Abstract
The legal environment in which spaceports operate and will operate is very much a work in progress because there are so many national, regional and supranational legal mechanisms that must be considered [1–4]. Not surprisingly, given the country’s busy launch schedule, it is the United States that has the most advanced regulatory framework that regulates and legislates what happens at a spaceport. In the U.S., spaceport policy comes under the jurisdiction of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA—AST), which developed the current legal spaceport environment by first examining civil aviation policies and the current crop of United Nations (UN) international treaties (Table 3.1/Appendix B) that concern space access (Fig. 3.1).
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Notes
- 1.
U.S. law applies to governmental and nongovernmental space activities through, inter alia: λ Commercial Space Launch Act λ Land Remote Sensing Policy Act λ Communications Act of 1934 λ National Aeronautics and Space Act.
- 2.
Title 14 → Chapter III → Subchapter C → Part 420 → Subpart B. §420.19 Launch site location review—general.
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© 2017 Erik Seedhouse
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Seedhouse, E. (2017). The Regulatory Environment. In: Spaceports Around the World, A Global Growth Industry. SpringerBriefs in Space Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46846-4_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46846-4_3
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