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Comment by andrewinardeer

1 day ago

I take it if SpaceX debris hit and destroyed a boat the owner can claim damages from SpaceX?

Does international space law allow for this?

27 comments

andrewinardeer

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ceejayoz  1 day ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention

Only used once, when the Soviets dropped a nuclear reactor on Canada.

> States (countries) bear international responsibility for all space objects that are launched within their territory. This means that regardless of who launches the space object, if it was launched from State A's territory, or from State A's facility, or if State A caused the launch to happen, then State A is fully liable for damages that result from that space object.

  • krick  1 day ago

    I feel like it should be updated. When it was written it wasn't like every Musk could launch high-orbit rockets on sundays. Only actual states did.

    • dragonwriter  1 day ago

      The convention does not prevent national law from providing private liability which may come into play between entities subject to the jurisdiction of the same state or between the state who is liable to other states under the convention and entities operating within the state. So, there is no need to update the convention; the states from which private launches operate simply need adequate domestic law to cover both fully-internal liability and private launcher liability for claims against the government under the convention. (And the US generally does, with the basic regulatory regime being adopted and the private space launch industry operating in the 1980s; it is not an issue that arose with Musk/SpaceX.)

    • tcmart14  10 hours ago

      No expert, but I would assume, the USA would front it, but then take a case against SpaceX. So it would be Boat Owner v. USA, then USA v. SpaceX shortly after. Although I could be totally wrong.

      But yea, seems appropriate to update it or if that is going to be the process, write it in stone.

    • oskarkk  1 day ago

      Every rocket flight has to be approved by the government. No launch until FAA (and also FCC) OK's it.

  • twic  1 day ago

    Does the thing have to have got into space and then come back for this to apply?

  • walrus01  1 day ago

    As I recall a village in Australia also billed NASA with their standard municipal littering fine, for skylab debris that landed there, and the bill was paid 20+ years later by a radio station as a publicity stunt.

somenameforme  1 day ago

Most things put into space are designed to burn upon uncontrolled descent through orbit. And then the overwhelming majority of Earth is water and even on land the overwhelming majority of land is either completely uninhabited or sparsely inhabited. And then even if against all odds somehow something doesn't burn up in the atmosphere, and somehow lands in a densely populated area - the odds of hitting a spot with somebody or something relevant on it is still quite low. The overall odds of actually hitting somewhere really bad are just astronomically low.

Nonetheless, recently NASA won the lottery when part of some batteries they jettisoned from the ISS ended up crashing through a house in Florida. [1] Oddly enough there are treaties on this, but only from an international perspective - landing on your own country was not covered! But I'm certain NASA will obviously make it right, as would SpaceX. If they didn't, then surely the family could easily sue as well.

[1] - https://www.space.com/space-debris-florida-family-nasa-lawsu...

HPsquared  1 day ago

It's probably similar to if a US ship crashed into your yacht.

  • dylan604  1 day ago

    Rules of the water says smaller ship yields right of way to bigger ship. Sounds like you screwed up if your yacht got hit by a bigger ship. Of course that applies when the vessels are not tied up. If a big ship his a docked boat, that's an entirely different scenario