Professor Frans von der Dunk presents at PINC.Sarasota

PINC.Sarasota Author

01/27/2016 Added

228 Plays

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Professor Frans von der Dunk discusses space law and why it's important for PINC.Sarasota.

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[00:00:00.000]We sometimes find pink speakers.
[00:00:02.199]They come about through recommendations,
[00:00:05.356]well, sharing a personal anecdote,
[00:00:08.022]I used to think that being a secret agent
[00:00:10.305]was quite possibly the coolest job in the world.
[00:00:12.598]What's better than working for MI5
[00:00:14.550]or MI6 and being a secret agent?
[00:00:17.408]Well, while reading the paper one day,
[00:00:19.189]I came across a gentleman who is our next speaker,
[00:00:23.413]who had the title of "Professor of Space Law."
[00:00:28.064]Who the hell even knew there was such a thing?
[00:00:30.239]And what a badass title to kind of carry around
[00:00:32.426]on your business card?
[00:00:34.378]We thought it was a highly relevant topic
[00:00:36.490]given Florida's positioning in the space world.
[00:00:40.628]We have here Jeff Bezos, we have Elon Musk,
[00:00:43.551]and of course the headquarters of NASA,
[00:00:45.758]who have been here in our home state.
[00:00:48.916]So it's with great pleasure that I introduce
[00:00:51.145]our next speaker, who is going to share with you
[00:00:53.854]really what the laws in space represent,
[00:00:56.158]and how we can each go about staking
[00:00:58.483]our claim in that big, open, open sky.
[00:01:03.321]Ladies and gentlemen, Frans von der Dunk.
[00:01:05.949](applause)
[00:01:14.471]Thank you very much for that introduction.
[00:01:18.282]It is true, usually when I start somewhere at a party
[00:01:22.685]and I tell that I am a professor of space law,
[00:01:26.321]the first reaction is incredulous laughter,
[00:01:30.129]and then the second question is,
[00:01:31.708]"okay, so tell me who owns the moon?"
[00:01:34.395]And then more laughter follows.
[00:01:36.507]By the way that is a serious issue right now,
[00:01:38.715]although it's not one that I'm going to discuss.
[00:01:41.222]But before we go into the issue
[00:01:42.854]that I am going to discuss,
[00:01:44.144]which is private commercial space flight,
[00:01:46.373]let me first confirm that happily,
[00:01:49.168]I can tell you now, after an interview
[00:01:51.514]with the Huff Post, that space lawyers are a thing.
[00:01:55.365]I do exist. Thank you very much.
[00:01:57.359](laughter)
[00:01:58.223]We talked about cosmic mining,
[00:01:59.631]the future of cosmic mining,
[00:02:00.815]which is also a very interesting issue,
[00:02:02.490]which is also not what I'm going
[00:02:04.047]to discuss today.
[00:02:05.956]By way of background, you may have heard
[00:02:09.060]about the saying that "wherever man goes,
[00:02:11.502]the tax man follows?"
[00:02:13.422]I would like to broaden that a little bit
[00:02:15.289]and actually, it's perhaps not the lawyers as such,
[00:02:17.881]but at least the law follows.
[00:02:19.182]We will find you wherever you go,
[00:02:20.835]or whatever you do.
[00:02:22.478]Today I'm going to talk only about
[00:02:24.995]one particular part of the field of space law.
[00:02:28.515]It's one of the most interesting ones,
[00:02:30.264]you saw perhaps on the title that I referred
[00:02:32.066]to commercial space flight.
[00:02:33.997]More commonly this is known as "space tourism."
[00:02:36.898]Space tourism used to be something
[00:02:39.085]that only cartoons were playing with, right?
[00:02:42.850]Cartoons like this one, which by the way
[00:02:45.634]also shows you that space tourism
[00:02:48.737]can have some more serious effects
[00:02:50.903]either positive or negative.
[00:02:53.985]But let me first do a little bit
[00:02:55.201]of audience participation
[00:02:56.588]to get you a sense or feel
[00:02:58.518]of where you stand today.
[00:03:00.630]How many of you, and I want to see
[00:03:02.187]a show of hands, have done this?
[00:03:03.979]Flown a small aircraft across the United States
[00:03:06.944]for an hour, two hours, or something?
[00:03:10.123]That's almost everybody.
[00:03:11.125]No surprise there.
[00:03:12.469]How many of you have done this?
[00:03:13.984]Flown a widebody over the ocean
[00:03:15.978]for six or eight or ten hours?
