Rockets in the Airspace: Legal Implications of Aircrafts and Launchers Interactions
- Paper number
IAC-19,D6,3,6,x54657
- Author
Mr. Eloi Petros, France, IDEST, University Paris Sud
- Year
2019
- Abstract
The vertical path to access outer-space implies to cross airspace. With the simultaneous growth of commercial aviation and space transportation, the interactions between aircraft and launchers are becoming a growing issue. Authorities, commercial aviation companies and launches operators are facing what might become a new central issue to handle. As a matter of fact, airspace’s sharing, crossed horizontally by aircrafts and vertically by launchers, is already subject to general legal mechanisms ensuring users’ security. A better regulation of those interactions remains however needed. In June 2018, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) published a white paper entitled “Addressing the Challenges to Aviation from Evolving Space Transportation”. It emphasized the necessity of cooperation between the two sectors in order to “create policies, regulations, and procedures to manage shared national aerospace resources safely and efficiently”. Recently, on Thursday 18th December 2018, more than four commercial space launches were planned to be performed on a single day, clearly illustrating the incoming issues. This article analyses the legal background underlying those activities. It focuses on the legal tools and mechanisms currently addressing those interactions and presents some legal innovative solutions that could be implemented in order to ensure a safe and efficient sharing of the same airspace for those two activities.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-19,D6,3,6,x54657.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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