Nathan C. Goldman is an attorney in private practice in Houston, Texas. He is also Adjunct Professor of Space Law at the South Texas College of Law and a lecturer at Rice University.

Major changes in space technology and law require a second edition of American Space Law. I crafted the first edition around a two-era model of space law: the Classical Period (1957-1979) and the Modern Period. Since 1990, space law has entered a third era. The fall of Communism in Eastern Europe  and Russia is the most visible but, by no means, the sole reason for this new era in space law and policy.

A new, three-era model of space law is, I believe, a useful device to structure this book and to structure a contextual approach to space law, domestic and international. The overshadowing image of the Classical Period was the U.S.-Soviet space race. This relationship gives rise to two characteristics - a state focus on space activities and a focus on two states only. Flowing from these characteristics, international space law in this period reflects a pro-state orientation (restrictions on private activities in space) and a pro-victim orientation (most nations then did not perceive true benefit from space, so that all risk should be borne by the two superpowers).

In the second era, 1979-1990, both characteristics or variables were changing. More and more nations were becoming involved in space, and increasingly private enterprise was playing a role in this activity. Moreover, these activities had mundane, lucrative or beneficial applications on earth. These changing characteristics, in turn, gave rise to two divergent trends in space law (actually beginning in the latter part of the first era).

(1) Because space was becoming important to more and more nations, international agreement became harder and harder to reach. Indeed, the Registration Convention of 1975 was the last treaty to be ratified by a sufficient number of nations to become general law. (2) Partially because of this atrophy of international space law and partially because of the increasingly complex needs of sophisticated, largely private space commerce, a domestic space law developed first in the United States to guide and regulate the private activities.

The third era, circa 1990, reflects the continued evolution of these trends. Experience in space by corporate, national, and multinational entities has deepened in scope and sophistication. Nonetheless, the ghosts of the Classical Period - a bias against private enterprise and a belief that space truly only benefited the superpowers - continued to haunt the law. The continued development of American domestic law and the beginning of domestic space law in Europe, Japan, and Russia as well as the growth of a private international law offered some shelter from a hostile public international law. Meanwhile, the fall of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe began to exorcise those demon ghosts from public international space law. The end of the East-West dispute is permitting a new consensus to emerge that welcomes private activity in space (and investment in those troubled earth-based economies) and that no longer sees space as a playground of the superpowers but as an important resource for the planet. Public International Space Law is a reemergent force in the 1990s.

The book follows this three-era paradigm: I begin with the international law focus of the Classical Period (Chapters 2 through 4). Chapter 5 discusses the second era in international space law while Chapters 7 through 10 look at  the domestic U.S. space law which grew up largely in that era. Chapter 6 completes the description of international space law, focusing on the third era. Meanwhile, Chapter 11 looks at private international space law and domestic space law in other nations in this third era.

The book concludes with an expanded Chapter 12 on Astrolaw. The maturation of space activities will lead to a permanent presence in space with all the legal needs of an on-going, on-site means to settle disputes and regulate activities. The international space station, whatever its ultimate form, will be the first real step in this process that leads inevitably to some government in space, details still just beyond the scope of this book.

Nathan C. Goldman