Internationalism in Spaceflight
Jeffrey Miyamoto2013 July 22

Abstract: In the realist perspective, the international order is largely impotent. If a nation has enoughrelative power, it will ignore any conventions that seek to tame it. This paper argues that outer space
is an exception by examining the durability of the egalitarian outer space legal regime. Even thoughcertain nations have and have had a sustained and overwhelming technological, economic, andmaterial preponderance, there have been no serious challenges, certainly nothing long-lived, to thetreaties, conventions, and norms that govern outer space activities. Instead, nations have chosen tocollaborate more often than not even though the bounties promised by an outer space domination are
staggeringly appealing. The paper's argument is established through a historical exegesis followed bya reflection on the qualities that characterize spaceflight activities in the modern-day. There may yet
be a substantive role for the international order and it is possible that humanity's outer space
activities point the way.

Introduction

On June 7, 1494, the Holy See, keen to mend incipient fractures emerging between its
leading states, mediated a concord between Spain and Portugal at the small town of Tordesillas. In
the agreement, both sides generously gave to each other half of the Earth.1 Spain was to receive thebulk of the recently discovered New World and Portugal would take most of Africa and Eurasia.
Both were to have dominion over civilizations far more advanced than anything found within
Christendom. Other aspirational powers in Europe had no say at this conference. The non-European
world population, then numbering at around 450 million, was completely unaware of theseproceedings.2 Unsurprisingly, this order did not last and countries ignored those decisions as soon as
they could.
Humanity stands on the precipice of incorporating yet another tremendous domain into thesocial order: outer space. Like at Tordesillas, a binary relationship between two leading states has
been the force defining the contours of the arrangement. Likewise, it is reasonable to ask whether or
not the arrangement decided today can last? According to the realist, the answer is, decisively, in thenegative. Kenneth Waltz argued that the determination of the international regime is merely thebalance of power and that states with the military strength overwhelm any attempts at opposition.
Stephen Krasner's landmark paper on the emergence of the telecommunications regime discusses thereasoning behind this perspective.3 Although there were efforts to impose an international order,
those attempts came to a standstill as certain countries had the power to break out of those confines.
The discussion concerning the international regime in telecommunications sheds somelight on the model that is typically envisioned by the internationalist. An international order istypically conceived of as a way to approach a more egalitarian and fairer distribution of benefits
between the various actors. Those with greater aspirations would be discouraged from acting on
those desires and those with less power would have an avenue to act on their ambitions more freely
and cooperatively within the broader community. The reason for the breakdown is that for certain
states in specific situations, there is no incentive and so Krasner contends it is folly to apply freemarket logic to predict or expect a distribution that approaches equilibrium.
In this paper, I propose that, in the domain of outer space, this supposition is notnecessarily the prevailing one. The analysis of this paper seeks to clarify the longevity of the outerspace legal foundations, which according to the realist theory, should have been already long
dislodged. There are a few treaties that have received unanimous assent from every nation withspacefaring capabilities, including those that are well poised for a dramatic rise. All nations have

1

Stephen R. Brown, 1494: How a Family Feud in Medieval Spain Divided the World in Half (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012)
134-146.
2
ibid
3
Stephen D. Krasner, “Global Communications and National Power,” World Politics 43 (1991) 336-366.

agreed upon a framework that prohibits the weaponizing of space as well as the elimination of any
property privileges. The draft of this Outer Space Treaty of 1967 also adopts a decidedly
humanitarian tone, declaring space to be the "province of all mankind."4 Treaties that followed thisone have assumed a similar tone. According to the United Nations, these agreements demonstrate thefollowing commitment.

The international legal principles in these five treaties provide for non-appropriation ofouter space by any one country, arms control, the freedom of exploration, liability fordamage caused by space objects, the safety and rescue of spacecraft and astronauts, theprevention of harmful interference with space activities and the environment, thenotification and registration of space activities, scientific investigation and the exploitationof natural resources in outer space and the settlement of disputes. Each of the treaties lays
great stress on the notion that the domain of outer space, the activities carried out therein
and whatever benefits might accrue therefrom should be devoted to enhancing thewell-being of all countries and humankind, and each includes elements elaborating thecommon idea of promoting international cooperation in outer space activities.

There are two puzzles at the heart of this inquiry. First, why did such a framework evenemerge? In Krasner's study of telecommunications, it was posited that the only factor holding backgreat power states is when the situation is such that cooperation is more beneficial individually.
However, this was not the case at the time of the treaty's ratification; only the United States and theSoviet Union possessed spaceflight capabilities then and other nations had neither the will nor thetechnology to become challengers in any capacity.
Second, what accounts for the durability of the Outer Space Treaty and the success ofsubsequent agreements that sought to further and consolidate the spirit of that humanist vision forouter space?5 In the decades since the ratification of those treaties, one can infer that nations havebeen largely content with their persistence as there exists no serious challenge to the reign of thisorder. On the surface, this does not gel with the realist vision. According to Krasner, any type of
lasting international regime would merely be an uneasy compromise, wobbling precariously by theflimsy chicken legs of a temporary and fleeting practicality. Nothing in that worldview can provide
an account for the apparent strengthening of an international order that no one has any incentive tobow down before.

