The envisaged goal here is to channel competitive market forces from a race to the bottom (toxic competition) towards a race to the top (noble competition) through a series of incentivizing measures by activating the higher ethical principles of space law.
This report was written by Maria Rhimbassen within her research fellowship with the Open Lunar Foundation. This report expands on a previous blog post entitled: An Introduction to Space Antitrust, presenting a proposal for a space antitrust regime based on a non-exhaustive selection of higher ethical principles of space law.
The purpose of this report is to formulate novel recommendations with regards to a proposed space antitrust framework built on the higher ethical principles enshrined within international space law. Several use cases and scenarios are analyzed through a legal lens in terms of potential detrimental effects by future space-based monopolies. This report argues that activating higher ethical principles of space law and transforming them into catalysts for compliance can help channel the competitive market forces in the direction of sustainable development and achieve collective purposes for the benefit of public interest, through transparency, trust and multilateralism. Moreover, this report argues that space is the ultimate arena to test such a novel antitrust framework, because it allows for regulators and policy-makers to establish best practices in a new domain.