IFL Law

One aspect of the colonial model included something I referred to as Interplanetary Flight Law or IFL for short. These IFL laws would pertain to all aspects of flight between planets (and our moon) and would cross the jurisdictional borders of Orbital Sovereign Space. (One of the new regions). The reasoning behind this is to ensure that all space farers would be following the same operational and flight statutes. 

Such IPF laws would address not only flight control and management but also include crew education and certification; in-flight crew and passenger regulation;  specifics regarding acceptable safety in propulsion types and specifics related to human survivability to name a few.

There is a precedent wherein a body of law regulated activities to ensure safety of participants and I have addressed this in my post entitled “Between Chaos and Triumph”. Other examples of such laws would be the requirement for settlers going west to carry certain supplies and quantities before they could join a wagon train. Going to another planet is no different.

After reading my previous topic on the regional division of space to facilitate space law, some may question the legal authority of one entity being responsible for all interplanetary (lunar) flight and operations. There is precedent for such flight laws, specifically the 1944 Convention on International Civil Aviation (The Chicago Convention)

One of the main issues facing space faring nations today is that there is no clear upper boundary to State sovereign air space.

In her book on Air Traffic Management (2018),  Margaret Arblaster, a PhD candidate in Aerospace Engineering and Aviation at RMIT University, noted that under the Chicago Convention, a State has “complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory” (ICAO, 2006, Article 1). However, there is no definitive answer under international law on where a State’s airspace ends and outer space begins.

The Chicago Convention (Convention on International Civil Aviation) was held in the early 1940s and it established the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency of the UN charged with coordinating international air travel. The document was signed on December 7, 1944, ratified on March 5, 1947, and went into effect on April 4, 1947.

Part 1 of this topic charted out the currently accepted divisions in aviation and physical space including the aviation ceilings which is often assumed to be the upper limit of air sovereignty. (Kármán line)

Something else of note in space law is that even with our near advent of stepping into space there are still no international space laws or treaties that contain any rules on how to deal with flight crew certification or passenger training. My colonial model also presents a concept for achieving this.

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