United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Useof Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies,” United Nations
5
ibid. Outer space has fallen under aegis of five international agreements, all of which were decided with virtual consensus.
Collectively, these treaties espouse agreements and sentiments for the exclusive peaceful usage of outer space and all other heavenly
objects, the abolition of space property on the Moon or other such objects, and the collective rescue and return of any stray satellites
or value debris upon reentry.
4This paper proposes that to unilaterally alter this regime demands certain conditions thatare difficult for any lone actor to meet. For a state to challenge the Outer Space Treaty and its ilk, it
would first have to bolster its domestic capabilities and then follow through with the opportunity to
use those capabilities. For a variety of reasons, this is difficult. More importantly, shared institutions
already established and entrenched in the international realm resist any would-be efforts to remake itunilaterally as they are, by their very nature, auto-consolidating. In other words, as time goes by, itgets progressively more difficult for each actor to implement their own designs as something else isalready occupying the same place.
The dependent variable is the durability of the outer space legal regime. The independent
variables are the various qualities that define the nature of outer space activities. In order, the ones
discussed in this paper are the budgets and timelines typical to outer space plans, the kinds of actors
involved in carrying forward spaceflight, international space projects, and the outer space culture.
These variables have been selected by looking at the major themes of the history of space
exploration. It is the contention of this paper that each of these factors constrain outer space
jingoism.
The argument in this paper is first established through a historical exegesis of the Space
Age. Certain forces moved in concert in a manner that encouraged restraint over the tendency andthe desire to single-mindedly pursue national aims in outer space. Following the historicalinterpretation, the paper engages in an examination of several ongoing cases that continue to bind thenational tendency that one might usually expect. This shows that the historical forces that have given
shape to what space exploration is today are ongoing phenomena.
One of the legacies of the realist worldview is the futility of the international institution asa mediator for national disputes. All of the forces mentioned throughout this paper challenge thisassumption as they can be cultivated, incubated, and reinforced through such institutions.

The History of the Space Age

For a while, space exploration proceeded along the typical vector of any technologicaladvancement, that is rapid, if not exponential growth and development. In the similar field of
aerospace, humans had, within fifty years, advanced from a very basic machine cobbled together
with the odd bicycle part into an international system of gleaming jetliners ferrying tens of thousandsof passengers daily across continents and oceans in a matter of hours.6
To the early observer, the roaring start of the Space Age brought forth similar
prognostications. Just two years after the Russian accomplishment, an American postmaster general
6James Tobin, To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004). The
inaugural flight lasted only twelve seconds and went only a distance of around a hundred feet, shorter than the wingspans of many
modern-day jetliners.

promised intercontinental ballistic mail delivery within years. As farfetched as they seem nowadays,
these were not simply the ravings of figures on the fringe. The example of rocket mail had real
support in government indicating that even credible individuals at the center were preparing for thisnew outcome.7 There was no reason not to from their standpoint. In the short decades following thelaunch of Sputnik, humankind had, among other things, visited the moon, sent spacecraft to all of theplanets and beyond, and built a permanent human presence in the heavens.
However, what seemed like such an auspicious start came to a shuddering halt. By the endof the 2000s, many observers were ready to call for an ignominious end to the Space Age when the
National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) called for the retirement of the Space Shuttle
without any planned successor waiting in the wings.8 After 1969's moon landing, widely considered
the apogee of human accomplishments in outer space, space programs around the world had fallenfrom the grace of the public and most had to settle in for a long decline into obscurity precipitated bya tremendous upsurge in apathy and pitched and protracted fights against relentless attempts to cut
down financing.
This was not the matter of running up against a technological limit. In fact, even without
further pushing the limits of the state of the art, the ambitions of space exploration can go muchfurther than humanity's accomplishments to date.9 This was, instead, a matter of choice, whicharises from a situation where nations around the world began reining in the fiscal largesse onceenjoyed by their space agencies.
Space exploration was never about making contributions to scientific discovery. The
impetus for the huge space agency budgets was to secure victory in the Cold War. The further
discussions to expand space program objectives always ran into a wall as soon as politicians lostinterest in space as a proxy battlefield. From the perspective of the United States, the space race
ended with the defeat of the Soviet Union and with it, the need for the generous budgets that typicalof the early Space Age also departed.10 This was not even a gradual process. In the United States,
NASA had to fend off violently aggressive budget cuts as soon as the Apollo program had met
Kennedy's promise
However, this is not to say that there are no other substantive benefits to a unilateraldominion in space. On the contrary, the prestige and resources one stands to derive from thedomination of space are tremendous in both qualitative and quantitative terms.11 But this never
The Eisenhower Library, “The Papers of Arthur E. Summerfield,” http://eisenhower.archives.gov/Research/Finding_Aids/S.html“Before man reaches the moon your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or toAustralia by guided missiles.... We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.” The United States government commemorated thisinitiative with collectible postcards commemorating the first and only test launch of a rocket powered mail delivery system.
Needless to say, this pronouncement proved wildly inaccurate.
8
Kerry Sheridan, "Neil Armstrong Says US Space Program Embarrassing," The Associated Press, September 22, 2011.
9
ibid
10
Richard D. Lyon, “12.5% Slash in NASA Funding Will Force Sharp Program Cut,” New York Times, February 3, 1970, NewYork edition. Just months after the successful conclusion of the moonshot, Congress already began putting these constraints on
NASA’s budget.
11
Denis Healey, “The Sputnik and Western Defence,” International Affair 38 (1958) 145-146. Planners in the west have envisioned,
7

