The Rights Stuff
Rosanna Sattler, a specialist in space law, looks ahead to the not-too-distant future when commerce fills the heavens.
You're the new chairwoman of the US Chamber of Commerce's Space Enterprise Council and head the space law practice at the Boston firm Posternak Blankstein & Lund. What exactly is space law?
It involves satellites, remote sensing, GPS, property rights, telecommunications, broadband, export control, business contracts, financing, insurance, and treaties. When people think of space, they tend to think of NASA. But space is a place where you can develop commercial enterprise and provide real, measurable, relevant benefits to the American people, like medical improvements and reduction in energy costs.
One of your clients is a company that wants to offer space diving. What is that?
You're going to dive just like a sky diver would, but you'd dive from an altitude considered to be in space.
Will this actually happen?
Not tomorrow. The major commercial activity going on now is suborbital flight. You go up about 65 miles, so you're in space and you're in weightlessness, but you're not circling Earth. Richard Branson's company, Virgin Galactic, is building vehicles that would take people to the suborbit for $200,000 a pop.
Will private space travel always be for the super rich?
The cost will drop dramatically as the vehicles become more standardized and demand increases. Eventually it will be like an airline trip. We're really at the dawn of the commercial space age.
When did you become interested in space?
I was 7. That's when Sputnik was launched. And 1958 was when NASA was founded. That was the beginning of the Space Age. I remember it vividly. I was so excited. I actually found a 40-page paper I wrote about rockets when I was 12. I still have it.
Why is space so fascinating to you?
We're going to outgrow this planet, and we're going to need to find other environments to live, work, and play. We shouldn't be leaving footprints and our flag on the moon. We should be there with a base, and we should be there fostering commercial activity. I think it's our manifest destiny to get off the planet and bring civilization with us.
Won't we make the same environmental disaster of space that we've made of Earth?
The universe is a vast place. I don't think it's possible to make a huge mess up there. These planets are not pristine, livable places to begin with. It's not like you're going to Tahiti and starting mining operations.
Before going to Harvard Law School, you studied theater criticism at Yale. Why the change?
I thought I was going to write criticisms of film and plays, but then I realized that if I worked for a newspaper, I probably was going to starve.
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