The Main Problems of Multilateral Dialogue on the Issue of Private Space Exploration

Since the middle of the 20th century, space exploration has been playing a vital role in the world development, particularly within the scope of international affairs. This is due to the fact that space has been established as one of the key platforms for interaction between states. There states could fight to ensure the security of their national interests, as well as compete to achieve leadership. However, initially being used exclusively for military purposes, now space has become an important room, where there is an importance for the life of all mankind. Given the scale of the impact of activities in space, there are a lot of problems related to the necessity to regulate this area at the international level. Despite the existing regulatory framework for space exploration, there are so-called “gaps” - unaffected aspects of space activities. These “gaps” need to be filled as soon as possible by the international community, so they limit the possibility of a full-fledged space activity. In recent years a bigger attention has been drawn to the new tendency which is characterizes by the power shift and the transmission of leverage from state-owned companies to private ones in the field of space exploration. Mass media regularly report on new promising projects of the American private company SpaceX. However, not all states have so equally favorable conditions for the emergence of such successful private initiatives. Moreover, the existing international legal framework has failed to identify this kind of relations because of modernity of the trend. Space activity obviously is one of the most important aspect of the world development of science and technology, but its rational implementation requires appropriate conditions, such as a full-fledged international legal framework, including multilateral treaties as well as cooperative powers to achieve new discoveries in space.