emerged nor did even the beginnings of a serious bid at space domination. For several reasons, thespace programs of nations lost their budgets in full knowledge of this. Mostly, this has to do with thelong time frames that typify greater space ambitions. The appeal of Cold War rhetoric lies in theeasily packaged and understandable appeal of the argument. The spokespeople of the time couched
the argument as one of immediacy and urgency. By contrast, further space ambitions are on atimeline that ends in the hazy future, many decades from now and there has been no appealing way
of tying those efforts back to a like theme. In 1973, NASA sought to tie its quest for a budget
restoration by invoking a speculative Sputnik but to no avail.12
What this implies is that the realist argument holds only when the timeframe is digestible
for policy actors. If the timeline is speculative or if it is too far away into the future, the argument
loses its potency and urgency. The same should be said of any of the proposed budgets. If thecommitment becomes too exorbitant, countries face a situation that requires too much action
performed in unison. Nations are not perfectly coordinated monoliths. If the task demands too muchcoordination, it can move beyond the range of what is tolerable and this has indeed happened to theclassical space program.

The Continuation of the Space AgeWith the retirement of the Space Shuttle and the surprising absence of a successor from
NASA, many observers were ready to call an end to the Space Age. Although old -- shuttle telemetry
systems were devised before the microprocessor -- the Space Shuttle was not simply outmoded
technology due for retirement; at the time of the decommissioning of the very last vessel, it was the
only American way to perform delivery missions for the ISS and the only human way to capture andrepair satellites, a function called upon frequently during its service lifetime.13 For these reasons,most expected that the cancellation of its erstwhile successor would lead to stay of execution. Thisnever materialized and, instead, the United States put itself in the awkward position of having toenlist Russian help to bring astronauts to the ISS.
Although this was the symbolic nadir of the decline of the post-Cold War space agency,
calling this the end of a Space Age was a premature pronouncement. For most of the several decadesof space exploration, outer space accomplishments were seen as a tool in the statecraft of prestige
and to a much lesser extent, in the spirit of scientific inquiry. As a result, the positive externalities
could not be internalized by the private market because there was no price and so the state was thedriving force behind all outer space efforts.
feared and salivated over the possibility of an outer space weapons platform for a very long time now. The material benefits may
also be tremendous. According to the startup Planetary Resources, a relatively humble asteroid could yield resources
12
Robert A. Wright, “NASA Chief Seeks More Funds In ’73,” New York Times, October 3, 1971, New York edition. James C.
Fletcher, head of NASA in 1973 argued that this would force the United States to scramble to “outrace another Sputnik.”
13
T.A. Heppenheimer, History of the Space Shuttle (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002).

A group of atypical actors rose in the place of the disinterested state to become the primary
momentum behind the maintenance and development of space exploration. Nowadays, private
industry startups funded by adventurous maverick billionaires are promising a revolution in
spacefaring. Some are rather moderate, hoping only to enter into the market for services
long-dominated by established and reputable defense companies.14 Others are trawling through thehistory books and resurrecting forgotten and abandoned business plans like that of space tourism.15
Still more have ambitious goals in mind involving the capture and retrieval of an asteroid to bepillaged for mining on Earth.16
The consequences for the prospects of a resurgent mood in nationalism are particularly
dire. Private industry types do not have the incentive to act in any particular national interest as theforemost concern is profit-making. This is not just speculative; examples abound in just a few of theyears since this concept came into vogue. British magnate Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has had
absolutely no qualms about moving its space operations to America as there they have access to themost effective launch sites and the expertise of a vibrant, burgeoning aerospace industry.17 On asimilar note, private corporations will not and cannot limit the scope of their activities to theconfines of a national border. Most of the business models of these industries depend on the rapid
decay of price; they become untenable as soon as they are bound by a limited audience.18
This change is apparent not only in the grassroots found on the outside of the space agency.
For decades, space agencies built their achievements on the science and labor derived from powerfuldefense industry contractors. In the earlier era of fiscal largesse, the profit motive of these players
was coopted into the national imperative as a subset of the military-industrial complex. For example,
although the Saturn V rocket was constructed by Boeing, all of the research and all of the
manufacture was paid for with public funds.19
Nowadays, the far tighter budget constraints placed on the space agency means that
defense companies are no longer mere extensions of government will. Rather, they are now partners.
One of the ways the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has managed to cope with theirstagnant budgets is to jointly develop new space technologies. The H-series rocket, co-developed“SpaceX Goes to the ISS and This Time It Means Business,” The Economist, October 13th, 2012. SpaceX, and its earlier
forerunner Orbital Sciences, have long argued that they are capable of performing the mundane functions of the space agency at a
price far discounted from the usual rate. Part of their plan involves better administrative structure and the use of technologies
abandoned by previous research programs.
15“Virgin Galactic: Flame On,” The Economist, April 29th, 2013. The idea for space tourism has been around for a very long time.
Even in the 19th century, science fiction authors imagined pleasure cruises taken to the stars. This was even floated during theheyday of NASA among some circles. However, only in the last decade or so has the idea received any lasting traction and theimpetus for this change comes almost exclusively from new, privately held enterprises like Virgin Galactic.
16“Fool’s Platinum?” The Economist, March 9th, 2013.
17“Virgin Galactic: Flame On.”
18
ibid.
19
“Companies Also Accused With NASA of Waste in Lunar Program,” New York Times, October 4, 1963, New York edition.
NASA's relationship with these corporations was so close that many in Congress accused those in the aerospace industry of forming
an alliance as a conspiracy to secure and inflate finances. Although besieged by accusations of such gravity, NASA's argument for
procurement was largely persuasive and successful. During the peak of the Apollo development, the NASA budget had becomenearly five percent of annual American expenditure, representing the single greatest peacetime commitment in American history.
14

