Priority. Outer Space Legislation Discussed

The event that the former Soviet Union launched the first satellite of the whole world on October 4th, 1957 marks the opening of mankind from the space age. About half a century later, human exploration and utilization of outer space activities have reached a very high level. It is obvious to all that mankind has benefited enormously from outer space activities. Outer space becomes not only the important space of the national security, but also the treasure house of national sustainable development Resource. In fact, because of endless resources and vast living space in outer space, more and more"villagers"of the global village become interested in it.However, with the outer space activities more and more, there are also more and more issues emerging, such as environmental pollution of outer space. These issues indicate, on the one hand, that human exploration of outer space has reached a higher level; on the other hand, they also constitute a great threat to the further expansion of outer space activities. Problems appearing in outer space activities become more and more complicated and they often have different causes and status. If they are being treated aimlessly and without disorder, there will be more of them emerging and it will be more and more difficult to solve them. The proper way to solve them is to distinguish them between primary and secondary status preferentially. In line with this thinking, this paper presents the argument of Priority of outer space legislation. The purpose of this argument is not to provide an advanced theory, but to show an effective method to resolve complex legal issues emerging in outer space activities.The first chapter is "introduction of the priority of outer space legislation." In order to avoid the ambiguity of the literal meaning of the word priority and to illustrate this word thereinafter, Chapter 1 gives a clear sketch of the true meaning of priority. First, it illustrates the content and standards of the concept priority of outer space legislation and then shows the reasons for priority appearing in outer space legislation. This chapter is the basis of this article. The following explanation for the specific issues mentioned in the next chapter depends upon this so-called priority method.The second chapter is "the three major problems of legislative priority emerging in outer space." This chapter uses the priority introduced in the first chapter as an idea or a method to choose the three major issues influencing the current human outer space activities, namely, the militarization of outer space, the environment protection of outer space and outer space commercialization. For each issue, it first shows the present situation of the problem, and then analyzes the lack of regulation of this problem, and finally offers its own way to solve the problem. This chapter can be said the specific performance of the standards of priority said in the first chapter.The third chapter is "the realization of priority of outer space legislation." The realization of priority of outer space legislation was discussed in this chapter. Due to the lag of current space legal system, the priority of outer space legislation should begin with the implementation in the domestic level, but this realization is just preliminary. The substantial realization of priority must depend on the international level legislation. In the international legislative level, this chapter highlighted the important roles of United Nations and COPUOS. Finally, this chapter indicates that the ultimate way to resolve current legal issues in outer space activities is to rebuild a new outer space legal system that reflects the priority of legislation.