Open Letter to United Nations on 50th Anniversary of the Outer Space Treaty

Open letter to the United Nations

In view of the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the Outer Space Treaty, October 10, 1967

Civilization needs to expand into outer space in order to survive and thrive. Such an urgent need is clearly evidenced by the growing number of issues that face the human community of almost eight billion people. These include: a shortage of sustainable energy resources, environmental imbalances and catastrophic natural events, mass migrations, recurrent economic crises, and unemployment. As a consequence, these issues are triggering perpetual conflicts and wars among nations.

The expansion of civilization into outer space will open a new horizon of development and thus greatly contribute to obtaining peace on Earth. Wars and major conflicts aimed to the control of land and resources could eventually and abruptly catalyze an implosion of civilization. On the other side, a huge technological and cultural renaissance is in progress, which could alleviate and mitigate this prognosis and enable humanity to become a spacefaring species. By expanding civilization into outer space, all the inhabitants of Earth will profit from the virtually infinite resources of the Solar System. If this happens in time, the economic reasons for war will be progressively reduced.

Civilian expansion into outer space will need an evolution of our legal systems. In order to regulate civilian industrial and commercial activities in the region of outer space and to insure that civil rights will be respected outside the boundaries of Earth’s atmosphere, the legal framework established by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty must be exercised by the courts. Through this framework precedents will be developed which address the issues of how to protect commercial development of space, human life in space, how to specifically manage space transportation and accommodation systems for civilian passengers and settlers.

The Outer Space Treaty is now 50 years old and is and should be the foundation for building the legal framework we need for ongoing civilian space development.  Signed October 10th, 1967, the Outer Space Treaty serves as the space legal framework to develop a body of case law that will support humanity’s expansion into the Solar System.

We urge the United Nations, UNOOSA, all governments and their space agencies, to support the development of an equitable and coherent outer space legal system for the benefit of humanity.