Chapter Four INTERNATIONAL SPACE LAW AND THE USE OF NATURAL RESOURCES: SOLAR ENERGY 4.1 Solar Energy as a Source of Power High altitude solar energy, like the geostationary orbital position, is a world natural resource. In this Chapter attention will be called to the natural characteristics of this resource, to the relationship of international law essentially as stated in the 1967 Principles Treaty to solar energy, and to international political-1egal efforts to facilitate the acquisition and transmission to Earth of such solar-based energy. Solar energy is considered to be a vast, unlimited, inexhaustible, and renewable source of power. It is also a very clear source of such power. It is so vast and unlimited that no one has claimed exclusive rights to it. It is even more inexhaustible and renewable than the water of the ocean, a resource that has been treated as a res communis and therefore not subject to exclusive rights but rather open to the common use of all. High altitude solar energy, like the water of the free high seas, is not subject to sovereign appropriation by States at the present stage of science and technology. The principal focus of an energy-hungry world on solar energy has been a scientific and technological one. The main considerations have This expression will be taken to mean that energy derived from the sun at heights where geostationary space objects are able to orbit effectively, namely, at the range of 22,300 miles above the surface of the Earth.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==