Abstract
Over the past decade, the commercial spaceflight industry has seen a growth never witnessed before. The likes of Virgin Galactic and Xcor are promising suborbital flights to anyone willing to pay the price. Golden Spike is selling tickets to the moon. And SpaceX was re-supplying the ISS as a commercial provider as of 2012. States have responded to this growth by trying to make themselves more attractive to these commercial providers of space services (hereinafter generally referred to as “spaceflight entities”). Attractiveness has become synonymous with overt efforts to decrease spaceflight entities’ liability from injuries to their spaceflight participants (“SFPs”). As a result, six states (Virginia,New Mexico,Colorado,California,TexasandFlorida, or the “SpaceFriendlyStates”) have passed statutes limiting spaceflight entities’ liability with respect to their customers (the “Space Activities Statutes”). However, though the legislature may pass laws, the courts must enforce them. This raises the following two overarching questions: 1) did the legislatures in the Space Friendly States actually decrease spaceflight entities’ liability exposure by enacting the Space Activities Statutes?; and 2) how robust is the common law of each state in limiting liability for operators of recreational activities? These questions are answered for each of the Space Friendly States below.