Abstract
Just as outer space appears to have reached a critical mass of investment and popularity, rising legal, regulatory, environmental, and market risks loom. A bifurcated future assessment juxtaposes robust enthusiasm with growing fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
The economic case for space commerce is substantial, with revenues having grown dramatically in recent years and credible projections suggesting continued expansion on a massive scale. Low Earth orbit satellite constellations have the potential to bridge the digital divide by providing reliable infrastructure for affordable broadband access to remote, rural, and underserved communities throughout the world. Other emerging market opportunities include the development of a vibrant space tourism industry, mineral extraction from asteroids, colonization of the Moon and Mars, and an expanded array of services via commercial satellites. Yet without stable, predictable, and globally accepted rules of the road, these opportunities cannot achieve their full potential.
Extraordinary economic growth in space commerce could quickly evaporate if longstanding and emerging challenges shift from chronic and unresolved to acute and potentially catastrophic. National governments and private ventures can avoid triggering worst-case scenarios only if they immediately and effectively respond to growing risks, including: the proliferation of space debris from irresponsible spacecraft weapons testing; an increasing likelihood of orbiting spacecraft collisions; toxic emissions generated by spacecraft launches and deorbiting vaporization; and the growing potential for harmful radio spectrum interference and orbital congestion from newly launched small, low Earth orbiting satellite constellations.
This article identifies the positive and negative impacts of vast changes in space access and commerce. Technological innovations and entrepreneurial business plans have substantially eroded longstanding barriers to market entry, competition, and diversification in space. A large percentage of the more than 15,000 currently orbiting satellites did not exist a few years ago. Private ventures, rather than government-owned and operated enterprises, now dominate the space commerce marketplace, with many pursuing business plans that were once dismissed as science fiction.
While space commerce has recently achieved remarkable growth and diversification, national governments and private ventures have allowed irrational exuberance to obscure serious, potentially catastrophic worst-case scenarios. Their failure to acknowledge chronic and emerging problems has consequently left critical risks unresolved. Resolving those problems requires the United Nations and the International Telecommunication Union to achieve a timely global consensus on reforms that make space treaties legally binding, enforceable, and applicable to both private ventures and national governments—agreements that, as currently written, are decades out of date.
This article explains how emerging technologies and business plans contribute to both revenue enhancement and greater risk of calamity. It identifies specific environmental, business, and governance factors that generate positive, negative, conflicting, or uncertain impacts on space commerce. The article concludes with specific recommendations for unconditional and immediate commitments that national governments and private ventures must make to promote space sustainability.