with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), is emblematic of this change in the distribution of
procurement.20
Without a doubt, this is a smarter use of funds as it allows the space agency to do morewith the same amount of money. However, this represents yet another limitation that checks national
ambitions. Private companies like MHI do not enter these partnerships out of a sense of altruism.
Rather, they do so because space agencies are offering opportunities for profitability. For its
industrial knowhow, MHI receives licenses and patents and the ability to deploy that technology inother business arenas. In 2012, Mitsubishi performed its first international commercial satellite
launch with the H-rocket and has tapped it as a key component in this as a part of its future growthstrategy.21 The way these resources are now being allocated represents a new constraint on thenationalistic space agency. The private industry embraces only projects that are likely to bring profit
and it also demands the freer usage and access to what would have been the jealously guarded statesecrets of yesteryear.
In summary, outer space may soon be looking far more like the market driven regimes that
we see in other sectors. The regulations demanded by a landscape of privateers cannot be
constructed in a manner that overly skews everything in the favor of an exclusive party. First,
competition is the only way to decay pricing. Second, the actors are already crossing borders and so
the argument for protecting domestic interests does not hold the same sway. Finally, and mostimportantly, having access to a global consumer base is only going to happen if the field tends to be
more equitable than exclusive.

Case Study: The International Space Station

Today, the International Space Station is a remarkable feat of engineering technology. It
was built through the efforts of over thirty different countries. It is likely the single most expensive
project ever undertaken by humankind. It has played host to the longest sustained human presence inouter space, a duration of nearly thirteen years at the time of writing this paper.22 It is also functions
as a restraint on nationalism in space.
The ISS began as an exercise in realism as it finds its roots in the Cold War milieu.
Originally, it was called Space Station Freedom, a Reagan era proposal meant to counter Soviet
space station technologies. The tenor of the project was incredibly combative; it was unveiled as a

20

"Japan to Rely More on Private Sector to Develop Cheaper Rocket," Asahi Shimbun, May 29, 2013. This would represent acomplete change from the typical developmental structure seen in the development of the components for the moon program.
21
Chris Cooper and Kiyotaka Matsuda, "Mitsubishi Heavy Makes Japan's First Commercial Satellite Launch," Bloomberg, May 18,
2012. In 2012, Japan carried into space a satellite for the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. This was not just a onetime affair.
Mitsubishi and JAXA both plan on having many more commercial satellite launches as the global market is rapidly growing andcurrently, dominated by only a few players that Japan is more than capable of competing with.
22“International Space Station,” NASA, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html#.Ueec1awvmXA.

part of the Reagan Administration's ill-fated "Star Wars" plan to weaponize space.23 That it
developed into the premier and enduring symbol of international cooperation in space activities is atestament to the power of the forces in outer space exploration that drive nations together.
The first national partner drawn into the orbit of Space Station Freedom's designs was
24

Japan.

In Japan, the United States saw another competitor in outer space and to include it in theseplans was seen as a way to check its national ambitions. In the report compiled to discuss America's
new role in the changing world order, scientists sounded the alarm against falling behind once more.

The Soviets are now the sole long-term inhabitants of low-Earth orbit. The
first, and only, U.S. space station, Skylab, was visited by three crews ofastronauts before it was vacated in 1974; the U.S. has had no space station
since. The Soviets have had eight space stations in orbit since the mid-1970s.
The latest, Mir, was launched in 1986 and could accommodate cosmonauts
and scientific experiments for nearly a decade before the U.S. Space Station
can accommodate astronauts in 1995. The United States has clearly lostleadership in these two areas, and is in danger of being surpassed in manyothers during the next several years.