[00:03:19.274]Still a sizable group.
[00:03:21.066]Still no surprise there.
[00:03:22.389]How many of you have done this?
[00:03:24.287]Flown with this vehicle?
[00:03:26.972]I don't want to see any hands
[00:03:28.188]because then you're exposed as a liar.
[00:03:30.556]Because this hasn't flown before.
[00:03:32.711]This is the Lynx vehicle, currently developed
[00:03:35.430]by XCOR, which is a U.S. company.
[00:03:38.097]This is what it's going to do.
[00:03:40.027]It's going to take off from a normal runway,
[00:03:42.513]and instead of a normal aircraft,
[00:03:44.784]which levels off at about 30 or 36,000 feet,
[00:03:48.571]this continues all the way to about
[00:03:50.725]110, 105, 110 kilometers.
[00:03:53.883]Which unofficially is the borderline
[00:03:56.186]of outer space. So you just tip into
[00:03:58.480]the lower edge of outer space.
[00:04:00.133]You get a few minutes of weightlessness,
[00:04:02.181]you can see the atmosphere from the outside,
[00:04:04.751]and it's a fantastic view.
[00:04:06.543]But then you coast down again
[00:04:08.004]and within an hour you're back on the ground.
[00:04:11.162]Now, XCOR is not even the only game in town.
[00:04:14.361]Most people may have heard of Richard Branson
[00:04:17.497]and his Virgin Galactic brand.
[00:04:19.588]He is going to take, it's a different
[00:04:21.444]technological concept, he is going to take
[00:04:24.099]a mother carrier aircraft, the "WhiteKnightTwo,"
[00:04:27.854]these are these two thin bodies
[00:04:30.275]on the side of the picture,
[00:04:32.078]up to about 55,000 feet,
[00:04:34.520]and then the spaceship itself,
[00:04:36.195]which is hanging in the middle,
[00:04:37.677]drops from underneath and goes up
[00:04:39.469]into its own, on its own power,
[00:04:41.528]until about 120 kilometers.
[00:04:45.653]Basically the same altitude as the XCOR Lynx.
[00:04:49.868]Recently, Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, was named.
[00:04:53.282]He put his money into this one right now.
[00:04:55.436]There's a famous saying, "the best way
[00:04:56.929]of becoming a millionaire in space
[00:04:59.159]is starting out as a billionaire."
[00:05:00.897]Luckily we have a few of those
[00:05:02.785]who are willing to spend money
[00:05:04.129]on space, and Jeff Bezos is one of them.
[00:05:06.358]And this has just made a successful landing
[00:05:08.566]after going to an altitude of 100 and a half kilometers,
[00:05:11.723]which is just tipping into outer space.
[00:05:13.718]So he's in the game as well.
[00:05:15.254]This looks like, much more like a traditional rocket, right?
[00:05:18.848]We have something, and I don't think this has been
[00:05:21.152]successful so far, but the Armadillo Aerospace Pixel
[00:05:24.170]rocket looks quite differently again.
[00:05:26.997]And again, this is going to aim also for
[00:05:29.109]what they call "suborbital altitude,"
[00:05:31.295]so 110, 120, 130 kilometers, that range.
[00:05:35.732]People start looking even further.
[00:05:37.279]In Colorado, there's the Sierra Nevada Corporation,
[00:05:39.721]which is developing the Dream Chaser,
[00:05:41.599]which is planning to go actually into
[00:05:43.230]orbital altitude, we're talking about 300, 400
[00:05:46.196]kilometers, we're talking about complete orbits
[00:05:48.361]around the earth.
[00:05:49.470]This is a few years further away.
[00:05:51.358]Now, you've already understood
[00:05:53.768]that in the Netherlands, much is,
[00:05:55.902]money is a very important thing,
[00:05:59.133]so I want to address this financial aspect
[00:06:01.267]for a little bit.
[00:06:03.602]Sarasota to Atlanta is a distance of roughly
[00:06:07.336]450 miles. Diderik, what would you think
[00:06:11.197]a ticket costs for that trip?
[00:06:13.426]Uh, about 150 dollars?
[00:06:16.764]150 dollars. Somehow you found
[00:06:18.759]a very cheap one, because I looked it up
[00:06:20.711]and it's 350 dollars. But maybe yours -
[00:06:22.737]I get no return.
[00:06:24.636]You get no return, okay, okay.
[00:06:26.801]So take this picture in your head.
