In the previous Module, we discussed states and international organizations (IOs). In addition to these actors, there are also non-state actors. Non-state actors are individuals or groups who are not states or comprised of states (e.g., international organizations). These actors shape much of the patterns of international relations, and therefore they must be considered in addition to states and international organizations.

Individuals

Individuals, like you and me, are key actors in international law en masse. Especially with the rise of social media, people are more able to impact outcomes in the international system more than at any other time in human history.

International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs)

When individuals work together across states to form groups to promote specific global-level policies these are called international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). Some of these groups advocate a given policy change across all states. Examples include Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, etc. Some also directly provide a service to people as well (e.g., humanitarian aid provided by the International Red Cross and CARE (based in Atlanta). These organizations use money raised by individuals to provide people with basic goods and services in times of need.

Other international non-governmental organizations are identified as ethno-religious groups. These groups include individuals collectively identifying as practitioners of an organized religion or ethnically identifying around a specific nationality. Examples may consist of the Muslim, Catholic, and Jewish diasporas.

Some international non-governmental organizations identify across national boundaries that advocate through conflict. Examples within this category might include transnational rebels or insurgent groups, internationally-organized paramilitary groups, and terrorist organizations.

Multinational Corporations (MNCs)

Are corporations people? Though multinational corporations could be considered international non-governmental organizations, international public law tends to treat corporations as "legal individuals," distinguishing them from "natural" individuals. These corporations are not able to make international public law (as they are private, not public, entities), but they have a very real impact on international outcomes that affect states. For this Module, we will explore how the growing influence of multinational corporations globally, and beyond, has directly impacted the future of space exploration.

U.S. Space Program Built Using Nazi Technology

The early speculative study of space travel was international in focus. In 1904, a Russian named Tsiolkovsky published a detailed look at the mathematical requirements to propel a rocket into space. From there, U.S. rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard was the first to propose that rockets could be used to travel to the moon using liquid fuels (instead of more basic solid-fuel, or gunpowder rockets, used as early as the 13th century). His work was funded by the Smithsonian Institute, Charles Lindbergh, and later the Guggenheim Fund. Though largely ridiculed in the United States for his ideas, German scientists and mathematicians took notice.

Though earlier studies focused on the plausibility of space exploration, the first rockets to be built were in Germany during the early 1930s by a rocket club trying to experiment with actualizing these early conceptions. By the mid-1930s, the German military began a facility for space research on the Baltic Sea. There they developed the original ballistic missile (the V2 or “Vengeance Weapon 2”), considered the prototype for the first space rocket.

Toward the end of WWII, just a few months before Germany surrendered to the Allied forces in Europe, many of the scientists working on the Nazi rocket program surrendered to the United States, believing they would be able to levy their expertise for clemency. Their plan worked, and the plans and knowledge of the V2 that they brought to the U.S. were instrumental in the U.S. space program. The Soviet Union established a military facility devoted to rocket research as early as 1921. By 1933, two aeronautical engineers, Valentin Glushko and Sergey Korolyov, launched the first Soviet liquid-fuel rocket. Though the Soviets visited Germany’s rocket facility after WWII, they did not benefit from the immigration of German scientists as the U.S. did.

Satellites for Spying

Though the technology had been pursued for decades, the first rockets were not intended to be used as weapons. Instead, both the Soviet Union and U.S. rocket programs’ focus was to launch satellites into space with sophisticated cameras attached that could be used to spy on one another. Interestingly, this effort was chosen as a means to be in adherence to international law. By 1944, two treaties (the Paris Convention of 1919 Relating to the Regulation of Aerial Navigation and the Chicago Convention on International Aviation) prohibited states from entering the airspace over a state’s territory (from the ground to about 3.4 miles above the earth’s surface) without permission.² As a result, both the U.S. and the USSR sought spying capabilities outside the airspace of the other in the area known as aerospace, or the outermost layer of the earth’s surface and outer space.

In October 1957, the USSR launched the first aerospace satellite, Sputnik (Russian for “satellite”), via a ballistic missile.³ The U.S. military doubted that the USSR had the technological prowess to launch a satellite (as the ballistic missile testing had been kept secret until August of that same year). It looks like they needed those satellites for spying after all. In 1957 and 1958, the Soviets launched two larger satellites into space. The second satellite had a dog named Laika on board so the Soviets could show they could launch life into space. The dog, sadly, did not make it. The third satellite took measurements of the earth’s atmosphere. In 1960, Sputnik 5 took two dogs into space. Both survived.