But the reason the United States and Japan agreed to such a plan was obviously not adesire to place limits on themselves. Rather, the project costs of such an enterprise were far too
exorbitant for either government to bear on its lonesome. In the same report sounding the alarm
against a decline in American leadership was also a rather startling concession considering the
all-or-nothing attitude of the previous climate. Said the authors of the report, “leadership does not
require that the U.S. be preeminent in all areas and disciplines of space enterprise. In fact, the broad
spectrum of space activities and the increasing number of spacefaring nations make it virtually
impossible for any nation to dominate in this way.”
This very same force drove other states together as well. By the finalization of its approvalin the 1990s, the ISS involved thirty different countries, including every nation with significant
spacefaring capabilities at the time.25 The realist motive was probably also a concern in the calculusof each and every ISS member but inarguably, dominating the drive to the expansion of this project
was the intimidating sticker price coupled with the prestige and scientific value of having a spaceDavid E. Sanger, “Many Experts Doubt ‘Star Wars’ Could Be Effective by the mid 90’s,” New York Times, February 11, 1987,
New York edition. The plan failed as a result of the technological requirement that would have been demanded by the entire
program. This is a particularly apt example of the budget, coordination, and timeline issue discussed already earlier in the paper.
24
The NASA History Foundation, “NASA Leadership and America’s Future in Space,” The National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, http://history.nasa.gov/riderep/begin.htm.
25“International Space Station,” NASA. The Russian contribution was a particularly powerful sweetener for American politicians
as some saw it as one of the last and most symbolic triumphs over the Soviet Union. The Russian part of the International Space
Station was the incomplete planned sequel to the Mir space station.
23

station.
But the lasting contribution of the ISS in the field of international politics is not that it is
one of the technological and engineering wonders of the modern age. Rather, its legacy may still be
obscured and not fully revealed for years to come. The ISS has yielded scientific strides and prestige
for every one of the participants and this has happened by dividing costs between projectcontributors and in doing so, it has cultivated a new normal in what governments expect to be able toaccomplish through a limited budget.
Nowadays, one can scarcely find the willpower to furnish an ambitious space programwith the required fiscal support. The situation becomes even direr when the nationalist argument isremoved from the equation. This is not just speculation. NASA, the agency with the most capability
and the one in the world with, by far, the easiest argument for its own expansion, is finding it very
difficult to see through a growth in size because of this new climate of internationalism in space
agency budget planning. The type of budgeting demanded by American congressional committees
envisions a much broader role for collaborative finance.
In 2004, the Bush Administration announced Constellation, a wildly ambitious plan tobring NASA into, what was intended to essentially be, a second golden age. Within six years, it was
scrapped. Many observers state that its cancellation ought to be blamed on its gross budget overruns
but this explanation does not hold up upon closer examination as space programs are no strangers tobudget overruns and Constellation was not significantly deviant from the typical. Although there
were many factors at play, the documents at the time point to another answer. Part of the reasonscited by the Obama Administration was the failure of the plan to incorporate enough of the fiscal
advantages of internationalism. By this point, the House of Representatives had already conducted
several studies on the feasibility of a smarter budgetary allocation by drawing in global expertise.26
To challenge the laws that dominate space is going to be a project that requires thedevelopment of indigenous space capabilities. Collaboration is not going to lead to such an outcome
as the diversity of the stakeholders and their opposing interests holds back any individual actor frombreaking free with impunity. Even though NASA is the far more powerful agency in any partnerships
formed with the ESA, it willingly gives up prominent roles to deepen and make more extensive
partnerships. In the Cassini mission to Saturn, the Huygens was a space probe designed exclusively
in European laboratories; this was a conscious concession to their complaints of being relegated toancillary, unimportant positions.27
But not only does collaboration contribute nothing to individual space capabilities, it evencounts as a net negative to any aspirants of space conquest. What the ISS demonstrates is thatcooperation, once begun, becomes a self-multiplying force that automatically grows in power byKenneth Chang, “For a Moon Colony, Technology Is the Easy Part,” New York Times, January 27, 2012.
Ralph Lorenz and Jacqueline Mitton, Lifting Titan's Veil: Exploring the Giant Moon of Saturn (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000).
26
27

virtue of its own existence. It sorely weakens the reasoning for the handling of space objectives
unilaterally and it introduces and expands a new conceptual approach to the planning of outer spacebudgets that has proven far too enticing for any mature spacefaring state to ignore. And the more thisgrows and the more success it sees, the range for going through with, and even conceptualizing, a
return to a unilateral space program driven exclusively by the concerns of one nation becomes evermore distant.
The International Space Station is but the most prominent of many trends in space science,and indeed science in general, that comprise a seismic groundswell of technological collaboration.
The largest telescopes and observatories today are being built through the efforts of multinational
consortiums.28 Likewise, attempts at creating the first nuclear fusion power plant involve many
countries with considerable expertise in the fields of engineering and science.29 It seems that we arein an age where the average science project is far beyond the means of any lone nation. Even themost powerful of states find it difficult to bring any of these projects into complete fruition. The
Superconducting Super Collider, intended to be the largest particle accelerator in the world, wascanceled because American politicians saw that it was preferable to enter into the concord behind
what would become the Large Hadron Collider.30
One can say with some authority that this fiscal barrier is only going to harden as we go
further into the future. The engineering challenges behind some of the greatest of human ambitions
for outer space go far beyond anything seen today. By the conservative estimations of NASA, amanned mission to Mars is going to cost $300 billion dollars.31 To retrieve an asteroid back to Earthfor the purposes of mining is going to demand a $100 billion dollar investment upfront.32 Not onlyis the long-coveted space elevator is going to involve a Herculean engineering effort, its realization
will require a tremendous research investment in the creation of high strength polymers that are yet
unknown to humanity.33
It is not just the cost that presents an obstacle. The nature of science is that it draws upon
the communal contributions of the entire professional community. To overcome the many hurdles
that stand in the way of innovations like the life systems that would make a Mars mission feasible or
the synthetics required for the construction of a space elevator is going to require, more than ever,“Thirty Meter Telescope,” http://www.tmt.org/about-tmt. Slated to be the largest telescope ever built, the 30 Meter Telescope
involves institutions from America, India, Japan, China, and Canada. The Very Large Telescope array in Chile was constructed in
the same manner but between European member nations. The recent activity European Southern Observatory attests to the power ofcollaboration in furthering the research of science. After integration, European nations have taken the lead in developing the largest
telescopes and are even considering the construction of a behemoth with a 100 meter aperture!
29“The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor,” http://www.iter.org/proj/iterhistory. The ITER project is a very serious
attempt at proving the feasibility of nuclear fusion and its consortium involves nations encompassing over half of the world
population.
30
Jeffrey Mervis and Charles Seife, “Lots of Reasons, but Few Lessons,” Science 302-5642 (2003): 38-40.
31Kenneth Chang, “For a Moon Colony, Technology Is the Easy Part,” New York Times.
32“Fool's Platinum,” The Economist.
33
Tim Hornyak, "Japan Plans Snail-Paced Space Elevator for 2050," CNET February 23, 2012,
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57383872-1/japan-plans-snail-paced-space-elevator-for-2050/ If this ever works, this isgoing to require the construction of carbon nanotubes on a scale never before seen in engineering.
28

