Maxwell Thelen

A little background information:
When you watch satellite TV you are, of course, receiving a broadcast from a satellite, but where is that satellite? Up in orbit in the outer reaches of earth’s gravity. Do you have to move your dish around every minute to keep it pointed at the satellite? Of course you don’t, that is because the satellite is in “Geostationary Orbit.” This is a fancy way of saying that as the earth turns the satellite moves in orbit so that it stays in the same place relative to the surface of earth:

Geostationary Orbit, courtesy of Wikpedia

So….. what? Well, pretend you are running your favorite satellite TV company. If the earth was flat you could put up one satellite and sell TV to everyone in the world. Unfortunately for you, the world is not flat. Since the earth is a sphere that means you have to put up multiple satellites around it to reach everyone. However, you want to save money and satellites are very expensive so you want to put up as few as possible. The majority of human population is not too far south or north of the equator so this means that it makes the most since to put a ring of a couple satellites around the equator. Good decision CEO, you and every other satellite company thought of this. So here we are, we have tons of satellites around the equator and way too many TV channels.

A little legal background:
There is an old principle of law: “Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad caelum et ad inferos” (Latin for for whoever owns the soil, it is theirs up to Heaven and down to Hell). Obviously this principle isn’t in full force. If you don’t believe me, try and sue an airline for flying 30,000 feet over your house. However, it still remains intact in some sense. While you may not be able to control what happens 30,000 feet over your house, the government can, hence the Federal Aviation Administration. For another example, consider when you have heard the term “no fly zone” in movies or news. It is a general tenet of international law that nations are sovereign over their airspace, so if they don’t want another nation, or a person from another nation, to fly over their country – they have the right to prohibit or tax it. So how does that apply to satellites in orbit? Interestingly enough in 1967 a treaty, The Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies effectively prohibited the ownership of space and was adopted by the majority of the United Nations. So, is geostationary orbit “space” that can’t be owned or is it the upper reaches of airspace that nations are usually acknowledged to be sovereign over?

And Now The Feature Presentation:
In 1976 a group of countries that lie on the equator (Brazil, Colombia, Congo, Ecuador, Indonesia, Kenya, Uganda, Zaire) signed a declaration of their sovereignty over the geostationary orbit directly above their respective countries. http://www.jaxa.jp/library/space_law/chapter_2/2-2-1-2_e.html The rest of the world community largely ignored this on the basis that it was moot and prohibited under the 1967 treaty, though the declaration expressly distinguishes itself form the treaty with regards to what is “space”. The argument is, basically, that geostationary orbit relies completely on the benefit of earth’s gravity and, as such, can hardly be considered space. The equatorial nations make a case that it is a natural resource that they are being deprived of by more powerful countries who have the advantage of lucratively funded space programs. The economies of large nations benefit by corporations using this resource (GEO) to produce income, jobs and taxes in their home countries.

Is this just, or are the U.S., the EU, Russia and China ignoring a fundamental rule of law (national sovereignty) under the pretext of a vague treaty (can’t own space, and assert that something as close as GEO is space)?

Edit:

A little context is in order as brought to my attention by a comment.  GEO, though close as compared to Mars, is still 22,000 miles above us.  To put this in perspective, the International Space Station (ISS) is only ever as high as 286 miles and this is where most space shuttle missions go.  This makes the argument made by these equatorial nations rather weak.  It seems rather clear this is space, especially as contemplated by a 1967 treaty.  If this is the case, then the question is if GEO is a natural resource common to the inhabitants of the whole earth, who should govern it? Should anyone govern it? If no group does, who should mediate the disputes, the United Nations?

However, I think some further perspective is in order, what if the 1967 treaty did not think of 22,000 miles above earth as space? Ridiculous you say? Well, by 1959 space crafts had already made it to the moon, crashed into the moon and photographed the moon.  The significance of this is that the moon is on average 240,ooo miles away! Also worthy of note is that this treaty was made in 1967 in anticipation of what actually happened in 1968 and 1969 – the first manned mission to the moon and the first manned moon landing, respectively.  So maybe the intent of this treaty was to keep nations from owning the moon or other objects more than 240,000 miles away with their own gravity!  Maybe the application of this treaty to GEO is a semantics game.  Sure we call it the International “Space” Station and the “Space” Shuttle, but they are actually in low earth orbit (LEO) at 240 miles, which means that if we don’t keep pushing them back up they will fall to the surface of the earth!  In fact the ISS is not a zero-gravity station, it is in micro-gravity because it is in a constant state of free-fall.  Perhaps the best measure of what is in space and not in space is the fairly bright line of GEO, where things of normal man made mass stay in orbit without drifting away or falling down. (The moon, because of its colossal mass stays in place at a further distance).  And if the measure of that is the benefits of earths gravity, that means the line is inbounds and not space.  So perhaps we should give more thought to the justice of staking and recognizing claims in GEO.  There are regions above international waters that could clearly be administrated by the UN, but I propose we should be more cautious and conscientious in using GEO above sovereign nations.

This raises further implications with regard to LEO and the ISS that circles earth only 280 miles above, but the whole point of this article is to not let ourselves be persuaded by economics, but justice and equity and then working out matters with the GEO vested nations in cooperation.

-Max

These are just preliminary opinions on some recent reading -not a thorough analysis, so comments and corrections are welcome.