One year after the orbit of Sputnik 2 (the first one with the dog) in 1957, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 1348, calling for the establishment of a Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). In the Resolution, the General Assembly both recognizes the “common interest of mankind in outer space” and that space should be “used for peaceful purposes only.” It further explicitly noted that the formation of COPUOS was to avoid “the extension of present national rivalries into [space].” In 1959, COPUOS became a permanent committee with 24 members. Today it has 84 members.

Initially, Eisenhower dismissed the Soviets’ success, calling the satellite “one small ball in the air.” In actuality, he welcomed the presence of the satellite as precedence for establishing the U.S. presence in space as well. U.S. public opinion, however, saw that science fiction was becoming a reality, and it was the Soviets who were making this happen. There was, as one historical record describes it, a “crisis of confidence” in the American public as it viewed the exploration into space as part of “America’s destiny.” Instead, one scholar writes that “the American response to the accomplishment of the Soviet Union was comparable to the reaction I could remember to Lindbergh's landing in France, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death.”

The result of this public reaction was for the Eisenhower administration to devote considerable funding and attention to scientific research. By the beginning of 1958, the U.S. (with the help of Dr. Wernher Von Braun, one of the key German emigres) launched their first satellite. To ensure the satellite was completed as soon as possible, Eisenhower ordered the army, navy, and air force to compete for the project (NASA was not created until July 1958). During the first attempt at a launch, Braun’s team used one of their ballistic launcher prototypes to get their own satellite to space in January of 1958.

The National Air & Space Agency (NASA) was publicly established by Eisenhower months after the launch of the first U.S. satellite in the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. The president’s first inclination was to have all U.S. space efforts, including those of a civilian character, managed by the Department of Defense. He was convinced, however, that it made more sense to create a separate civilian space agency to carry out an open program of scientific activities and to engage in international cooperation.

Meanwhile, a second organization called the National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO) was created to use the same technological advancements to spy on the Soviet Union. Though this program was created in 1958 as well, the details of this program did not become public knowledge until 1992. The Corona program produced spy satellites that would originally take pictures - with rolls of film having to be dropped, recovered by plane, and then manually developed - and eventually used radar and electronic-signaling to gather intelligence.

Discussions of Outer Space Law

With the space race really taking off (pun intended) in the late 1950s and early 1960s, western powers became concerned about the possibility that space could be militarized. As a result, the U.S. led several pushes in the UN to regulate space under international law, even calling for all-out disarmament. Addressing the General Assembly on September 22, 1960, President Eisenhower proposed that the principles of a treaty that focused on the Antarctic be applied to outer space and celestial bodies. Like Antarctica, he argued that no one state can make territorial claims, it should be used for peaceful purposes only, there should be the freedom of scientific investigation, and information about discoveries should be freely exchanged. The Soviet Union, however, was leading the space race and did not want to curb its advantage in space. As a result, it offered to consider space disarmament if the U.S. agreed to disarm some of its short- and medium-distance ballistic missile bases on Earth (where the USSR was at a relative disadvantage). The U.S. denied the deal.

To move forward on regulating, and ideally stopping, the weaponization of space, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 1721 in December of 1961. The Resolution reinforced that “Outer space and celestial bodies … are not subject to national appropriation” and requests all member-states participating in space launches to register their “space objects” to the United Nations for cataloging in a public registry.

In addition to being the first to put a satellite in orbit, the Soviets were also the first to put a person in space. On April 12, 1961, Russian Lt. Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth. Just one month later, Alan Shepard became the first American to fly into space, and in February of 1962, John Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth.

Following the Soviets’ successful launch of the first man into space (Yuri Gagarin) in April of 1961, President Kennedy tasked NASA with the goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. After receiving this mandate, NASA’s budget increased 89% in 1961 and then 101% more from 1961 numbers in 1962. It soon became a 34,000-person agency located in D.C. as well as ten other facilities around the country managed by various universities and industrial contractors.

Though Kennedy’s legacy includes the very public push to send Americans to the moon, NASA documents privately revealed that he was concerned about space as a second battlefield on which Cold War tensions could reach their peak. A month after his call to reach the moon, Kennedy approached the Soviet leader, Kruschev, with the idea of cooperating together on a moon landing. Khrushchev agreed if larger nuclear disarmament could be reached first.

Kennedy declined this agreement, though he returned to his original proposal in September 1963 after successfully negotiating with Kruschev to abandon their missiles in Cuba the previous fall during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He died just two months after suggesting new cooperation. It is believed, however, that Kruschev would have declined either way as the Soviets were attempting to launch their own moon program for the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Though the USSR had been against a treaty that regulated weapons in space, its outlook on this and other weapons issues changed after the Cuban Missile Crisis when the U.S. and USSR came to the brink of war. Moreover, scientific advancements confirmed that the radioactive fallout from a nuclear weapon was more severe, longer-lasting, and more widespread than initially believed.

