Tuesday 14 March 2017

Star Trek and Space Law

Star Trek recently celebrated its 50th anniversary and to mark the occasion, Astrosociological Insights have published an issue containing articles linked to that famous science fiction television series.

My research into Space Law, in particular the concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind (CHM), indicated to me that there is a definite thematic similarity to the well known Prime Directive, the familiar regulation from Star Fleet that seems to only be observed in the breach. As a result, I've written an article that looks at these links and I was delighted that this was included in the Star Trek themed edition of Astrosociological Insights, which is available here:

http://www.astrosociology.org/Library/PDF/Newsletters/ARI-Newsletter_Vol-5_Iss-2_12-2016.pdf

My article starts on page 8.  If you have any comments about this, do let me know.  Comparing the two has proved to be a useful and humorous way of understanding the CHM, which is not always the most direct of principles to grasp.