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Space tourism is often represented as an extended version of tourism on the Earth, with tourists experiencing relaxed and trouble-free experiences. But parallels between travel on…
Abstract
Space tourism is often represented as an extended version of tourism on the Earth, with tourists experiencing relaxed and trouble-free experiences. But parallels between travel on the Earth and in outer space are misleading. The latter raises major issues concerning power-relations between passengers, pilots, and ground control. Who has the power in space tourism and how is this power exercised? The literature underestimates potential dangers to the human body. These include short- and long-term risks stemming from microgravity, exposure to radiation, and rapidly changing switches between day and night. These problems further undermine the popular image of space tourism as a wholesome and joyous practice. Space tourism may well be a very expensive way of achieving ill health.
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Walter Timo de Vries and Urs Hugentobler
In light of the discussions on outer space property management, this conceptual review paper aims to discuss and evaluate if, when and under which conditions certain land…
Abstract
Purpose
In light of the discussions on outer space property management, this conceptual review paper aims to discuss and evaluate if, when and under which conditions certain land management and property right frameworks can apply to allocate and/or restrict property rights in outer space.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper applies a pragmatic review approach which seeks to better understand if and how the basic tenets of the land management frameworks could better shape and revise the challenges in outer space regulations.
Findings
Despite the fact that regulatory guidelines on outer space rights are existing, the analysis shows that these lack a number of practical tools and measures aiming at intervening if stakeholders do not follow the rules. With the use of land management frameworks, it is possible to derive policy options for making the outer space management more practical and action-oriented, in particular for the removal of space debris. These include amongst others more attention for formulating global public restrictions in outer space, incorporating regulatory guidelines for accessing open space regimes, addressing responsiveness and robustness in adherence and compliance to regulations
Research limitations/implications
Given the conceptual and discursive character of the paper, there are no specific empirical data, yet several recommendations for further research include expanding the boundary work between the land management and regulatory outer space domain.
Practical implications
The insights derived from land management and real estate related property theories could potentially provide new starting points for (re)formulating the regulatory framework for outer space property discourses.
Social implications
Interpreting the outer space regulations from known and practiced land management perspective helps to bridge the policy–society knowledge and necessity gap on outer space activities.
Originality/value
The specific land management perspective and discursive analysis on outer space debris provide new options for devising and extending regulatory guidelines for assigning responsibilities on outer space debris and debris rights, restrictions and responsibilities.
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Space tourism has to be regulated as a subset of private spaceflight activities, whereby humans are sent to outer space in a fundamentally private context. In addition to space…
Abstract
Space tourism has to be regulated as a subset of private spaceflight activities, whereby humans are sent to outer space in a fundamentally private context. In addition to space law, air law would be relevant for addressing private spaceflight, but neither regime has at the international level regulated relevant activities to any appreciable extent. They provide little more than a set of guiding overarching principles. Much of the onus of future regulation will fall on the shoulders of individual states, most notably the United States. In the more distant future, this may result in a special international regime, using elements of both space and air law.
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Sui Pheng Low and Xiu Ting Goh
The purpose of this paper is to explore and identify the potential outer space technologies that can be used in the construction industry to enhance sustainability in buildings.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore and identify the potential outer space technologies that can be used in the construction industry to enhance sustainability in buildings.
Design/methodology/approach
Outer space technologies developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the USA are explored for possible use in sustainable construction within the context of the Green Mark scoring system implemented by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) in Singapore. NASA's voltage controller and self‐illuminating materials are identified and mapped with the energy efficiency criteria of the Green Mark Scheme. The mapping exercise suggests that Green Mark points can be enhanced through appropriate adoption of these technologies.
Findings
The Green Mark points that are re‐computed can show significant enhancements when the two potential outer space technologies are to be used in the building.
Research limitations/implications
National security and patent issues as well as related cost implications associated with the use of outer space technologies are not considered in the study. This may be a limitation because developers often deem costs to be an important consideration.
Practical implications
Appropriate outer space technologies do appear to enhance the assessment criteria in the Green Mark Scheme.
Originality/value
This exploratory study provides a bridge between outer space technologies and sustainable buildings. The study is original in that the bridge is the first ever attempt to further enhance the sustainability agenda, through additional Green Mark points, using potential outer space technologies developed by NASA.
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Sam Spector and James E. S. Higham
Conceptualizations of sustainability and the Anthropocene are expressed in static terms, with the Earth’s biosphere viewed as imposing immutable limits. Yet, increased access to…
Abstract
Conceptualizations of sustainability and the Anthropocene are expressed in static terms, with the Earth’s biosphere viewed as imposing immutable limits. Yet, increased access to outer space, with tourism as an important facilitator, challenges past limitations. This chapter examines the implications of advances in space tourism for the concepts of sustainability and the Anthropocene. The former is complicated by access to outer space, which may bring about a raft of calamities but also potentially immense resources and even the possibility of ensuring our species’ long-term survival by settling the cosmos. This chapter also analyzes problems incurred by the Anthropocene’s emphasis on terrestrial geology in an era of increasing ability to leave the Earth.
