[ggm]

I agree we're centuries away, so there's that. But being pejorative about the force of law and writing it off as useless european hand-wringing I think misses the point: Elon is either going to pussy out, and not actually put people into space, or is going to, and they're going to die.

Since he doesn't have a matter transporter, he has to transit from a legal regime his company assets exist in, to some mythical point where the jurisdictional boundary lies. I think that is likely to be where alignment of the limits to US lawfare, and the headache of privatized use of space combine.

If I was China, I'd refuse to recognise any claim to ownership of assets beyond Geosynchronous. I wouldn't deliberately go to the lagrange points and graffiti the JWST, but I'd sure as hell make sure Musk knew that if he finds magnetic monopoles or tritium supplies, China expects it's cut. (magnetic monopoles don't exist.)