On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 11:59 AM Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Thu, 12 Oct 2017, William Claybaugh wrote:
This is a "settled" issue in international law: a reason the Eisenhower
Administration prevented the launching of an American satellite in 1956
was so the Soviets would do it first and the US failure to protest it as
a violation of airspace would then settle the question...or so a memo
from the time claims.
Reference? The historical studies I've seen (e.g. Bille & Lishock, "The
First Space Race") found no indication of that. Setting a precedent for
right of peaceful overflight was definitely considered important (at a
very high level -- the folks doing the work weren't told about that), but
last I heard, it appeared that the idea that the Soviets might set that
precedent was just never taken seriously.
Henry
Henry;