global expertise.

The Challenges on the Horizon

If there is any nation that poses a challenge for the vision of space presented in this paper
thus far, it is China. With its booming economy and revanchist attitude to historical relations -- manyin China view its newly acquired modernity as a triumphant return to a position of primacy after
centuries of what it sees as imperialistic humiliation -- it is reasonable that China has both the fiscal
fitness and the popular will to initiate the second phase of a competitive Space Age.
Recent developments in Chinese space exploration indicate that this is indeed a nation thatcan buck the trends that have coagulated the interests of its spacefaring colleagues. It has announced
a tremendously aggressive time schedule for its National Space Administration; by 2020, it wishes tohave a person on the moon as a prelude to the construction of a permanent moon base, by 2040,
China plans on having an astronaut on Mars and what makes this all so remarkable is that it claims
to intend to do all of this on its own.34
While the jury is still out on the likelihood and feasibility of their planning, we do alreadyhave some hints that offer some predictive force. As of the time of the writing of this paper, China
has already fallen behind on their own timeline.35 While the secretive nature of their program makes
a true assessment difficult, it is obvious that they have already toned down the aggressively
optimistic propaganda that colored their voice at the time of this program's announcement.
Interestingly, China is also already on the lookout for partnership agreements, indicatingthat the expenses of so much homegrown spaceflight are just proving too costly. On their own spacestation, China has already borrowed scientific expertise from Germany and other ESA states.36
Moreover, it appears that China wants an active role in the ISS and has only been rebuffed due tosecurity concerns voiced by the United States.37
Nevertheless, the issue posed by the government does not stop outer space collaborationfrom being an attractive force. Whether China can overturn the contours of this new arrangement is
yet to be determined but current events already cast doubt on such an outcome. Furthermore, even if
it manages to do so, it would simply be a unique exception to a very evident and solid trend and thiswould not cast any doubt on the power of these forces. The history suggests that it is nationalistic
forces that are ephemeral. Just three years following Apollo 11, President Richard Nixon and the“China's Space Activities in 2006,” China National Space Administration, http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/n615709/n620681/index.html“China's Space Program Tries to Catch Up,”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor/2013/06/27/chinas-space-program-tries-to-catch-up/
36
Christian Schwägerl, “Challenging America: Europe Seeks Space Cooperation With China,” Der Spiegel.
37
Marc Kaufman and Dafna Linzer, “China Missile Destroys Satellite; Test Raises Fear of Arms Race in Space,” Chicago Tribune,
January 19, 2007, Final edition. Without warning to the rest of the world, the Chinese used a missile to destroy one of its satellites asa test for its space warfare technologies, perhaps creating over 300,000 pieces of orbital debris. Observers questioned in the article
saw this disregard as an early development that may lead to an arms race in space again.
34
35

Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin planned for a linkup between an Apollo command module and a
Soyuz spacecraft. This became the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). On July 17, 1975, an
American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut shared the very first international handshake in space.
The default stance in space exploration is not to remain a tool for other national ambitions.
Cooperation triumphs because it is easier.
Internationalism is not simply a way of rescuing a program in peril. In some cases, it also
allows for far greater ambitions. In 1986, a NASA/ESA joint project to intercept Halley’s Comet was
scrapped as a result of the Challenger disaster but it was resurrected with even broader goals by
including Russia and Japan as partners.38 In short, a China with tremendous ambitions might find its
needs better sated through cooperation rather than blunt individualism.

