On The Perfection Of Legal Norms Of Outer Space Tourism

Outer space, the whole space outside the sovereign jurisdiction of any country, with the air space on the surface of the earth excluded, contains abundant resources and magnificent scenery. With the frequent change of outer space activity, has produced many new outer space activities, such as outer space tourist activities. Outer space tourism is a kind of commercial activity to provide outer space travel experience for visitors, which include orbital flight, sub orbital flight, atmospheric edge travel and parabolic flight travel.The very first outer space tourist was Tito, an American businessman, who in 2001 set foot on the international space station and enjoyed a week-long stay. The outer space tourism industry is full of business opportunities hence has attracted a large number of private entities involved in the field and hope to make a profit.As human activities in outer space surge and for better regulation, the United Nations in 1966 passed the very first international treaty about outer space activities – “Outer Space Treaty”. Right after the “Outer Space Treaty”, the UN has successively signed another four outer space treaties to build the legal system of the outer space of today’s world. At the same time, some developed countries in space technology, such as the United States, Russia, France and other countries, have carried out related domestic space legislation, in an attempt to promote the development of outer space business activities and to regulate outer space activities for private entities more effectively. These laws and regulations, along with international treaties, established the criteria for human activities in outer space.However, as the formulation time of current outer space international treaty is rather early, space technology as well as people’s mind are relatively backward when the treaty was drafted, which is in sharp contrast to today’s living environment of the international community, social beliefs and the advanced space technology. The deficiency of system and jurisprudence has become an important constraint on the development of the outer space tourist activities, which has been facing many challenges, such as unclear outer space tourists, unclear status of the spacecraft for tourism, the lack of liability security system, etc.With the development of space technology and the increase of people’s need for the outer space tourist activities, improvement on the legal norms is particularly important,which is not only directly related to the safety of the countries and regions, but also is inaccordance with the maintain ance of the international peace and development, as well as the progress in science and technology while conforming to the trend of the changing times. To improve the outer space tourism legal norms, we have to specify the rescue provisions applicable to outer space tourists, clarify the legal status of tourism spacecraft and perfect the content of the responsibility system for the outer space, then the healthy development of the tourism activities in outer space can be achieved.