ABC News (that’s Australian Broadcasting Corporation, mate) posted an article earlier this week about the “legal mire” that space tourism is facing. The biggest issue the article discusses is the lack of an official demarcation of space: how high to you have to be to be in space? Says Steven Freeland of the University of Western Sydney: “If we look at space tourism … [people] are going to want a certificate that says ‘I’ve been in space’, not ‘hey you’ve been very high up in the air’.” The most common altitude is 100 km (also known as the von Karman line); that’s the altitude used for the Ansari X Prize competition as well as the official boundary of space in Australian law.

That and other issues (like the definition of “astronaut”) suggest to Freeland that current space law is antiquated and in need of an overhaul to reflect the realities of space tourism, as opposed to the government-run space programs of the 1960s. “You have to have legal certainty [about] what law applies, whether it’s international air law or international law of outer space or a combination of both.”

Sam Dinkin, CEO of SpaceShot, passed along a holiday special the company is running for people who think their best chance of making it into space is through gaming:

This weekend, let’s celebrate people who have less than $200,000 in mad money. SpaceShot is giving away a free play at level 1 with every play for the first 1,000 plays each day starting Thursday 8/31 through Monday, 9/4. If the first thousand plays each day are made at level 1, they can’t lose.