Fulya Apaydin in Phenomenal World:
In mid-June, SpaceX went public. The company’s initial public offering share price of $150 quickly crowned Elon Musk the world’s first dollar trillionaire. As the company’s executives rang the Nasdaq bell, Musk announced far-fetched plans to launch 100,000 satellites and new data centers beyond the stratosphere. The technical challenges of this growth projection—including the absence of a global space traffic management regime—is counterbalanced by the company’s political power.
Orbital domains and celestial objects have long been defined in international law as “the province of all mankind,” meant to serve collective and future interests. Decades before the rise of new “techvangelicals” with their eyes set on colonizing Mars, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 served as the principal legal framework anchoring spectrum and orbital coordination. The signatories of this treaty recognized that exploring and using extra-terrestrial domains “shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interest of all countries.”
But over the past fifteen years, outer space has emerged as a frontier of intense commercial activity and private investment, and the regulation of the orbital environment—from satellite licensing to debris mitigation rules—has become increasingly influenced by corporate interests. Questions once treated as public policy (how to manage orbital slots, radio spectrum, launch safety, or space data) are predominantly settled by way of closed-door consultations. How has this regulatory framework moved so far away from protecting the province of all mankind?
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