Frontier Justice in the 21st Century: New Law for the International Space Station

Don't worry. "Europe Lays Down the Law for New Space Lab" is not a jingoistic complaint, or another tiff involving European nations and those 13 wayward British colonies.

It's about rules that help people work together on the International Space Station.

The International Space Station's crew is composed entirely of human beings. Nobody expects a shootout in the Zvezda module over who ate the last snack, but where you've got humans, you've got trouble: sooner or later.

And, a new module is getting connected the the ISS, adding new functions, and new legal issues.

So, a European group put their heads together and drew up "Humans in Outer Space – Interdisciplinary Odysseys" to cover the new situation.

I was very impressed with the ISS approach to civil liability. It's very different from the current American judicial approach to lawsuits, where:

• A pickle attacks a woman, so she and her husband sue McDonald's for $125,000 (this is serious stuff - physical and mental injuries)
• Another woman spills hot coffee, so she sues the fast-food place that served it
• A police officer almost saves a 1-year-old from drowning and hurt her knee - she's suing the parents because the floor was wet. (The kid has permanent brain damage, but these things happen.)

(I still don't understand how any conscious person, not in restraints, could manage to get a permanent scar from a pickle.)

As the International Institute of Air and Space Law at the University of Leiden's Frans von der Dunk puts it:

"We are all there together, we all have the same purpose to make the ISS into a big success and we don't want that attitude, that mentality, to be disturbed by the threat of one party suing the other."

That sort of approach to law and society sounds a lot like common sense. If the high frontier wasn't still so sincerely a frontier, I might consider moving there.