[00:06:29.905]If you want to fly back to Amsterdam,
[00:06:31.931]which I am going to do in a few days,
[00:06:33.787]that's about 4,500 miles, ten times as much.
[00:06:37.755]John Bush, what do you think this is going to cost here?
[00:06:41.051]1,000 dollars?
[00:06:42.768]Pretty close. 1,500 for a round trip.
[00:06:46.867]Now from Sarasota to outer space
[00:06:49.137]is just 100 kilometers. 62.5 miles, right?
[00:06:54.211]Anyone an idea what the ticket price is?
[00:06:56.871](chatter)
[00:06:59.057]I'm sure the right answer was somewhere
[00:07:00.476]in between all those calls.
[00:07:01.869](laughter)
[00:07:02.936]You have two companies pretty close,
[00:07:05.933]Virgin Galactic requires a quarter of a million
[00:07:09.137]U.S. dollars, and XCOR a little bit less,
[00:07:11.782]150,000 euros is about 170,000 U.S. dollars.
[00:07:15.515](unintelligible)
[00:07:17.446]Sorry?
[00:07:18.022]How about for one way?
[00:07:19.399](laughter)
[00:07:22.395]I can negotiate a good deal for you, I'm sure.
[00:07:24.747](laughter)
[00:07:26.757]We talked about orbit.
[00:07:27.785]Now you may know that at about
[00:07:29.000]a 250 mile altitude up in outer space
[00:07:32.360]there is an international space station orbiting.
[00:07:35.123]What do you think it costs to go to the
[00:07:38.120]International Space Station?
[00:07:39.517]For about a week?
[00:07:40.904]And remember, it's a very tiny room,
[00:07:43.581]there's no shower, there's no fresh air,
[00:07:45.949]the food is horrible, it's just that the view is great.
[00:07:49.660]25 million?
[00:07:50.748]25 million. Pretty close.
[00:07:52.263]It started at 20 million,
[00:07:54.002]and prices have gone up since.
[00:07:55.793]Now, what I'm going to show you
[00:07:58.695]to make this a little bit more lively,
[00:08:01.457]is a little clip showing some of these highlights.
[00:08:05.073]I warn you the clip was made five years ago
[00:08:07.334]in 2010, so not all figures are appropriate anymore.
[00:08:12.368](spacey music)
[00:10:10.475]Okay, now you saw Dennis Tito in there.
[00:10:13.493]He paid his 20 million
[00:10:14.954]and since then, six more people
[00:10:16.533]have followed him at prices going as far
[00:10:18.719]as 40 million and up,
[00:10:19.999]and one of them actually took the trip twice.
[00:10:22.548]And the others you saw, also the reference was made
[00:10:25.108]to Virgin Galactic in 2011, of course
[00:10:27.657]there have been some delays,
[00:10:30.580]it will now be likely like 2017,
[00:10:33.044]but they're still serious.
[00:10:34.814]Something like 500 people have already
[00:10:36.948]signed up for Virgin Galactic and have
[00:10:38.942]put down deposits, down payments,
[00:10:41.406]in order to make sure that they
[00:10:42.590]get their seats on the first flights.
[00:10:44.510]Which again, may take place two years
[00:10:46.067]from now, or something like that.
[00:10:47.816]And XCOR also has some 200 people
[00:10:50.323]already signed up. So we have
[00:10:51.784]a certain amount of people willing to go,
[00:10:54.984]willing to pay these prices to go.
[00:10:57.309]So now that's where the lawyer
[00:10:58.909]obviously comes in.
[00:11:01.277]The issue is is this all allowed?
[00:11:03.805]Well, we have seen human spaceflight
[00:11:08.316]in the past.
[00:11:14.044]So why do we need legal issues?
[00:11:15.793]Why do we need to bother with them?
[00:11:19.228]Nobody gave Gagarin a license, right?
[00:11:25.467](spacey music)
[00:11:57.519]You are go for landing, over?
[00:12:00.697]Tranquility base here,
[00:12:02.873]the Eagle has landed.
[00:12:07.225]So the point I'm trying to make here
[00:12:09.304]is that this was of course all about governments.
[00:12:11.395]We were talking about astronauts and cosmonauts
[00:12:13.347]flying in outer space.
[00:12:14.979]And what the law says about this
[00:12:16.440]in a treaty going back to 1967,
[00:12:19.757]the Outer Space Treaty,
[00:12:21.218]is that this freedom of exploration
[00:12:24.237]and use of outer space applies to states.
[00:12:27.373]Not to private entities, not to private operators,
[00:12:29.698]this applies to space.
