Studies On Construction Of Legal Regime For Moon Development

Human exploration of the moon has once again become the focus after "the Apollo mission" interrupted for thirty years. To moon development activities of the new century, in addition to the pursuit of scientific interests, the commercial interests has also become one of its objectives. The commercial interests could be gained in the following ways:to carry moon resources back to the Earth and make commercial use of it; to receive remuneration by exploration of moon resources, and so on. Furthermore, the subjects of moon development have also changed in the new moon resources exploration. Besides traditional subjects of international law-countries, the private actors are increasingly taking part in moon development. However, in the process of moon development, the countries and private actors are different in characteristics. And their objectives pursued are diametrically opposed to each other. Countries, as the main body of moon development, are only for scientific purposes in activities in most cases. To the opposite, the private actors mostly are for commercial purposes. What’s more, their concern is whether moon development activity could make a profit and how much could they gain from the activities, which also resultes in the ignorance even violation of space law and other related laws. The involvement of private entities in moon development has made challenges for the existing space law. Some basic problems appear as follows:whether the existing laws already have sufficient capacity to bring into balance the interest and the risk, and also the private interests and the public interests which arise in moon development? The solution to these basic problems demands for a new set of legal regime for moon development.In the process of constructing a new legal regime for moon development, the primary problem is to define the property right of moon resources. The paper starts the discussion on this problem from two dimensions. One is the common heritage of mankind principle and the other one is the definition of property right and different means to acquire property right. Ultimately, the paper arrives at the conclusion that the private subjects can claim for parts of the property right of moon resources. There are possibilities for the construction of a new regime for moon development.The research on the construction of a legal regime for moon development is not only to build a complete regime, but also to build an operational regime. Therefore, the paper should address the management agency and legislative procedures for moon development. The paper is then followed by the research on the "The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea" and "The Antarctic Treaty" which can provide the legal basis for a new legal regime for moon development. Moreover, the paper also makes a brand new assumption research on choosing corporation or moon development authority as moon development agency. In the end, moon development authority is selected as the formal agency for moon development. For the part of legal procedures for moon development, the paper makes a research on the basis of the general legal proceedings. All in all, the paper has also paid attention to the principles and established a new set of legal regime for moon development through a progressive research.