The Culture of Space

Because outer space is not yet fully incorporated by any political regime, it may seemcounterintuitive that space already carries with it a cultural identity of sorts. However, this would bean accurate characterization. The gestures made at humanity in space exploration may seem hollow
as they were verbalized during the most heated times of the Cold War but the record indicates that
there may be a substance to it at the core. The first steps on the moon were made in the name ofhumankind, not America. The Voyager and Pioneer deep space probes bear plaques carrying
greetings in the languages of the world. The absence of jingoism in space is not just a random act of
benevolence; rather, it can best be understood as the most accessible of outer space conceptions.
Although these points may seem trivial, culture is a very important part to the appearanceof the final contours of a domain. Nation building happens by incorporating a region within not only
the physical superstructure, but also by drawing it into the mental orbit.39 If we conceive of thenation as an imagined community, it is necessary to implement a kind of simultaneity andconsistency between all of its parts. Otherwise, citizens do not understand the immediacy or theurgency of such a community and will find no reason to defend it.
For the country contiguous with a continent, this is not such a tall order. However, thechallenge grows dramatically if space enters into the equation. A typical fixture of the conception of
space is the organic growth of territory. However, this does not work as there is no way to draw aneat border in space and so there is no way to grow it outward like the growing of the appendage ofJohn Noble Wilford, “Halley’s Comet: Scientists Prepare the Welcoming Party,” New York Times, October 26,
1982, New York edition. All four agencies together sent an armada of satellites to provide telemetry readings so the satellite built toapproach it would have the most accurate data possible. It should be noted that the ESA was the leader of this mission as it provided
the majority of the funding and contributed the Giotto satellite designed to approach Halley’s comet up close. The mission was astunning success, providing scientists with the closest and clearest images of a comet nucleus up until then. It also served as an
introduction for Japan to bigger aspirations in space explorations as its satellite was a national first in interplanetary studies. Japan
also became the first nation to send a man-made object out of Earth orbit, after the Soviet Union and the United States.
39
Ana María Alonso, “The Politics of Space, Time and Substance: State Formation, Nationalism and Ethnicity,” Annual Review of
Anthropology 23, (1994), pp. 379-405
38

the organic land. The fact that there is no space population isolates even further any attempt tonationalize the heavens; because this is the situation, a would-be space nationalist does not haveaccess to the arguments of cultural or historical preservation. An effort dominating space would run
into the same problems as any attempt to dominate the skies or the seas, two other domains that areindeed under collective administration. There have been challenges. However, while in thepresent-day we may be perturbed by the flare ups of various small island disputes, contextualized inhistory, they are simply not of the same scale or resonance as that of the disputes in the past because
they do not have access to the usual arguments and fixtures that stir up emotions.40
While unlikely, this does not preclude the possibility that the ambitious state might one
day pen a nationalistic language that successfully incorporates space into an aggressive, territorial
worldview. However, the possibility for that further diminishes as the nation may have already been
beaten in defining outer space. Despite overwhelming advantages in spaceflight technology, military
power, and material resources, both the Soviet Union and the United States checked their own
tendency to be nationalistic in this domain. Although Sputnik sparked fears in some American
quarters of a communist nuclear menace in space, it was a rather benign piece of technology,
sporting only a rudimentary radio transmitter. More significantly, the meaning of its name was only
"traveling companion"41 to Earth, evoking images of an amorphous humanity sharing a planet, notof a representative of an exclusive Russian fiefdom.
The symbolism behind Sputnik is not unique and represents just the beginning of alongstanding tradition in the typical nomenclature of the space agency. Overall, even throughout thetensest periods of the Space Age, humanist or neutral spacecraft names far outnumber those that arenationalistic which is a very unusual convention compared to the kinds of names found in aerospaceor military vessels.42
This is not just a coincidence. Space agencies were engaged in a dialogue with a grassrootscommunity that held influence over the naming schemes. For example, in naming the very first
Space Shuttle, NASA held a contest and decided to name it Enterprise after the starship of the samenamesake in the television series Star Trek.43 The community organized around this media

40

ibid
Matt Bille, The First Space Race: Launching the World’s First Satellites (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004).
On July, 29 1958, NASA was established after the enactment of the National Aeronautics and Space Act. In many ways, its very
formation was also steeped in the charged political climate of the time; it absorbed its antecedent, the National Advisory Committee
for Aeronautics (NACA) in part because the government felt that NACA lacked the agility necessary for a response to the Soviet
Union and had done a poor job of keeping America afoot in aerospace developments in light of Sputnik and the several failed
American rocket launches immediately after.
42
Harve Bennett, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. DVD. Directed by William Shatner. Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1989.
Pioneer 10 was blown up by a Klingon cruiser in the movie Star Trek V: The Undiscovered Country. Human representatives in a
Star Trek book introduced a copy of one of the plaques to nearby alien races who told the envoys that their civilizations never wereable to decode the message. See: Judith Reeves-Stevens, Star Trek:
Federation (New York City: Simon and Schuster, 1995) The fictional Voyager 6, shaped just like the two real Voyagers also made anappearance in the first Star Trek film as a probe turned into a powerful artificially intelligent being after drifting for centuries inspace. See: Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. DVD. Directed by Robert Wise. Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures,
1979.
43“Space Shuttle Shown Amid Palmdale Fanfare,” Los Angeles Times, September 17, 1976, Los Angeles edition.
41

