#165: Regulating the Universe

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2017

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Who's in charge of the universe? "Innovative space activities" like asteroid mining and private missions to Mars raise key questions for countries and their regulators. Can you "plant a flag" on an asteroid? How can countries cooperate in space without interfering with each other? Is the "weaponization of space" a growing concern between the US, Russia, and China? Congress is trying to figure out the answers. Evan and Berin discuss a recent hearing with Jim Dunstan, longtime space lawyer and founder of the Mobius Legal Group.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Swartzstrapper. On today's show, regulating outer space.
0:14.4	Recently, the House Subcommittee on Space held a hearing. Regulating space, innovation, liberty, and international obligations. In that hearing,
0:22.4	they discussed a White House report from the last administration, President Obama, under the Commercial
0:27.7	Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015. You will hear that on the show as CSLCA. Got a lot of fun
0:34.9	acronyms today. Essentially, the Obama administration was saying there's a gap in
0:38.7	regulation for innovative space activities. And what do we mean by that? We're talking about
0:42.5	private missions to the moon, private missions to Mars or asteroid mining, things that you might
0:47.9	have heard about in the context of companies like Space X. And of course, the report recommended
0:53.5	a way to fill this gap in regulation. It said we need a, quote, mission authorization regime where essentially the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration, would head up a panel to review requests for innovative activities and approve those that are in compliance with domestic laws, national security interests, and international
1:12.5	obligations like Article 6 of the Outer Space Treaty, something we've talked about on the show
1:16.9	before. Now, unsurprisingly, Republicans rejected the report, said it was overly regulatory,
1:22.9	but after we got the partisan jabs out of the way, we got to more serious discussion of what
1:27.2	should the role of government be in space.
1:29.0	So that's what we'll be talking about today.
1:30.7	And I've got two guests joining me who've talked about space on the show before.
1:33.9	Jim Dunstan, longtime space lawyer and founder of Mobius Legal Group.
1:37.7	Jim, thanks for joining.
1:38.9	Thank you, Evan.
1:39.7	And Baron Soka, also a longtime space lawyer. He's actually the first person I ever met who was a
1:44.4	space lawyer. And yes, that is actually a thing. So, Barron, thanks for joining. Besides us,
1:48.4	have you met any others? No, thank God. But anyway, let's get to this. So Jim, I'm going to go
1:54.5	ahead and assume that you agree with the general criticism from Republicans that it was overly regulatory, but we are operating in a world where
	...

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