Corporate cosmos: How commercial American space imagines our future and shapes our present

Over the past ten years, and without a lot of public or political attention, space has
become a site of commercial investment and development. Already much in our daily
lives depends on growing satellite systems, crowding Earth’s orbit, for communication,
navigation, weather information, and the surveillance and prediction of climate
change patterns. And in just a few years ambitious plans for industrial development
in outer space will, too, be on the threshold of fruition: helium and mineral mining,
water extraction, solar engineering, and permanent base building. We have entered
the age of the orbital economy and the rise of commercial space actors.

This report explores the ideas and ambitions of what is currently the most dominant
force within that new landscape: the American space industry, which is effectively an
extension of American tech, and as such wields unparalleled forms of private power.
More specifically, the report unpacks an American space industry driven not just by
profit, but by two grand-scale visions of the future. Firstly, a tech-optimist vision of
space as a climate solution: a both profitable and sustainable way out of contemporary
ecological dilemmas. Secondly, a tech-libertarian vision of space as a place of political
revolution: a realm free from the reach of states, and as such an arena in which the
virtues of market innovation might be displayed.

As the report concludes, commercial American space, like much of the wider tech
industry, is not simply a passive government instrument or partner, blindly loyal to the
axioms of American statecraft, liberal democracy, or a rule-based world order.
Ultimately, it is a critic of deliberative, regulatory statecraft, and an advocate of
corporate leadership as the governance form of the future. Only CEO activism, much
of the American space industry believes, will be visionary, agile, risk-willing, and – if
need be – ruthless enough, to navigate the complexities of a high-paced, high-tech,
and crisis-ridden future.