The European Commission is gearing up to publish the world’s first comprehensive space law.
Not content with regulating fertilizers, cars and cheeses, Brussels is looking to create an EU Space Label it could soon slap on rockets and satellites as part of efforts to force companies to use orbit responsibly.
“With each passing day, space is becoming more like the Wild West, and it’s time to have European rules,” said Christophe Grudler, a member of the European Parliament from France who is leading legislative work on IRIS2, the EU’s answer to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communications system.
The European Commission is expected propose the world’s first comprehensive space law after Easter.
According to documents seen by POLITICO, the bloc’s diplomats have been briefed on plans to create an EU Space Label that will be used to designate companies that play by the new rules on sustainability and security, much in the same way that the bloc uses eco-labels to certify washing machines or televisions.
Why the snark ? Seems to me like the EU is the only body remotely interested in (and able to) apply any kind of regulation to the largely American corporations that steal your life and rent it back to you.
I could be wrong and biased but it could just be that the US is so far ahead in the commercial space… uhhh… space. EU has been piggybacking (and paying for) US company launches because their programs have not caught up yet. They’re getting there but setbacks keep happening.
Better US companies than Russians like it was before TBH. That said, regulations are one of the EU’s ways to negotiate trade and throw its weight around. The EU is supposed to bring competitive advantages to EU economies, that’s what it was made for.
Totally agree! I hope my comment wasn’t taken as a negative. I am biased but there are several EU projects that are looking so promising and primed to actually compete with SpaceX which should bring healthy accelerated advancements.
TBH what I’ve heard is that a major obstacle to that is that ESA has an absolute dogshit culture. Hope it has changed or will change, but I don’t see it moving forward like this any time soon, and I also don’t see other developments trying to take over in Europe.
I too wish we wouldn’t have to rely on SpaceX, or anything US-based really, with how fickle politics there is nowadays.
Like they fixed cookies?
Yes like they fixed cookies. It is not the EU’s fault that users don’t realize that cookie banners aren’t required if the service is not doing anything shady.
Oh they are all doing something shady, don’t kid yourself ;-)
Install the consentomatic add-on and it takes care of most of those dialogs for you transparently, while respecting your preferences.
Thank you for the recommendation.
Love it, been running it for years. It’s probably saved my sanity numerous times :-)
It really is just about the annoying cookie dialogues. I support most of the work they are doing and I want it to go further. I wanted to see a tracking cookie ban that corporations couldn’t wiggle out from under.
There is no EU law mandating cookie dialogues. They are a form of “malicious compliance”.
They don’t just need to be regulated, they need to be stopped except for essential things. The new space race is helping to destroy the climate based on studies of the upper atmosphere.
https://www.space.com/rocket-exhaust-pollution-upper-atmosphere
I am absolutely not against things like communications satellites and space probes, but things like Starlink, which require launch after launch and constant replacement as satellites fail, are making the climate worse.
Especially when setting up that tech at the lunar L points would probably be more efficient long term
Latency becomes a considerable issue at the L points and it’s why Starlink style deployment is useful. This is not really an argument to use in this case.
The EU Space Law will set standards to curb light pollution caused by growing satellite constellations and limit greenhouse gas emissions and pollution caused by rocket launches.
There will also be an effort to tackle the growing amount of debris in space, while making sure that space junk hurtling back to Earth is handled safely.
Seems pretty reasonable.
The “Wild West” as commonly perceived was a Hollywood invention. The actual wild west had its fair share of law and order. For instance, the famous shootout the Earp brothers participated in happened because they were enforcing a gun ordinance on no pistols in town.
The EU’s regulations have generally been more hit than miss, let’s hope this is one of the former
Yeah how dare legal entities want to prevent the environment that spawned Blood Meridian from happening in the fucking void of space.
I think aliens would find it adorable that we think we can police space.
On the contrary… anyone able do bridge interstellar distances will agree that the near orbit belongs to the planet.
BUT THE PLANET BELONGS TO US NOW, PUNY HUMANS!
shoots Callisto “STOP RESISTING!!!”
Damn I didn’t know that the place covered by international maritime legislation was completely lawless
This “international maritime legislation” (which is about the ocean, not space) does not seem to affect things like what France is doing according to the Wild Wild West article the post links to, which you obviously didn’t read, or Russia’s plan to put a satellite-destroying space nuke in orbit.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/why-russia-might-put-nuclear-weapon-space
Nuclear weapons stationed in space are explicitly against the outer space treaty or the united nations resolution that came before it. The resolution is binding for all nations and the Soviet Union agreed to both.
Sounds like Putin doesn’t give a shit.
