Mars is being explored by many space agencies of the world today, and humans are hoping to have a Star Trek reality in the future. In my earlier articles I had talked about the need for debating the future Constitution of Mars and for preventing export of flaws of our society on Earth to the future Martian society.
Space Law and States
Connected with these topics is the increasing futility of international law. Today’s “space law” comprises various treaties, UN principles and instruments such as the Artemis Accords. These documents make sure that countries remain the prime actors in space law and not the individuals. Although SpaceX has definitely broken this streak, even SpaceX, being a legal entity incorporated in a country, has to abide by the international law.
The international law may pretend that it is representing the will of the people because countries also represent the will of the people, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Today, countries have a limited utility, namely to maintain cordial relations amongst themselves and not cause unnecessary human conflicts that impede human growth and progress. Most of the innovation is driven by private actors. Bureaucracy has emerged as a huge problem in our governance systems. The prime directive of bureaucrats is to work for protecting their own status in the society rather than striving towards conditions that promote growth, development and innovation amongst individuals and their groups. Merit is replaced with cheap bargains.
Common Heritage of Mankind
Let us come back to the realm of space again. By virtue of the international documents, the countries have formed an oligopolistic club where they can extend their sovereignty into space and keep ruling over the masses. These international documents and treaties call outer space the “common heritage of mankind”, but in reality outer space has been converted into a common heritage of nation-states. Of course, it is a folly to contend that individuals have the money and resources to go into space today, but the same does not mean that in the future states should act as gatekeepers of outer space, and only those deemed worthy by them should be allowed to participate in the space economy.
This becomes extremely important as everybody is talking these days about unlocking the age of abundance. The orbital economy cannot grow without the private sector and without active participation of common people. The need for transparency has never been higher. There is a reason Jensen Huang is using the platform of X to promote the idea that open-weights in AI are better than only having closed AI models. Same open approach is needed in the realm of outer space too. SpaceX is already doing the heavy lifting. It is giving us the technology and the means to reduce the cost of payload by several orders of magnitude. But SpaceX cannot be expected to solve all bureaucratic problems too. It is here that individuals and private players must come together, form a consensus and shape the future of space law.
AI and Outer Space
Space law is at an absolute nascent stage right now. We should not abdicate our celestial future to the whims and fancies of nation-states. With AI, most of the bottlenecks are being removed from the society, and in the future the society is going to keep transforming. Without hoping for a Skynet kind of future, we can hope that AI acts as a companion that can do most of the things that have been done so far by the nation-states for us and more. The same AI can open access to space for everyone in the future.
My point is that we should accelerate this process, and not wait or expect the states to make decisions for us in their old and rotten bureaucratic fashion. A future where every stakeholder has an equal say in space affairs regardless of their status and form will be much more interesting than a future where UN delegates keep debating mindlessly about various issues and wasting the precious time of humanity on useless stuff.