In August of 1963, the Nuclear Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed, prohibiting the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, and in outer space (leaving underground testing as the only possible option). After this, on September 19, 1963, the Soviet Foreign Minister told the General Assembly that the Soviet Union wished to conclude an agreement banning the orbiting of objects carrying nuclear weapons. The U.S. ambassador replied that the United States had no intention of orbiting weapons of mass destruction, installing them on celestial bodies, or stationing them in outer space. The General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution on October 17, 1963, welcoming the Soviet and U.S. statements and calling upon all states to refrain from introducing weapons of mass destruction into outer space. Seeking to sustain the momentum for arms control agreements, the United States pressed for a treaty that would give further substance to the UN resolution. An agreement was reached on January 27, 1967. On April 25, the Senate gave unanimous consent to its ratification, and the treaty entered into force on October 10, 1967.

In the process of debating the Outer Space Treaty, there were issues about the obligations of states to rescue both astronauts and spacecraft when missions go awry. Specifically, there was concern that when a mission returned to Earth, it may not land in the high seas as anticipated. In such cases, there was concern by both the U.S. and USSR that the technological advancements and the astronauts themselves could be held captive by the other party. Though this agreement is in keeping with the Outer Space Treaty, this led a separate discussion to unfold concerning the rescuing of both persons and objects, of which the U.S. and USSR were on opposing sides.

Putting a Man on the Moon (1960s)

In the United States, Apollo moved forward as a high-priority program. After the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963, it became seen as a memorial to the fallen young president. Johnson, however, had no vision for what would become of NASA once this goal was accomplished and made no efforts to fund new programs. This effort was not as politically captivating as it once was. Though astronauts became real-world heroes, the U.S. government rested on laurels. Moreover, the Soviets made four failed attempts to launch a lunar landing craft between 1969 and 1972, including a launch-pad explosion in July of 1969. As a result, the U.S. public felt they had “won” the space race, and attention turned elsewhere.

It was under Nixon that NASA officially landed on the moon on July 20th, 1969. After the moon landing, Nixon agreed to fund the development of both a space shuttle (a larger reusable rocket) and a manned space station program. Nixon apparently seemed most interested in the idea of NASA developing space shuttles capable of disposing of nuclear waste into space. He did so rhetorically, however. Soon after making the public declaration for both programs, he proceeded to decrease NASA’s budget by 75 percent. NASA decided to focus its efforts on a space station.

Space Stations (1970s)

As early as 1969, the Soviets began to shift their emphasis from human spaceflight to the development of stations that would orbit the Earth and carry out extended observations. The first Soviet space station, called Salyut 1, was launched on April 19, 1971. Using some remaining hardware from the soon-to-be-canceled Apollo program, NASA developed Skylab, which launched in May of 1972. Skylab remained in orbit for six years, and experiments conducted aboard the craft obtained vast amounts of scientific data and demonstrated that humans could live and work productively in space for months at a time.

Under President Ford (an avid space fan) NASA’s prominence was resurrected in three different ways. In 1975, amidst a detente in Cold War tensions, an Apollo space shuttle rendezvoused and docked with a Soviet space shuttle to test landing and docking capacities among ships. A year later, Ford funded unmanned missions (e.g., Galileo to Jupiter) and the Hubble Space Telescope to increase observations beyond Earth’s orbit. By the end of the 1970s, however, (due to an economic recession) the Skylab program lost all its funding and had to be discontinued. The Soviets, however, continued to send five additional stations into orbit throughout the decade. At least one of these space stations, the Salyut 3, included an aircraft cannon aboard, which was considered capable of destroying a satellite. Though the Salyut 3 tracked American space endeavors, no attack ever occurred.

Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) (1980s)

Though Carter spoke highly of the space program (he once noted that “the challenge of space takes us very close to the heart of things”), in practice, there was little evolution in the program during his administration. In contrast, Reagan was among the most ardent presidential supporters of the space program. After a six-year hiatus in his first year in office, the first space shuttle, Columbia, launched its first mission. Between the launch of Columbia in 1981 and the Challenger, there were 24 space shuttle flights. For many, Reagan was present. As one author notes, “Reagan was thrilled, and he loved seeing NASA scientists and technicians at Houston Control waving small American flags when the launch was declared a success.”

