Delimitation of outer space (Kármán line)
The lack of any legal boundary between airspace and outer space: the 100 km line is a convention, and the altitude chosen changes which liability regime applies.
Air law and space law rest on opposite logics: airspace falls under the sovereignty of the state below, while outer space belongs to no one and is governed by the space treaties. Yet no international instrument sets the boundary between the two. The international aeronautical federation, FAI, uses 100 km, the so-called Kármán line, while the US Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration use 50 miles, about 80 km, and the COPUOS Legal Subcommittee has debated the question since the 1960s without a conclusion, with the United States opposing any delimitation. The stakes are concrete for suborbital flight: a vehicle peaking between 80 and 100 km is a spacecraft for some and an aircraft for others, and the choice decides whether the 1972 Liability Convention or the aviation conventions apply. For an underwriter, the policy wording therefore has to define the altitude or the regime it covers.
On July 11, 2021, Virgin Galactic's Unity 22 flight peaked at about 86 km (282,000 feet): enough for its crew to earn astronaut wings under the US 50-mile threshold, but below the FAI's 100 km, a point Blue Origin stressed ahead of New Shepard's July 20 flight. In 2018, astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell argued in Acta Astronautica that 80 km was a physically better-grounded boundary.
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