Space is the new ‘Wild West.’ The EU is dying to step in and regulate.

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 69 points – Space is the new ‘Wild West.’ The EU is dying to step in and regulate.
politico.eu

The European Commission is gearing up to publish the world’s first comprehensive space law.

Not content with regulating fertilizers, cars and cheeses, Brussels is looking to create an EU Space Label it could soon slap on rockets and satellites as part of efforts to force companies to use orbit responsibly.

“With each passing day, space is becoming more like the Wild West, and it's time to have European rules,” said Christophe Grudler, a member of the European Parliament from France who is leading legislative work on IRIS2, the EU's answer to SpaceX's Starlink satellite communications system.

The European Commission is expected propose the world's first comprehensive space law after Easter.

According to documents seen by POLITICO, the bloc's diplomats have been briefed on plans to create an EU Space Label that will be used to designate companies that play by the new rules on sustainability and security, much in the same way that the bloc uses eco-labels to certify washing machines or televisions.

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They don't just need to be regulated, they need to be stopped except for essential things. The new space race is helping to destroy the climate based on studies of the upper atmosphere.

https://www.space.com/rocket-exhaust-pollution-upper-atmosphere

I am absolutely not against things like communications satellites and space probes, but things like Starlink, which require launch after launch and constant replacement as satellites fail, are making the climate worse.

Especially when setting up that tech at the lunar L points would probably be more efficient long term

Latency becomes a considerable issue at the L points and it's why Starlink style deployment is useful. This is not really an argument to use in this case.

The EU Space Law will set standards to curb light pollution caused by growing satellite constellations and limit greenhouse gas emissions and pollution caused by rocket launches.

There will also be an effort to tackle the growing amount of debris in space, while making sure that space junk hurtling back to Earth is handled safely.

Seems pretty reasonable.

The "Wild West" as commonly perceived was a Hollywood invention. The actual wild west had its fair share of law and order. For instance, the famous shootout the Earp brothers participated in happened because they were enforcing a gun ordinance on no pistols in town.

The EU's regulations have generally been more hit than miss, let's hope this is one of the former

Yeah how dare legal entities want to prevent the environment that spawned Blood Meridian from happening in the fucking void of space.

Damn I didn’t know that the place covered by international maritime legislation was completely lawless

This "international maritime legislation" (which is about the ocean, not space) does not seem to affect things like what France is doing according to the Wild Wild West article the post links to, which you obviously didn't read, or Russia's plan to put a satellite-destroying space nuke in orbit.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/why-russia-might-put-nuclear-weapon-space

Nuclear weapons stationed in space are explicitly against the outer space treaty or the united nations resolution that came before it. The resolution is binding for all nations and the Soviet Union agreed to both.

I think aliens would find it adorable that we think we can police space.

On the contrary... anyone able do bridge interstellar distances will agree that the near orbit belongs to the planet.