{"id":2371,"date":"2019-09-20T11:11:46","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T15:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/groundbasedspacematters.com\/?p=2371"},"modified":"2019-09-20T11:19:15","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T15:19:15","slug":"ruminations-on-science-fiction-and-space-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/groundbasedspacematters.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/20\/ruminations-on-science-fiction-and-space-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruminations on Science Fiction and Space Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the questions I got at DragonCon on the space law panel was how science fiction affected space law.\u00a0 It’s invaluable, of course, for a space lawyer to have read a lot of science fiction.\u00a0 It allows said lawyer to worry about things like whether an alien would need a reentry license from the FAA.\u00a0 The alien is from elsewhere and has thus never left Earth and thus is not re<\/em>entering.\u00a0 Have we found a loophole?\u00a0 Science fiction offers a host of hypotheticals for exams for space law classes.\u00a0 This is all good.\u00a0 However, there are drawbacks.<\/p>\n

Getting to space is hard.\u00a0 Getting to the Moon is hard.<\/p>\n

But if you read or watch science fiction, you might think it isn’t.\u00a0 Instead, you’ll internalize the notion that going to space is like going to Ohio — totally doable.\u00a0 Star Wars<\/em> has its main characters in different solar systems in the blink of an eye.\u00a0 Star Trek<\/em> seems to take longer and employ a wee bit more effort, but they’re still pretty speedy.\u00a0 Even the Expanse<\/em> has people zipping around.\u00a0 They say that repeated visualized images, even knowing they’re fiction, lead a person to believe somewhere in the back of his brain that what he’s seen is what is true.<\/p>\n

I am a science fiction fan.\u00a0 I love the stuff.\u00a0 However, could it be that science fiction being fiction, it must, of necessity, be full of conflict and squabbles?\u00a0 There’s not a lot of drama if everybody’s nice to each other, respects boundaries, and honors their contracts.\u00a0 Also, science fiction being fiction, does it have the tendency to shrink entire planets–never mind continents–to the size of Rhode Island?\u00a0 All this makes us think, perhaps incorrectly, that there’s some sort of crying need for rules.\u00a0 Now.\u00a0 Right now.<\/p>\n

(I still get annoyed at the “dairy planet” in Battlestar Galactica.\u00a0 Seriously?\u00a0 A dairy planet?\u00a0 The whole planet?\u00a0 Or the Star Trek episode with the Dana Buchman planet?\u00a0 Do these writers not know economics?\u00a0 Heinlein may have said that specialization is for insects, but spacefaring economies require specialization and diversification.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, with the access difficulties downplayed, the vast sizes shrunk, and the potential conflicts clear in our minds, we tend to think that, if not next month, at least by next year, we’ll have water wars at the lunar south pole, boundary disputes between corporations on Mars, and a battle for scarce regolith.\u00a0 This seems a wee bit premature.<\/p>\n

Space is big.\u00a0 Even the Moon is big.\u00a0 Not only is it bigger than the United States<\/strong><\/a>, it’s bigger than Texas.\u00a0 I’d bet anything that the first person or corporation to get to the Moon and figure out how to stay a whole month is going to be alone.\u00a0 For a long time.\u00a0 I was talking to Goddard’s deputy director for the Hubble program the other day. \u00a0 He told me the James Webb Space Telescope would be going to L2<\/a>,<\/strong> a Lagrange point beyond the Moon.\u00a0 Being not only a science fiction fan but a lawyer, I, of course, asked him if anyone had any concerns over NASA’s use of L2.\u00a0 Did anyone else want it?\u00a0 He was very gracious about my ignorance.\u00a0 That would be like trying to claim Earth, he pointed out.\u00a0 L2 is huge.\u00a0 Ok, then.<\/p>\n

Did I say I was immune to the phenomenon described above?\u00a0 I did not.<\/p>\n

Where am I going with all of this?\u00a0 Just this:\u00a0 perhaps we don’t need a myriad of rules for things that haven’t happened yet.\u00a0 The common law grew organically over millennia.\u00a0 Some principles from the middles ages got discarded or changed to fit new circumstances.<\/p>\n

I still remember reading a Texas judge in a water case in law school.\u00a0 Faced with an argument that he should employ precedent from\u00a0 a case arising in damp and rainy England, the Texan drily pointed out that Texas is not England.\u00a0 And, sure enough, Texas evolved different rules and nuances for water rights than\u00a0 England.<\/p>\n

But if a bunch of English people had sat down and come up with rules — in advance — for water rights in the new world, had meetings, written articles, and been thoroughly logical if a touch uninformed, they could have still gotten it wrong for large chunks of the North American continent.\u00a0 Remember, Texas is big.<\/p>\n

Other common law principles stand with us to this day, but modified for modern circumstances.\u00a0 Trying to assess in advance that we need rules for colonists or industry smacks of hubris.\u00a0 Personally, I’m a fan of applying principles of adverse possession in outer space, but that’s because I, too, am guilty of the need to get those things I care about ironed out.\u00a0 I blame science fiction.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>While we are on the topic, I have a new book out.\u00a0 Simple Service<\/strong><\/a> has no space law, but does offer space opera.\u00a0 It’s full of conflict, including between brothers, and is set in First Landing, the one terraformed valley of Not What We Were Looking For.\u00a0 First Landing, however, is the size of the Chiang Mai valley in north Thailand, and does not take up the whole planet.\u00a0 Instead, it’s in the Nwwwlf equivalent of northeastern North Carolina.\u00a0 Life is precarious.\u00a0 Technology is degrading.\u00a0 And the two settlement factions don’t play nicely.<\/p>\n

Here’s the blurb:<\/p>\n

A lost starship. A lost colony.<\/p>\n

Two factions. One expendable son.<\/p>\n

When the colony\u2019s governor requisitions the colonists\u2019 personal weapons, Peter Dawe\u2019s father sets him a simple task. Get their weapon back.<\/p>\n

But the Marss have all the technology, and Peter, a second generation colonist, the youngest of ten, the expendable son, must contend with the guard, palace politics, and his biggest problem of all — Simon, his brother.<\/p>\n

It’s on Amazon<\/strong><\/a> in paperback and ebook form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the questions I got at DragonCon on the space law panel was how science fiction affected space law.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nRuminations on Science Fiction and Space Law - 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