Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, September 24, 2007 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium
James Dunstan
"Liability Law in Space"
ABSTRACT -- In adopting regulations in late 2005 to allow for the first time passenger flights into space, the Federal Aviation Administration affirmatively quoted a Futron study predicting as many as 20,000 private passengers by the year 2020. To put that in perspective, a total of 460 separate humans have flown in space to date, over the span of the last 46 years. Are we as a society ready for this massive increase in "astronauts"? Have we equipped ourselves with the necessary regulatory and safety standards necessary to both avoid catastrophe and also not strangle this nascent industry? Are the companies themselves prepared for both success and failure? This presentation discusses these and other issues related to the "other" space program.
SPEAKER -- James E. Dunstan is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Garvey Schubert Barer, where for nearly 25 years he has concentrated on issues of high technology, communications, and space law. Jim represents a significant number of burgeoning outer space companies: he drafted and negotiated the first commercial lease for the Russian Mir space station on behalf of MirCorp. He has drafted and helped negotiate contracts with several potential commercial space passengers. Jim was a founding board member of LunaCorp and assisted in negotiating with the Russian Space Agency and NASA to shoot the first television commercial onboard the International Space Station (ISS). He helped arrange for the first pitch of the 2002 baseball World Series to be conducted onboard ISS. Mr. Dunstan has also been involved in export issues (ITAR) related to experimental hardware launched on Russian rockets.
Jim assisted in the drafting of the Virginia Spaceflight Liability and Immunity Act, is a member of the Virginia Joint Commission on Technology and Science (JCOTS) Aerospace Advisory Committee, and is an active member of the Space Frontier Foundation’s Teachers In Space project.
Jim is a frequent speaker at space conferences on a variety of issues related to entrepreneurial space.