Both his love of space and his desire to beat the Soviets in the arms race led Reagan to make two key military decisions related to space. In 1982 his Administration created a Space Command as part of the Air Force. And on March 23, 1983, he gave a speech calling for a nuclear weapons defense system in space. He named the program that he introduced the “Strategic Defense Initiative” or SDI. In theory, this program would use surveillance satellites to detect a nuclear missile from the USSR and then use space-based lasers and subatomic particle beams to explode the missile in space before it reached the atmosphere above the U.S.

In reality, this technology was (and really is) far from being realized. By the end of the century, the U.S. had spent $60 billion on the SDI and faced much condemnation by its opponents. It was Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy that gave SDI the nickname “Star Wars.” Though there was much debate over SDI’s cost, its political implications, and its technical feasibility, many argue that the projection of power inherent in this program was one of the key factors that led the USSR to give up on its Cold War stance.

In 1984, the president overruled most of his advisers and gave NASA his approval to develop a permanent space station. NASA sought that approval 15 years earlier and was forced to wait until the space shuttle was flying regularly. Reagan announced his approval in the most public way possible, during his January 25, 1984 State of the Union address. “A space station will permit quantum leaps in our research in science, communications, in metals, and in lifesaving medicines which could be manufactured only in space,” Reagan said. He also indicated the United States would invite its allies to participate in the space station program in the same speech.

A private-public partnership around security and strategic state initiatives was first coined the military-industrial complex by President Eisenhower in his farewell address. Though Eisenhower served as a Supreme Allied Commander during WWII, after his farewell address warned that "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

In 1984, the U.S. government agreed to allow the commercial use of space via the Commercial Space Launch Act. At first, this act was intended to reduce the cost of launching NASA rockets into space by having private contractors operate the launch pads. Such contracts went to early defense industry giants in aerospace engineering and defense, like Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

Russia's Early Offerings of Space Tourism

While the United States continued to allow private corporations on-ground support of space exploration, Russia began offering opportunities for private individuals to fund its space programs through space tourism, or the recreational exploration of space by private individuals. Beginning in 2001, investors paid around $20 million to the Russian space program to fly aboard its Soyuz capsules and then spend time aboard the International Space Station. Participants in space tourism included Dennis Tito (an American investor in 2001), Mark Shuttleworth (a South African venture capitalist in 2002), Gregory Olsen (an American engineer and business owner in 2005), the first woman space tourist Anousheh Ansari (an Iranian-born American telecommunications entrepreneur in 2006), Charles Simonyi (a Hungarian-born American software architect in 2007 and 2009), Richard Garriott (and American video game developer in 2008), Guy Laliberte (a Canadian founder of Cirque du Soleil in 2009), and Maezawa Yusaku (Japanese entrepreneur in 2021).

NASA Invests in Private Space Companies

The United States began to consider the commercialization of space exploration more beginning in 2004 with the passage of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 and the NASA Authorization Act of 2004, which together allowed commercial investments in all aspects of the government space program. There were at least two reasons for this shift. First, the Russians had shown the private investment of individuals in space tourism could be lucrative. Second, the U.S. had defunded its own shuttle program following the disintegration of the Challenger Space Shuttle in 2003 upon re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. Without its own shuttle program, the United States would have to rely on Russia to reach destinations in space. By encouraging private investments in shuttle services, the U.S. could circumvent relying on Russia and still achieve its freedom of movement in its space exploration. In 2002, Elon Musk established SpaceX, and in 2004, Richard Branson Virgin Galactic. Both of these companies had the stated goal of building a shuttling service for private individuals into space and also with the intention of taking U.S. astronauts into space as well.

By 2009, SpaceX launched an unmanned space flight (Falcon9) and the next year a capsule capable of carrying passengers (Dragon). In September of 2014, the United States granted both SpaceX and Bowing contracts to build multi-passenger space capsules for shuttling U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station. In 2020, SpaceX began testing its Starship model spacecraft, meant for longer voyages to the moon, Mars, and potentially beyond. In April 2021, the U.S. offered SpaceX a nearly $3 billion contract for a Starship capsule capable of taking astronauts to the moon by the end of this decade. With the growing investments in SpaceX by the government, the company is stated to be worth around $74 billion.

Billionaire's Summer in Space

On July 11th, 2021, Richard Branson successfully funded the launch of a six-person rocket he had been developing for decades, the SpaceShipTwo, which climbed around 50,000 feet into the air. Instead of launching from the ground, this rocket dropped from an aircraft before firing its ascent engines and then gliding back to "Earth for a space shuttle-like runway landing." Though Branson plans to offer tickets for initially around $200,000, his stated goal is to make space "open for everybody." So far, more than 700 people have already signed up for commercial passenger flights.