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Katarina Damjanov and David Crouch
Virtual reality technologies have given rise to a new breed of space travel, enabling touring of cosmic environments without leaving the Earth. These tours democratize…
Abstract
Virtual reality technologies have given rise to a new breed of space travel, enabling touring of cosmic environments without leaving the Earth. These tours democratize participation in space tourism and expand its itineraries – reproducing while also altering the practices of tourism itself. The chapter explores the ways in which they alter modes of establishing “authentic” tourism destinations and experiences, rendering outer space into a stage for the performance of space travel, while themselves facilitating novel avenues for its social organization and technological assertion. Virtual space tourism not only reflects the progression and metamorphoses in tourist practice and production but also has the potential to influence both the aspirations and prospects of our space futures.
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The purpose of this paper is to present and analyse part of the relevant legal instruments currently available for regulating environmentally harmful space activities.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present and analyse part of the relevant legal instruments currently available for regulating environmentally harmful space activities.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper opted for a functional research method combined with a comparative methodology. To make the argument, this paper relies on the contextual analysis of primary and secondary sources of law, instrument of soft law and the relevant background material (e.g. journal articles, textbooks, law reform and policy papers).
Findings
The central section will focus on the principles of international environmental law to outline their utility in the contemporary context. Finally, the conclusive part will point out the several ways in which the use of analogies can shape the outer space regime, especially concerning how those principles that are developed to safeguard the Earth, can also be extended for the protection of the space ecosystem.
Originality/value
Environmental hazards are rapidly increasing and the current international law and policy on planetary protection are inadequate to meet the challenges of the near future. There is no possibility of an environment-friendly and sustainable future if not strictly connecting it with a comprehensive and transparent acknowledgement of the human mistakes made on Earth. There are valuable lessons to be learned from our past, and it is under this perspective that the trend of polluting the outer space can be reverted. This paper fulfils an identified need to study the correlation between principles of international environmental law, space law and the current situation in the outer space.
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James Ormrod and Peter Dickens
Space tourism is a rapidly growing sector of capital accumulation. As virtually all space on the Earth has been humanized and populated, outer space is being made by elite groups…
Abstract
Space tourism is a rapidly growing sector of capital accumulation. As virtually all space on the Earth has been humanized and populated, outer space is being made by elite groups into the new exotic destination of choice. But the humanization of outer space also reinforces an ancient and powerful worldview concerning society’s relations with the cosmos. It relies on the idea that outer space is an apparently pure and serene “other” place offering a profound sense of awe, wonder, and renewed identity. This hegemonic view of the cosmos and society is a product of a new dominant social bloc, one incorporating pro-space activists, the aerospace industry, the tourism industry, and governments.
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Recent developments in US rhetoric and policy advocating the militarisation and marketisation of outer space challenge the global commons values and regimes that developed partly…
Abstract
Purpose
Recent developments in US rhetoric and policy advocating the militarisation and marketisation of outer space challenge the global commons values and regimes that developed partly in response to decolonisation. These regimes embodied aspirations to post-colonial distributive justice, as well as to international management for peaceful purposes. The purpose of this paper is to argue that global commons values should be defended against these challenges in order to avoid the risk of exporting colonial legacies of injustice into outer space.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is an exercise in normative International Political Theory and so develops normative arguments by drawing on approaches in political theory and international law.
Findings
This paper demonstrates that the commons values endorsed in the aftermath of colonialism retain their relevance in a global politics that remains structured by post-colonial power relations. This paper also demonstrates that these commons values have evolved and found expression in central elements of international law, persisting as resources to be drawn on in normative argument.
Originality/value
This study places recent moves to assert US hegemony in space in the context of persistent post-colonial power relations and develops novel arguments in renewed support of commons values.
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Maria Lucas Rhimbassen and Lucien Rapp
In the absence of a clear property rights regime in outer space, commodification might bypass several legal considerations and instill a regime through customary practice, which…
Abstract
Purpose
In the absence of a clear property rights regime in outer space, commodification might bypass several legal considerations and instill a regime through customary practice, which could collide with international space law ethics, and thus, erode the corpus juris spatialis. The purpose of this paper is to find a way to prevent such an erosion.
Design/methodology/approach
Through an interdisciplinary review of the literature pertaining to space law, space property rights, economic goods, resources and commodities, this paper explores potential solutions to prevent further fragmentation of the corpus juris spatialis when confronted with the elusive transnational lex mercatoria dynamics and potential commodification of the space ecosystem.
Findings
This paper explores solutions to prevent this outcome through decentralized frameworks ranging from polycentric governance to a new “space antitrust” regime. Polycentric governance could prove very useful to address the plurality of space property rights and their complexity while space antitrust would not be precluded to intervene in a commoditized space market. Commodities benefited in the past from a certain antitrust immunity, however, due to globalization, technological development and deregulation, commodities have become more competitive, and therefore, the immunity is being gradually overturned.
Originality/value
This paper explores the benefits of unlocking antitrust potential forces into channeling, hand in hand with polycentricity, the development of the space ecosystem in light of international space law ethics. “Space antitrust” could become a discipline per se and better resonate with non-traditional stakeholders in the space sector in a context of commercialization and commodification of resources. Today, benefit-sharing causes debate among spacefaring nations in terms of property rights. However, it could be enforced through competition law dynamics.
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