[00:12:31.394]And by the way, this has been ratified
[00:12:33.175]by the United States, by the Soviet Union,
[00:12:35.244]at the time France, the United Kingdom,
[00:12:37.335]China, India, Brazil, and all the major
[00:12:39.329]spacefaring countries.
[00:12:40.417]So this is basically the bottom line,
[00:12:43.180]the legal framework for all space activities.
[00:12:45.622]So the freedom of space, you don't need a license
[00:12:48.385]to go there, only applies as such to states.
[00:12:52.128]When it comes to private enterprise,
[00:12:54.326]article six of that same treaty provides
[00:12:56.726]that well if you want them to fly there,
[00:12:59.275]you can allow them to,
[00:13:00.619]but they need to be authorized.
[00:13:02.059]They need to be supervised,
[00:13:03.242]they need to be licensed.
[00:13:04.405]So if that happens, okay, under the supervision
[00:13:07.658]of a particular state, you can fly into outer space.
[00:13:11.466]Which means for the United States for example,
[00:13:13.482]that you have to license those flights
[00:13:15.039]and provide them with the appropriate
[00:13:16.436]license obligations.
[00:13:20.009]Limited to that is of course the issue of damage.
[00:13:22.708]If you cause damage by your flight.
[00:13:25.022]In space, it's not the operator which pays
[00:13:27.230]international damage, it's the state which pays.
[00:13:30.067]If something goes wrong from Florida
[00:13:32.041]and crashes into Mexico,
[00:13:34.195]it's the U.S. government which has to pay
[00:13:35.966]for the damage, not the private operator.
[00:13:38.472]Which means that of course that the U.S. government
[00:13:40.211]in its license for the private operator,
[00:13:42.579]wants to make sure that the private operator
[00:13:44.435]is going to repay at least part of that
[00:13:46.344]to the U.S. government.
[00:13:47.826]So states need to take care of
[00:13:49.384]private space activities by way of
[00:13:51.303]a licensing regime, if only to control
[00:13:53.746]their own risk.
[00:13:57.735]That raises a lot of issues.
[00:13:59.314]If you go back to the pictures I showed you,
[00:14:01.895]we're talking about some craft
[00:14:04.241]which very much look like aircraft,
[00:14:06.076]and some which don't look like aircraft at all.
[00:14:08.369]So do we treat this, for licensing purpose,
[00:14:11.206]as aircraft? Who should license them?
[00:14:14.897]An aircraft, the Federal Aviation Authority?
[00:14:18.246]Or NASA? What are the requirements
[00:14:21.584]that you are going to impose upon the operator?
[00:14:23.973]Are you going to treat his vehicle as an aircraft
[00:14:26.832]or as a spacecraft? Those are the questions
[00:14:29.616]you need to ask yourself.
[00:14:32.080]And what if something goes wrong?
[00:14:33.871]This is the remnants of a Virgin Galactic
[00:14:36.399]test flight which crashed a little over a year ago
[00:14:39.226]in the Mojave Desert, with one pilot being killed.
[00:14:42.244]So who's responsible for that?
[00:14:44.057]Who is liable for that?
[00:14:46.009]And what liability regime applies?
[00:14:48.729]Do we talk about fault liability?
[00:14:50.116]Do we talk about limited compensation?
[00:14:52.089]Those are the sorts of legal issues
[00:14:53.742]that we have to face right now.
[00:14:55.758]I'm going to use only one element thereof,
[00:14:57.454]because of the time, and that addresses
[00:14:59.822]the interesting element of passenger liability.
[00:15:02.638]If you treat these types of flights as aviation,
[00:15:06.029]you are covered as a passenger.
[00:15:08.792]Because onboard of an aircraft,
[00:15:10.925]if you suffer damage as a consequence
[00:15:12.877]of the flight, the airline operator
[00:15:14.658]has to compensate for the damage.
[00:15:16.333]And there's a host of international reigmes
[00:15:18.381]going back almost a century,
[00:15:20.578]translated into national regimes
[00:15:23.628]where you get a lot of money
[00:15:24.834]if you're damaged onboard of an aircraft.
[00:15:27.105]If you treat this however, as a spacecraft,
[00:15:29.239]and a spacecraft passenger,
[00:15:30.753]there is no international arrangement.
[00:15:33.334]Only the U.S. has dealt with that,
[00:15:35.446]and they have adapted in 2004,
[00:15:37.697]an existing Launch Act to address
[00:15:40.161]manned spaceflight.