Less than ten days later, on July 20th, Jeff Bezos was the second billionaire to reach the edge of space on Blue Origin's New Shephard launch vehicle. Though not a long space voyage, "New Shepard's flight did take the crew past the Kármán line, the internationally-recognized boundary of space, at nearly 330,000 feet, or roughly 62 miles above the Earth." Unlike Branson's design, the New Shephard launched from the ground like a conventional rocket. Instead of returning via the sea, however, the capsule used parachutes and braking rockets upon reentry to safely land over land.

Though SpaceX continues to launch astronauts into space, Elon Musk has not ventured on one of the flights like the other two billionaire founders. Though there is speculation as to why this is so (and Musk has even reserved a ticket on one of Branson's future flights), his strategy for SpaceX is to be less focused on private space tourism and more on working with NASA to fund larger interplanetary missions. In previous interviews, Musk has determined his goal is to make humanity a “multi-planetary species.” At one point, he even admitted his perspective that, “if this species is going to survive, we kind of have to escape.”

Growing Concerns About Private Companies in Space

NASA is torn when it comes to the growing role of private companies in space. In its Safety Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel report, it notes both that companies, like SpaceX, have "tremendous upside potential - and are accompanied by equally tremendous challenges for managing the risk of human space exploration."

Optimists explain that NASA is self-funding and controlling its largest missions, including landing its latest rover on Mars, launching the James Webb telescope (which will help us determine the origins of the universe), and gathering samples from an asteroid located 200 million miles away). From this perspective, if private companies can run the more foundational and rote processes (e.g., launching of capsules and shuttling of passengers), then NASA can focus on stretching the outer limits of space exploration. Even NASA's director of commercial spaceflight feels comfortable knowing that NASA's future is in the project areas for which "the barriers to entry are still too high for the private sector to really make a compelling business case." That is, where it is too costly for companies to be able to invest. As the Washington Post describes it, let NASA blaze the trails and open "new frontiers," and let the private industries takeover "in the way homesteaders expanded into the West."

However, not everyone is as rosy in their perspective of the future role of private companies in space. Specifically, critics point to the requirement of states to be liable for any object launched into space from its territory, even by non-governmental entities. This is a lot of responsibility for the acts of private companies, without a lot of control over them. Others point to the inherent difference in the goals of private companies and governments in space. Again, the Outer Space Treaty requires all states to consider space to be the "province of all mankind." Yet, the nature of a corporation is to enrich market shares to expand profits and at the expense of other companies. Though states have also competed for dominance in space, the nature of companies is explicitly competitive. Still others point to private companies beginning to invest in the large expansive areas in which NASA claims it still has exclusive rights. As just one example, Google offered its "lunar Xprize" competition, which called for privately funded teams to be the first to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit hi-definition video and images back to earth.

Specific questions arise with the growing success of companies in space:

(1) What if private companies begin dominating space travel to the exclusion of states?

Consider piracy on the open seas without the legal protection of strong state navies seeking to keep these shipping lanes open. What would happen if SpaceX began denying astronauts trips into space, and or Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin only offered transportation with strings attached (e.g., tax incentives, policies passed that benefit them, etc.)

(2) What if private companies begin claiming territory exclusively for themselves on celestial bodies (e.g., Mars)?

in addition to shuttling services, some companies are interested in creating private space stations. Axiom Space is an American company working on building a space station that is twice the size of the ISS. Though it will not be permanently established on a celestial body, and instead float in space, it will be open only to those who pay to have access to it. With this new milestone, the future of private launches and modules in space will shift the open accessibility norm in space (see Article 12 of the Outer Space Treaty above). Further, other companies (such as ICON) have been working on designing 3-D buildings that can be constructed on celestial bodies going forward.

(3) What if private companies begin mining and extracting resources from celestial bodies?

And exclusive claims may only be the beginning. The mining of space is estimated to be of value at nearly trillion dollars, though no mining projects are yet to be underway. With such elements as aluminum, calcium, silicon, iron, magnesium, thorium, uranium, and abundance of potassium, phosphorous, and other rare earth elements, states are competing with each other to secure access to these deposits. As a result, they may overlook the role of private companies in this extraction if it means they can have superiority over other states.

(4) What if private companies used their dominance in space to begin holding individuals and states hostage?

One of Elon Musk's latest initiatives is for SpaceX to invest in the launching of more than 40,000 satellites. Together, these satellites will form Starlink, a nexus of telecommunication satellites around the globe that will bring internet connectivity to any point on Earth. This project is estimated to cost $1 trillion worldwide and is justified as a key step in the colonization of Mars, but the plan would substantively exclude any other internet service provider from Earth if successful. Currently, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has given permission for SpaceX to launch 12,000 satellites, while there currently are only about 4,300 estimated satellites in orbit around Earth.