In classical antiquity, one of the most profound Latin sayings was Civis Romanus sum, meaning I am a citizen of Rome.

In West Berlin in 1963, President JFK famously described this as “the proudest boast” of two thousand years ago. The reason for this was that in a world of slaves and conquered peoples, being a Citizen of the Roman Empire brought rights, privileges, and protections. One such privilege was the unhindered right to travel and freedom of movement across the entire empire and further afield.

In our modern world, we are no longer used to travel without restrictions. We have passport controls, entry requirements, visas, residence permits and complex immigration rules.

But there remains one frontier where none of that applies: Space.

Space is in a way the new Rome. The legal rules for modern space travel mirror the legal rules of the classical world. There are no borders, no restrictions on entry and exit, and nation states come together to co-operate in the unexplored dimensions of the universe. There is no better example of this than the International Space Station Programme, built and run by a global team of experts without any regard for international borders.

International law treaties and agreements such as The Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Uses of Outer Spaces and The Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies guarantee freedom of exploration for all states in outer space, on the moon and other celestial bodies for the “common heritage of mankind”.

No nation state can claim sovereignty nor impose their own unilateral restrictions on travel to, from or across space.

But to get to space, we still need to navigate the various visa rules of individual nation states.

Engineers, astrophysicists, and researchers with skills in software, hardware, and robotics all need visas to be able to come together to design and build the systems, spacecraft and rockets that get us to and keep us in space.

The space sector contributes £17.5 billion to the UK economy with the UK government’s national strategy aiming to grow the sector to contribute £490 billion over the next 10 years.

Space companies headquartered in Scotland alone bring in an impressive £254 million and account for around 20% of the 48,800 people working in the sector across the UK.

This growing sector still faces very real challenges, the most obvious of which is chronic skill shortages. From 2026 onwards, it is expected that there will be a 81% gap in software and data skills, 58% in commercial operations, 70% in electronic design, and 59% in systems engineering.

For the sector to grow in line with ambitions, we need to attract more skilled people to the UK to work in it. And it’s not just budding astronauts that are needed. It is a full variety of STEM skillsets that are already in shortage around the globe and which other sectors also desperately compete for.

With Scotland hosting 5 spaceports, we are already on track to become the next major commercial space launch nation and we need that global expertise here. We already have the ideal location and low-risk conditions to reach low Earth orbit. We just need attractive and simple visa rules to enable the talent to get to the UK to take the sector to the next level.

In Scotland we are leading the way globally on space. The Scottish Government recently published the Scottish Space Sustainability Roadmap which is a world-first strategy for a sustainable space sector with plans to cut 50% of space industry emissions by 2030, achieving net zero emissions by 2045.

Despite an ongoing tightening of immigration controls in the UK and the fierce push to reduce net migration, there remains a variety of routes to get international talent to the UK. There are Skilled Worker Sponsorship, Global Talent and Innovator Founder visa routes, all of which ambitious companies in the sector must utilise to grow. But there also needs to be a concerted and co-ordinated effort across the sector to push for more.

Glasgow already designs and builds more small satellites than anywhere outside of California and with the Space-Comm Expo in Glasgow, there is no better time for the sector to connect, strategise and plan for how we do this together.

Burness Paull is one of Scotland’s leading independent law firms and we will have our space law team at the expo. We are a founding partner of the Scottish Space Network who are at the forefront of igniting the leap forward for the sector. There might not yet be a need for lawyers in outer space, but we want to play our part in helping this vital sector to grow for the benefit of all.

At law schools, lawyers study the laws of ancient Rome. Like the Roman Empire, space is already borderless. Now is the time to connect and collaborate so that the sector on the ground in Scotland and across the UK also becomes effectively borderless.

Let’s connect and have a real push to attract the brightest world class talent to work here, so that we can launch sector to the next level.

Related News, Insights & Events