit in PPP programs conducted with public partners.

Orbital space is an economically and socially valuable resource that provides a vast array of satellite communication services for consumers, businesses, scientists, and governments. Among the socially valuable services provided, orbital satellites collect various types of environmental data relating to the earth's surface and atmosphere. These data help scientists monitor and better understand the evolving terrestrial environment. When satellites are launched and undertake missions in orbital space, they create pollution in the form of orbital debris. Orbital debris can, and does, damage or destroy other satellites. National entities that use orbital space pledge to follow voluntary guidelines for minimizing orbital debris, but many do not comply. This noncompliant behavior, along with a substantial increase in the number of satellites in orbit, causes the density of the debris fields in orbit to increase, making it more likely that an increasing number of other satellites will be damaged or destroyed. The limiting case of this process is a “collisional cascade,” which renders an orbit unusable. This scenario is broadly analogous to the effects of human-produced CO₂, both in terms of the increasing economic and social costs of environmental damage over time and the difficulty in binding nations to international agreements. Because satellites are vital to monitoring terrestrial conditions and provide unique data on the current state of the global environment, we suggest there is a natural linkage for including orbital space in climate change negotiations. Although this might complicate climate change negotiations, we demonstrate how it could also usefully expand the overall bargaining space, providing new opportunities for agreement.