Wow, I missed this... apparently a couple weeks ago a piece of (probably) the ISS crashed through someone's house in Florida?! And then they asked @planet4589 for help via twitter because they couldn't get NASA to respond to them?!! WOW.
Space law is going to be very "interesting" in the next couple years as exponentially increasing re-entries cause more damage/casualties on the ground...
@sundogplanets@planet4589 I don’t know the answer … what happens when/if debris falls off an aircraft and damages private property? Is there a current law governing this?
@sundogplanets@Simonas huh, I hadn't heard of it either. Having just looked it up, it does look promising for the homeowner: section C article II says "A launching State shall be absolutely liable to pay compensation for damage caused by its space object on the surface of the Earth or to aircraft in flight."
And article V addresses liability for jointly launched objects.
@esnyder@barrygoldman1@Simonas I think this is the kind of thing that space lawyers are figuring out right now. Under the Outer Space Treaty, the US is a launching state, so the US government is responsible for any damage by US-based corporations with satellites. But that has not been tested in court yet so who knows...
@1dalm@sundogplanets@planet4589 Nope. Statistically it’s more likely to crash in an ocean or a desert, but it’s not impossible for it to land somewhere populated.
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