Legal Issues on Suborbital Space Tourism

The scale of commercial activity in outer space is expanding as the participation of private companies in space activities, which has previously been carried out by the states, has been increasing. The development of private sector space technology has enabled the companies to launch suborbital spaceflights, however, regulations on private companies participating in space activities are insufficient. Moreover, the international norms that could be applied to suborbital flights are uncertain as the space law and aviation law do not clearly define the concepts of outer space, airspace, space objects, and aircraft. Thus, this article first looks at the concept and features of suborbital flights and analyzes whether the question regarding the delimitation of outer space has to be determined first in order to identify which law applies to suborbital flights. Then, this paper examines various approaches concerning how to determine the law applicable to suborbital flights including spatialism and functionalism. Since the states have various opinions on this issue, it might not be easy to solve this problem in the near future, however, establishing an intermediate zone between air space and outer space, which would be similar to the contiguous zone and exclusive economic zone in the law of the sea, could be a best possible solution as the international community has managed to agree on establishing these maritime zones decades ago.