IV. Sky for Sale: Privatizing the Night

Earth’s orbits and radio bands are finite commons. Yet mega-constellations surge skyward, and national laws now grant private claims to space resources, in tension with the Outer Space Treaty’s “common heritage” principle.

• U.S. CSLCA (2015): Grants U.S. citizens rights to possess, own, and sell extracted space resources, explicitly without claiming sovereignty over celestial bodies WikipediaCongress.gov.

• Luxembourg Space Resources Law (2017): Allows private companies to retain materials mined from asteroids, incentivized by €200 million in grants cjil.uchicago.edu.

SIDEBAR: Commons Licensing Model

• Use-It-Care-For-It Clauses: Licenses mandate debris mitigation, transparent registries, and public impact assessments.

• International Compacts: Extend UN frameworks to enforce shared stewardship and forbid territorial claims.

Without guardrails, we invite a tragedy of the commons: collision risks, congested lanes, and a privatized night sky reserved for the highest bidders.

V. Case Study: Astronomers vs. Mega-Constellations

In August 2024, the International Astronomical Union reported that SpaceX’s second-generation Starlink satellites emitted radio-frequency interference up to 30 times stronger than earlier models—blinding ground telescopes at Chile’s observatories Viterbi Conversations in EthicsForbes. An open letter from 120 astronomers urged the FCC to pause further launches, warning of permanent damage to radio astronomy Space.

This human vignette illustrates the stakes: scientific communities forced to lobby regulators, threatened by technologies launched in orbit without sufficient oversight.

VI. Protocols for Star-Stewardship

We can course-correct. Below are five integrated policies paired with embodied practices to embed integrity at every layer—from code reviews to constellation deployments.

1. Context-First Metrics

   • Policy: Mandate social and environmental impact assessments before deploying any new algorithm or satellite.

   • Practice: When a number feels urgent—pause. Notice bodily tension. Re-center on human context, not just dashboards.

2. Reciprocal Design Councils

   • Policy: Establish multi-stakeholder councils—including frontline workers, local communities, and environmental advocates—for product and mission sign-off.

   • Practice: Co-author a “First Contact” narrative imagining how diverse users—human and non-human—experience your system.

3. Cosmic-Commons Charters

   • Policy: Attach stewardship obligations—debris plans, public data-sharing, ongoing audits—to every launch license and data-use agreement.

   • Practice: Host ritual acknowledgments—public readings under the night sky—declaring your commitment to the commons.

4. Decentralized Truth-Keeping

   • Policy: Build open, immutable registries for training-data provenance, model cards, and orbital maneuvers.

   • Practice: Rotate your information diet—sample perspectives outside your bubble and note bodily openness or resistance as ethical gauges.

5. Embodied Horizon Statements

   • Policy: Require every AI or space project to publish a cultural-horizon statement assessing implications for future generations, historic trauma, and planetary wellbeing.

   • Practice: Stand under the stars and write a letter from your grandchildren’s era—what will they thank you for (or blame you for)?

VII. Checklist: How to Break the Code

Use this actionable checklist to ensure you’re truly dismantling the old myths and recoding for stewardship:

• Pause & Feel: Does this metric erase human complexity?

• Convene & Listen: Have all affected voices—workers, communities, the environment—been included?

• License & Care: Does your charter legally bind you to stewardship duties and transparency?

• Archive & Share: Is provenance of data and decisions transparent and tamper-proof?

• Imagine & Embody: Have you written from the perspective of future inheritors—both human and ecological?

VIII. Visual Briefs

• Figure A: DNA Methylation Transmission — A simple schematic showing chemical tags passing from grandparents → parents → children.

• Figure B: Orbital Commons Licensing Flowchart — Steps from license application → stakeholder review → debris-mitigation plan → audit.

• Figure C: Decentralized Registry Mock-Up — Screen-style wireframe for verifying model-card provenance and satellite‐operation logs.

IX. From Cults to Commons: A Call to Integrity

The myths we code become the world we inhabit. Will intelligence be wielded as a weapon by the few, or stewarded as a capacity for all? Star-stewardship isn’t a tagline—it’s a daily practice, visible in the fine print of licenses, the posture in our meetings, and the stories we tell under the open sky.

“Build systems that can’t survive without integrity—and cultures that can’t thrive without trust.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin

Our grandchildren’s orbit depends on the choices we script today. Let’s rewrite the myths, recode our ethics, and steward the stars.