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Comment by jesuslop | Hacker News Reader

hm why do they need permission?

Haven't read the article because of paywall but it's likely a requirement of the outer space treaty where the government is required to ensure conformity to the articles of the treaty by private entities.

Specifically, article VI requires - "the activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty"

Interestingly I don't know of any established processes for monitoring the activities of companies in outer space apart from getting approval from the FAA. It's not really ever been a problem up 'til now.

Who is the appropriate State Party if, e.g. SpaceX decides to start launching off of Of Course I Still Love You out in the ocean, in international waters? Do they go with the country where the launch platform is registered? Where the owing corporation is registered? Each of these seem to fall apart once you register a shell corp and launch platform in a non-space-faring nation like... Monaco ?

ITAR makes that illegal.

An interesting notion - it would be an interesting case to see if exporting rocket components to "not a country" would violate ITAR. That hasn't stopped Iran from getting launching satellites into orbit though, and misses that e.g. ULA buys their rocket engines from Russia where ITAR obviously isn't a problem.

If by interesting you mean certain Federal prison time, sure I guess that would be interesting.

It seems like it would be very difficult to export to "not a country." Every dry rock in the world is claimed by some nation, and ships and platforms on the open ocean are flagged and/or operated by citizens of some existing nation. Many U.S. laws apply to U.S. citizens no matter where they are in the world.

Seems like the Sea Launch project, which had multinational partners and started rockets from a floating platform outside of all 200 mile zones, is the closest thing you can look at for comparison (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Launch). Here it seems everybody just sort-of agreed that the rules are not entirely clear and that the US as the closest nation invested in the project should do the oversight. I found this old article that mentions some of it, but isn't terribly detailed when it comes to regulations either: https://web.archive.org/web/20120730201527/http://isanet.cci...

> Who is the appropriate State Party if, e.g. SpaceX decides to start launching off of Of Course I Still Love You out in the ocean, in international waters?

A tangible way to explore this is to ask "What if a craft, launched by SpaceX from international waters, fell on country X?"

If X is Canada, the resolution process seems straightforward. American and Canadian courts and law enforcement are sufficiently cross-linked to allow the latter to pursue SpaceX's assets and personnel.

But what if X is Iran, or Venezuela or North Korea? We would have to consider diplomatic and geopolitical factors. That looks much more like the anarchic environment of international relations rather than a sovereign-corporate dispute.

SpaceX is still an American company and they'd be launching from an American registered ship. I think an argument could certainly be made that the US would remain the appropriate state party to regulate such a launch but finding ways to legislate that within its jurisdiction could be amusing.

In other words, the United States and the Soviet Union along with a few insignificant states to lend a plurality got together and granted a monopoly on space exploration to nation-states.

> the United States and the Soviet Union along with a few insignificant states to lend a plurality got together and granted a monopoly on space exploration to nation-states.

International conventions require ships in international waters be flagged. This comes in handy when e.g. a ship needs help or causes trouble. I don't see the extension of this principle to spaceflight as being unreasonable. If Bezos's bird comes down on my house, I'd prefer there exist a venue in which to sue him.

It would be amusing if a Liberian flagged space ship was the first to land people on Mars.

Doubly-so, if they used feet, inches, °F, and pounds to do so! It would prove the superiority of our great measurement units :)

I don't think they are "yours", but more so an anachronism from your colonial days ;)

Well shit, nobody else seems to want 'em, so they're "ours" now.

There's an honest-to-goodness Congolese space program.

https://www.vice.com/read/hows-the-congolese-space-program-d...

If Bezos's bird comes down on my house, I'd prefer there exist a venue in which to sue him.

This doesn't seem to have much to do with outer space treaties, unless perhaps your house is on the moon. Assuming that isn't the case, your house is protected by the laws of the nation in which it is located, and perhaps those of other nations as well.

Presumably to get to space you still have to take off from somewhere on the planet, no?

Existing legal frameworks would suffice for pretty much anything in-atmosphere. The fact that the rocket is heading into space is largely irrelevant.

To add onto this: I know the movie "Gravity" was just a bit of an exaggeration, but a situation whereby two different satellites are competing for the same spot in the sky and collide or otherwise negatively interact with each other is totally possible. If nothing else, there should probably be some international governance when it comes to orbits, positioning, and mission planning to make sure no one interferes with each other.

There's no requirement for state parties to sign up to the treaty. In effect there's no difference between each signatory implementing national laws independently from the treaty or implementing them because they're required to under the treaty. It's voluntary to join up. If the holy see, which hasn't ratified the treaty, wants to launch nuclear weapons from the Vatican then they're entirely welcome to do so. I'm sure there'll be objections from other avenues but this treaty is not one of them.

I mean, they also granted a monopoly on ICBMs to nation-states as well. What's your point? Some countries passed some laws?

The article is paywalled, but if they are launching from a US Government owned launch facility, they would need permission to use it. They would also need US airspace approval as well. There are probably quite a few other regulations they would need to adhere to as well.

I would imagine it would be the same for any other country that has launch facilities as well.

It needs US approval because it's a US company. The launch site is in New Zealand.

From the article (search the URL on Google to get around paywall), it sounds like the biggest hurdle is ensuring a private company complies with international treaties concerning space and the moon. They described it as a regulatory Catch-22 because there was no template, no precedent for a private company sending something past orbit.

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