subculture sees space in a very distinct manner, as a place that is destined to be shared among
humanity. The communication was not just one way; the writers of Star Trek shared a dialogue with
NASA and, for example, saw fit to integrate the ISS as a symbolic forerunner to the egalitarian
United Federation of Planets in an episode of Deep Space Nine.44
These are not just seldom and incidental events nor is it something that emerges from thefertile imagination of a few renegade idealists imagining the post-Cold War future. On the contrary,
they emerge from a practice, culture, and tradition that finds its roots in the preceding centuries. For
example, the names of most of the objects within the Solar System come from the Roman mythology.
Occasionally, there are attempts to redraw the neutral zone. William Herschel, discover of Uranus in
1781, sought to name the seventh planet Georgium Sidus45 but that never caught on as the rest of theastronomical world pushed back against such a nationally aggrandizing name.46 Nowadays, naming
newly discovered heavenly bodies is something conducted through the International Astronomical
Union (IAU) a broad, multinational forum that regulates such matters.47
There is reason to believe that this cultural atmosphere has influence over even
agenda-setting. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) owes its existence to the amateurand professional scientific community that has chosen to consider space through this nation-agnostic
framework. Its high profile operations are quintessentially humanistic, like the sending of global
messages on the behalf of humanity to distant star systems in the hopes of reaching anothercivilization.48 This is a project that yields absolutely zero benefit for the proponent and the host49
and yet hundreds of millions of dollars have been devoted to it. This means that the culture is not justholding back aggressive tendencies but that they also steer the ship in a direction that tends to be
more pacifistic and egalitarian.
What holds back nations from making aggressive gestures at and in space is not altruism
nor can this tendency be characterized as mere coincidence. Rather, a more complete interpretation
lies in the insight that the traditional tools of cultural nation-building do not work so well in outerspace and on top of that, space is not a vacuum, at least conceptually. Science fiction and otherscientific conventions have defined outer space already, as a shared space the “province of all
humankind."50

Conclusions

Outer space is a domain ripe for collaboration. For various reasons, ranging from fiscal toStar Trek: Deep Space Nine. Star Trek. CBS Television Distribution. January 3, 1993 – June 2, 1999.
Meaning "George's Star"
46
Mark Littmann, Planets Beyond: Discovering the Outer Solar System. (New York: Courier Dover Publications, 2004) 10–11.
47“About IAU,” International Astronomical Union, http://www.iau.org/about/
48
Morris Jones, “Deep Pockets of Investors Needed to Realize Space Dreams,” Sydney Morning Herald, July 3, 2012.
49
It is hard to claim even a general soft benefit from these operations as they frequently come under media ridicule!
50
Quoted from the preamble in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.
44
45

cultural to practical, nations are willing to hold back the animal spirits of competition unilaterally
and to instead, work with fellow states. Emblematic of this spirit in space is the longstanding Outer
Space Treaty of 1967. This is worth a remark because, historically, only a few nations have had thewillpower and any interest in being regular spacefarers; this means that outer space is not aparticularly crowded place. This was especially true in the year of its first round of ratifications.
Potentially, space is a bountiful place to the victor with enough technological and material capability
would go some very economically and strategically lucrative spoils. That nations wrote that order in1967 and that they willingly accede to that order to this day begs for an explanation.
A simple, arbitrary delineation of power levels by examining cases from nation to nation isan inadequate analysis as it does not offer any explanation for the particularities of this context. The
sum accumulation of power is only the first and most basic of considerations to examine when anation chooses to pursue its aims. Whether or not it can execute its will to the fullest extent also
depends on the indigenous ability to mobilize its resources. This paper has argued that, for various
reasons, the task of mobilization is especially trying in the realm of outer space.
This is not the only consequence of this paper. The realist argument is one that undermines
the value of the international institution in mediating disputes as nations with enough power canadjust the landscape into their own favor overwhelmingly. Any hint of an international order isillusory and the domain is anarchic or so the argument goes. However, it is clear that this is notnecessarily the case. Even if there is no powerful order, the forces discussed in the paper all count asconstraints on the nation's ability to mobilize its resources and all of them can be cultivated andstrengthened through international organizations. The cases of the International Space Station andthe International Astronomical Union are demonstrative of this.
While Pareto optimality or even something approaching it is, in all likelihood, beyond
possibility, a collaborative organization can act as an incubator that holds back a distributive
outcome that would be even less optimal. In addition to this function of incubation, gains madethrough these groups naturally consolidate over time. When one interpretation dominates theconceptual framework, it becomes progressively more difficult to dislodge.
For further study, one should examine whether this process exists and how it works inother types and areas of activities. The argument in this paper has already touched upon this bylooking at science in the broader context in projects like the Large Hadron Collider. A deeper inquiry
can be had by delving further into other collaborative projects. It could be instructive to determine
whether or not there is a quality about space or about science that distinguishes it from other areas. Is
it simply the scale of these projects that drives nations into the each other's arms? If so, is it possible
to cultivate higher expectations and ambitions? Is there a greater force that undergirds these efforts?
If there is, the argument here may be applicable in similar cases like Antarctica, another wide swathof territory on the verge of mainstream incorporation. Whatever the case, even if internationalinstitutions are not a panacea for conflict, it seems that they can have a substantive role to play inthese negotiations.