Legal status of sub-orbital flight

Picture a time in the not too distant future. You can fly on a sub-orbital transport from California to Cape Town in an hour with one of a number of companies. You take off in the USA in a Russian registered space-craft, fly across the 'airspace' of several Carribean countries (Cuba) to land in the RSA. Who will be responsible for controlling access to routes which will become increasingly crowded over time? How will China (PRC) react to an object launching into a ballistic arc from Taiwan (ROC) on its way to Europe? Who will regulate minimum standards of safety and maintainance? Suggestions on a postcard please or do we wait with baited breath for the first mid sub-orbital impact and build in some means of evading the ABM's in the boost phase? A bit of silliness for a cloudy afternoon...

with the exception of north korea the governments of the earth speak with each other when it comes to space launches (because most payload rockets have the same (seismic and heat) boost signatures as icbms (the word for abm even though i got what you meant) but even north korea talks (if one can call it that) when they're preparing some "test" launch, they just kinda don't talk with others...

as for flight paths, procedures etc. it will be sorted out through the national aerospace agencies (like faa in the us) through icao (http://www.icao.int/) possibly with some input from the businesses through iata (http://www.iata.org/index.htm) at some point in time, but until then it will be negotiations/notifications among the countries involved. i have no idea at which altitude a governments "ownership" expires but guess it is at whatever altitude they (or their allies) can't defend (militarily) their claim anymore.

Anything thats above 100 miles is classified as International Territory by the same treaty that states that extraterestrial bodies, such as the moon, cannot be claimed by any organisation or country. If you wanna check this, look at the treaties section on the UN website. it should be there or @ the NASA site somewhere.

Cheers,
Colin.

Colin,

You are correct about space in general falling under the laws of international treaty, BUT. The first ones to colinize anything extraterrestrial have the ultimate, final say regarding the laws. Should a group of 100 people populate a manned moon base, they could certainly lay claim to the entire sphere and there isn't much the Earthly, international community could do about it.

China will most likely have invaded Taiwan long before any sub-orbital flights are doing commercial runs across the planet.

When it finally gets around to happening you can expect for what ever countries are participating to have their own regulations forn anything taking off or landing within their territory. Should be interesting seeing how that all falls out.

Sure the first 100 people to colonize the moon could 'claim' the entire sphere but that means about as much as all the yo-yo's already claiming it. Until they take effective steps to prevent anyone else from making claims to other parts of the moon without their permission, any claim of the entire moon if at best funny and at worst pathetic.

Personally I'd like to go out and stake a my own claim on some asteroids. As far as enforcing that claim, I figure I'll be able to move them by the time anyone else gets around to 'my' rocks hahaha.