[00:15:41.942]What does it say? There is no mandatory liability.
[00:15:45.238]These people do it on their own risk.
[00:15:47.168]The only thing we're going to ask from operators
[00:15:49.280]is that they can show that the passengers
[00:15:51.115]they fly have signed an informed consent clause,
[00:15:54.645]recognizing that they fly on spacecraft
[00:15:58.549]not certified by the U.S. authorities
[00:16:01.119]for safety purposes.
[00:16:02.751]In other words, you take your own risk.
[00:16:04.650]You can't claim then if something goes wrong.
[00:16:07.348]Now it is not an absolute defense
[00:16:09.577]against the liability claim,
[00:16:10.900]ultimately it would depend upon a court judgement
[00:16:13.919]where the liability is agreed upon or not,
[00:16:16.820]and that's why you have in addition by now
[00:16:19.422]seven individual U.S. states, including Florida,
[00:16:22.718]who have made their own state statutes.
[00:16:26.035]And they tell their operators,
[00:16:27.944]"if you come to us, and you show this
[00:16:30.333]informed consent clause, then for us
[00:16:32.189]that basically means that we waive
[00:16:33.811]your liability." Those people do it on their own risk.
[00:16:36.466]If something goes wrong,
[00:16:37.554]they know it's a dangerous activity,
[00:16:39.250]you can't blame the operator.
[00:16:41.127]Two more states which have a slightly
[00:16:43.239]more complex approach,
[00:16:44.359]I won't go into any of the details,
[00:16:46.396]but what does that mean legally?
[00:16:48.999]Well, the U.S. perspective is probably
[00:16:51.442]the eternal struggle between
[00:16:53.777]federal jurisdiction and state jurisdiction.
[00:16:55.644]To what extent can an individual state
[00:16:57.542]of the United States still legislate
[00:16:59.494]on something if it has already been
[00:17:01.030]taken care of at the federal level?
[00:17:03.515]This has not been solved yet.
[00:17:05.553]But there's also an international perspective.
[00:17:07.782]And the international perspective looks like this.
[00:17:11.216]Or, not to be sexist, like this.
[00:17:14.427](laughter)
[00:17:15.280]We are talking about a beauty contest.
[00:17:17.072]These states come all and say
[00:17:18.832]"please come to me, I am the nicest state,
[00:17:21.274]I am the nicest place for you to launch.
[00:17:23.226]I want you to come to me,
[00:17:24.335]because in my case, you don't have any liability."
[00:17:27.823]Now within the U.S. that may all be good and true,
[00:17:30.330]because I'm pretty sure that the FAA
[00:17:32.004]will make sure that these spaceflights
[00:17:33.647]will remain safe.
[00:17:35.343]But what happens if we move outside?
[00:17:37.273]We know that there are flags of convenience
[00:17:39.364]in shipping, where ships are registered
[00:17:42.052]in countries for a very low price.
[00:17:44.750]And this is just the short flights.
[00:17:47.577]I always compare them to a kind
[00:17:49.486]of sophisticated bungee jumping.
[00:17:51.854]You just go up and down.
[00:17:53.155]It costs a quarter of a million dollars
[00:17:54.339]but that's basically all you do.
[00:17:56.397](laughter)
[00:17:57.261]What if you change that,
[00:17:58.723]and these plans are there,
[00:18:00.163]to fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo
[00:18:02.552]in two hours instead of twelve hours?
[00:18:04.322]That's a different matter.
[00:18:05.570]How are we going to regulate that one?
[00:18:08.477]Or if we move to those space hotels,
[00:18:11.430]you saw very briefly at the end
[00:18:13.105]of one of the clips, a reference
[00:18:14.939]to the Bigelow space hotel.
[00:18:16.912]He is a billionaire, again, from Las Vegas,
[00:18:19.835]from gambling, and he is preparing
[00:18:22.043]to build a space hotel a few years from now.
[00:18:24.571]People go there, pay money, stay for a long time.
[00:18:27.952]How do we regulate that?
[00:18:29.018]Is that a part of the United States?
[00:18:30.480]Is that nowhere? We don't know.
[00:18:35.311]So, to give you the last question,
[00:18:38.276]who of you would like to go
[00:18:40.303]if you know this picture right now?
[00:18:43.801]Hands please.
[00:18:46.425]That's not a big group, in Florida.
[00:18:51.118]Okay, thank you very much for your attention.
[00:18:54.094](applause)

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Professor Frans von der Dunk presents at PINC.Sarasota

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