James E. Dunstan
James E. Dunstan is celebrating his 40th year as an outer space lawyer. He is the founder of Mobius Legal Group, PLLC and serves as General Counsel at think tank TechFreedom. Jim has spent his career representing smaller “New Space” companies – those dedicated to creating a fully functioning economic system in outer space. He is an unabashed “Gerry’s Kid, having chaired the economic and and legal track at many of Gerard K. O’Neill’s Space Studies Institute conferences, beginning in 1989. Jim drafted and negotiated the first commercial lease of a manned space station for the Russian Mir space station on behalf of MirCorp. He assisted in negotiating with the Russian Space Agency and NASA to shoot the first television commercial onboard the International Space Station (ISS). He helped arrange for the first pitch of the 2002 baseball World Series to be conducted onboard ISS. He has also been involved in export issues (ITAR) related to experimental hardware launched on Russian rockets and on a number of international interplanetary missions. He has assisted clients in crafting Space Act Agreements with NASA. In 2016 Jim co-chaired the regulatory and policy team for “Fast Space,” _a major study supported by Air University on Ultra Low-Cost Access to Space (ULCATS) which included an analysis of multi-agency regulatory approach to licensing commercial space activities and recommendations for changes in those systems.
Jim assisted in drafting the Virginia Spaceflight Liability and Immunity Act, as well as Virginia’s Zero-G/Zero Tax legislation as a member of the Virginia JCOTS Aerospace Advisory Committee.
Jim testified before the Senate Space Subcommittee in May 2017 at its hearing entitled: “Reopening the American Frontier: Exploring How the Outer Space Treaty Will Impact American Commerce and Settlement in Space.”
Jim is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, 1983, where he founded the Georgetown Space Law Group, and was an Associate Editor on The Tax Lawyer. He graduated from Claremont Men's College in 1980 and is the 1978 Harry S. Truman Scholar for the State of Arizona.