Onboarding: Welcome to #TheSpaceBar
The Sky Over Joshua Tree (Courtesy: Suli Yuan)
“We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
From bottle rockets to model airplanes, from Deep Space Nine to the moon of Endor, whether discussed in reality or fiction, Outer Space, our next frontier and celestial temple, has always captured my imagination and curiosity.
Ever since I was a little kid, I have yearned to learn more about Outer Space and the myriad of things surrounding it: from spaceships to astronauts, from stars to galaxies; this interest has fueled many of my favorite pastimes, whether reading sci-fi novels (two thumbs up for the Rogue Squadron series), watching movies and TV shows (BSG was my nightly escape during that grueling summer of bar studying), or playing video games (still need to finish Wing Commander). Even to this day, I still find myself glancing at the stars on quiet dark nights, my ears perking up at any Outer Space-related news.
While I have collected bits and pieces of Outer Space-related knowledge through these activities, I gradually realized that I have never taken the time to truly learn about Outer Space or explore any specific area of this vast universe in depth.
This is where this blog, #TheSpaceBar, comes in. With the legal field being central to my current profession, I have decided to explore, drill into, and learn more about Outer Space as well as the laws, regulations, and policies surrounding space exploration and the commercial space enterprises. Although it's an up-and-coming area of law given humanity’s renewed focus on the stars, it is also a legal environment that is still in its infancy. #TheSpaceBar is both my attempt to contribute to this area of law and a personal journal of my quest to learn more about Outer Space-related legal issues. It’s also a way to keep me honest in this pursuit as I believe the best way to build knowledge is by summarizing what I have read, researched, learned, and thought about.
Hence, #TheSpaceBar is a ride-along journey for my audience. But, I also hope that, through my posts, you will discover the resources and topics that will ignite your own interest in areas related to Outer Space. As a personal hobby, I can't promise you the most polished posts (if there is one thing that law school and a clerkship have ingrained in me is that writing is never finished, only abandoned) or a regularly spaced-out publishing schedule. But, I promise you that my posts will be filled with genuine reflections and citations to useful resources (along with the use of only one spacebar after a period)..
And now dear readers, start the countdown, grab a drink, and prepare for launch to our next frontier.
