The State and the new space economy: enabling 21st century privateers or asserting international law?

• Autor(a) principal: Sousa, Bruno Reynaud de
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Kypraios, Christos Ch.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34632/catolicalawreview.2020.6967

In the first two decades of the 21st century, the State and private actors are shaping the new space economy. One activity that is of great interest is the commercial mining of space resources. The present article seeks to assess the future role of the State in light of the relationship between international law and domestic law, positing that there are conditions for the State’s role to be limited to legally enabling what will become a private-sector-led competition for space resources. This scenario seems already conceivable considering the enactment of national space legislation aiming to facilitate the plans of private entities to exploit space resources, inter alia by granting them the necessary property rights. As pressures on national budgets mount, States will reduce investment in space R&D ceding the path to private entities. Absent legal developments in current space law, commercial mining of space resources is set to develop toward a model of economic activity in which a limited group of States would act as guarantors and enablers of 21st century privateers’ exploitation endeavours in outer space.