Liability risk management for activities relating to the launch of space objects: Today's environment and tomorrow's prospects

Launch activities are increasingly performed by private entities and launch participants deal with a complex legal environment. The Space Treaties provide a framework placing liability for non-governmental activities on the launching State and the duty to authorize and supervise them on the appropriate State. Launch participants are subject to specific regulation in certain States or are under institutional State control in others. They also have to comply with general domestic law of liability. Limited insurance availability led to the development of contractual risk allocation techniques, the inter-participants waivers of liability and claims, inspired by NASA practice.; This thesis offers a contribution with the synthesis of information, so far scattered, on today's legal environment, providing an overview of the norms at play in this field to allow the grasp of their relative weight and interactions in the assessment of liability risk attached to launch activities.; This synthesis reveals a legal framework presently lacking the predictability necessary for an efficient liability risk management: (1) inter-participants waivers of liability suffer the weaknesses of all limitation of liability clauses; they also lack uniformity and implementation rigor; (2) the Space Treaties contain ambiguous terms preventing predictable determination of the State liable for damage and the State obliged to authorize and supervise launch activities, and do not reflect the de facto primary liability of launch operators.; This thesis offers a contribution to the advancement of legal work on these problems by suggesting new approaches emphasizing the need for: (1) harmonization of inter-participants waivers of liability to improve their consistency and validity and ensure identical flow-down by all participants; (2) improvements of the Outer Space Treaty, Liability Convention and Registration Convention for their implementation to non-governmental launch activities.; Although the launch community is small and the need for lawmaking is not as compelling as in fields such as aviation. Nevertheless, tailored adjustments to the present legal framework are required and proposed in this thesis through model clauses and an international instrument, both of which are submitted for further thinking and contribution by those sharing the opinion that creative lawmaking is now necessary to prepare for tomorrow's endeavors.