Historical and legal drivers of space law

The article aims to determine the prerequisites and factors in space law during the first half of the twentieth century that contributed or might contribute to the development of space law. The methodological basis of the article is a set of principles and modes of knowledge, the choice of which was defined by interdisciplinary approaches to the disclosure of the subject, objectives, and the specifics of the aim. Historical-legal, formal, analytical, critical and comparative research methods were used in the research process. The scientific novelty consists in the fact that unlike general studies of the biographies of lawyers in the sphere of space law during the first half of the twentieth century and the history of the specific legal acts on space law and the legal analysis of these acts, the present study is an interdisciplinary (historical-legal) study of historical-legal aspects that became a background for the process of legal regulation of space activities and formed the scope of certain goals and tasks set before the international community at the beginning of the development of space law. The results of the study of the historical and legal factors of the legal regulation of relations in outer space made it possible to find out that at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century, the prospects of scientific and technical progress and the results of the research of the world`s leading lawyers already necessitated the development of a new field of law – namely, Space Law, which cannot have any analogies with air and maritime law. In addition, at that time, a list of the main issues and tasks that required addressing during the development of the provisions of Space Law, and which can be considered the basis for analyzing the evolution of this law, was already formed.