Pie in the Sky: Thrilled or Calamitous? -- A Spaceflight Participant-Friendly Perspective
- Paper number
IAC-11,E7,2,13,x10180
- Author
Ms. Zhuoyan Lu, University of Lapland, Finland
- Year
2011
- Abstract
Spaceflight, once a fictional illusion, would never ever be exclusively enjoyed by ISS crew members attributing to the thunderingly astonishing development speed human beings conducted in the space. According to statistic data from Virgin Galactic, as of the summer of 2010, over 350 people have paid deposits or full ticket price of a suborbital space tourism and another 600 people have signed up to buy tickets after flights begin. Those potential 950 people are just pioneers and others are full-pulsed to try, and not exaggeratedly, the market for space tourism is with a dynamic potentiality. Despite excellent and continually improving safety record there are certain risks inherent in space travel and an extremely high cost for private spaceflight pioneers. Up till now, no international legal instruments are available to regulate a private-operated space tourism market and practical space tourism cases ever taken by Space Adventures Inc. are in the shape of contract between the parties. How to protect the life and property rights of spaceflight participant? This article will elucidate this question from a contractual point of view and with special attention to the rights of spaceflight participant. One essential discipline of this article is based on the belief that space tourism will be a horrible venture rather than a thrilled piece of news provided the legal making and contractual process is non-spaceflight participant oriented. A special attention will be put on a failure space tourism case Daisuke Enomoto v. Space Adventures.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)