Dr Alina Utrata: Corporations and the Colonization of Outer Space
With the election of Donald Trump to a second term as US president, and his close embrace of Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk, it seems inevitable that the next four years will see a deep commitment by the United States to its plans for outer space colonization. Musk — along with fellow technology billionaire Jeff Bezos — has been one of the most prominent proponents of building human settlements in space. It is clear that President-elect Trump agrees, having created the US Space Force during his first term as president. NASA officials have even stated that they expect to see long-term human settlements on the Moon by the end of the decade.
But while the Space Race of the mid-twentieth century was characterized by a geopolitical Cold War between two state entities — Russia and the United States — this time, it is private corporations leading the charge. From the billions in US government funding that Musk’s SpaceX to Bezos’s Blue Origin have received, both business and government elites seem committed to outsourcing the colonization of the “final frontier” to private industry. For some observers, the idea of corporations leading celestial colonization efforts seems to “solve” some of the problems and harms of historic colonization. Violent wars and conflicts waged by states with armed forces over territory surely will be avoided if companies can simply peacefully pursue profit in a Commercial Space Race. However, my research on corporations has argued that this understanding of corporations as merely economic — and therefore non-violent — actors is a false one.
Companies were deeply embedded in historical colonizing efforts on Earth, both catalyzing their home governments towards imperial expansion and actually acting as ruling agents themselves. For instance, the British East India Company—a “company-state,” as coined by Philip Stern—maintained armed forces, waged and declared war, collected taxes, minted coin, and at one point ruled over more subjects than the British state itself. And J. C. Sharman and Andrew Phillips have noted that company-states, with large standing armies, came to wield more military might power than many monarchs. As William Dalrymple, author of The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, described:
It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company. . . [that] executed a corporate coup unparalleled in history: the military conquest, subjugation and plunder of vast tracts of southern Asia. It almost certainly remains the supreme act of corporate violence in world history.
While contemporary understandings of corporations often assume they are merely subservient to states, the companies involved in terrestrial colonization often turned into political or sovereign actors themselves. In colonial America, for instance, the Virginia and Massachusetts Bay Companies were both corporations which became colonies, ultimately breaking away from their ‘home’ state to establish their own. Similarly, King Leopold II of Belgium obtained personal ownership of the Independent State of the Congo through his private association, the International Association of the Congo, ushering in a horrific rule of violence, exploitation and resource extraction.
As contemporary companies set out to colonize space, it is worth asking what forms of political rule and violent harm they may enact in their pursuit of the stars. Will settlers on the Moon break away from Earth to found their own independent state? Will the United States take control of these celestial colonies from private companies, becoming an intergalactic empire? Or will Musk and Bezos retain personal control on outer space colonies through their ownership of Blue Origin and SpaceX?
In May of 2021, Elon Musk hosted Saturday Night Live. SNL gave Musk his first wide reaching opportunity to act out for a huge audience what his vision of a human colony on Mars might look like. Set in “the near future,” the skit (below) is a dramatic enactment of how the Martian colony might cope with a failure of life support infrastructures on the Red Planet. What is particularly striking is that Musk is not barking orders from NASA headquarters, nor from any other U.S. government building. Instead, the Mars colony’s command centre is the headquarters of SpaceX. Musk is clear about who he imagines will rule his Martian colony: his private company.
For Musk, company control is not just satirical. The terms of use of Musk’s satellite service, Starlink, state that users must “recognize Mars a free-planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities.” While Musk repeats that he believes his Martian colony should be run as a direct democracy, one of his proposals—to allow individuals to purchase one-way tickets to Mars which can be paid off once arrived by working for the new colony—has been likened to a form of indentured servitude, drawing questions as to whether these Martian “citizens” will be truly free from the corporation they are indebted to for money and air.
What political power may corporations like SpaceX and Blue Origin obtain from their attempts to colonize space? Like the techies who dropped out of universities to create companies that look like universities, colonizing space seems likely to turn corporations into something that resembles political states. The only real question left may be who will rule them – Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk.
If we want to avoid dystopia, as I argue elsewhere, the best answer may be to not colonize space at all. Instead, we should focus on controlling corporations and their billionaire owners here on Earth.
If you'd like to learn more about Dr Utrata's research, visit her profile here.
You can also listen to Dr Utrata's podcast, The Anti-Dystopians.
