Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is intent on creating a one-million-person colony on Mars. As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk also seems content to break anything that stands in his way—including potentially a Cold War era treaty that has kept humanity safe for over 50 years, the Outer Space Treaty (OST). Musk’s rejection of international governance could have lasting implications for life on earth, and could augur a new era of geopolitical conflict.
In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1, ushering in the age of spacefaring as geopolitics.
Just a decade later the two sides of the Cold War joined the international community to ratify the main international treaty that still governs space today: The 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty. How were nations able to come together and create a regulatory framework for lands none of them had yet visited?
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