Behold, the new British Space Act. I and others had not-insignificant influence in forming this. They were headed down a bad European road a few years ago. They were originally going to allow the European aviation safety agency regulate it, which would have been disastrous. Instead, as we recommended, it is modeled closely on the U.S. launch-licensing system.
7 thoughts on “Space Law In The UK”
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Which were the key areas of influence?
Looks like you updated it just after I posted my comment 🙂
They were initially taking bad advice from Alan Bond, who wanted a certification regime. We got Virgin to weigh in, after they understood that this would have essentially killed any suborbital flights in the UK.
Ah yes, I remember Alan pushing that one because RE were designing Skylon for airline-like operations… and now it’s effectively dead 🙁
Allowing the EU to regulate it would have been bad on multiple levels, not the least of which is that the EU would see this as a competitor for ESA (and associated agencies), and thus wish to strangle it.
Good job, Rand.
The UK’s geography isn’t great for non-polar orbital, but they could probably do GTO without too much penalty. For LEO, they’d be as limited as the Russians due to latitude.
The issue was primarily suborbital for Virgin Galactic and (at the time) XCOR.
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) would have made sure anything some bureaucrat didn’t like/vested interest didn’t like etc would be DOA.
EASA deserves to be burned down for what it is doing to aviation not just in Europe but countries like Australia who model their civil aviation regulations on those of EASA.
Europe would be a freer place under Vlad the Bad.