Who Gets to Inherit the Stars? Space Ethics, Space Labor, and the New Lunar Land Rush

On January 17, 2026, TechCrunch editor-in-chief Connie Loizos published a deceptively simple question with a very large blast radius: who gets to inherit the stars? citeturn1view0

Loizos’s piece isn’t about propulsion breakthroughs or shiny renders of lunar condos with tasteful recessed lighting. It’s about the topics that make the space business crowd shift in their ergonomic chairs: labor, power, ownership, and the uncomfortable realization that “we’re going to space” can mean anything from “humanity is expanding its horizons” to “we’re exporting the gig economy into a vacuum.” citeturn1view0

At the center of the article is Mary-Jane Rubenstein (Wesleyan University), a scholar of religion and science & technology studies who has been digging into the ethics of space expansion. Loizos interviews Rubenstein in response to a provocative on-stage prediction by Will Bruey, founder of space manufacturing startup Varda Space Industries: that in 15–20 years it might be cheaper to send a “working-class human” to orbit for a month than to build better machines. citeturn1view0

That one line—“cheaper to send a working-class human”—is a kind of ethical litmus test. If your first reaction is “cool, humans in orbit,” you’re thinking like a space enthusiast. If your second reaction is “wait, under what labor conditions, and who benefits?” you’re thinking like a space ethicist. If your third reaction is “what’s the health insurance situation for someone whose workplace doesn’t contain air?” then congratulations: you have now entered the conversation TechCrunch is trying to start. citeturn1view0

Why this TechCrunch story matters now (not “eventually”)

Space law, space business, and space policy have always had a weird relationship with time. The engineering is measured in milliseconds and microns; the legal frameworks are measured in decades; and the moral consequences can stretch across centuries. The result is predictable: technology sprints ahead, governance jogs behind, and ethics is expected to teleport in at the last minute, hopefully with a PDF everyone can sign.

We’ve seen this pattern before in terrestrial tech. Social media scaled globally before we decided what “moderation” meant. Data brokers thrived before we decided whether privacy was a human right or a settings page. AI models spread faster than we could articulate what “accountability” should look like when a system makes decisions at scale. Space is now entering that same phase—except the failure modes include making orbits unusable and hardcoding a new extractive economy into a domain that treaties still describe as belonging to all humanity. citeturn1view0turn3search0turn2search8

In Loizos’s reporting, the ethical questions aren’t abstract. They are about:

Workers: Who will do the dangerous, tedious, and physically punishing jobs in orbit, on the Moon, or eventually on Mars—and what protections will they have? citeturn1view0
Ownership: If no nation can claim sovereignty over celestial bodies, can companies still own what they extract? citeturn1view0turn2search7
Power: Who sets the rules when the most capable actors are a handful of states and a handful of companies?
Environmental risk: How close are we to turning valuable orbital regions into a debris pinball machine? citeturn1view0turn3search12turn2search8

What makes the moment especially urgent is that commercial and geopolitical incentives are aligning in a way that historically produces “land rush” dynamics. When the incentives are “move fast and claim your spot,” the people who don’t have launch capability (most countries) and the people who don’t have capital (most humans) tend to discover that “space is for all mankind” is not self-executing. citeturn3search0

The hidden premise: space as workplace, not postcard

Rubenstein’s blunt reminder—space “is not nice up there”—isn’t just a vibe check. It’s a reframing. We talk about “space exploration” like it’s a theme park for the brave and visionary. But the moment you introduce a “working-class human” into the story, space becomes a workplace. citeturn1view0

And workplaces have a few boring but essential properties:

They have employers and employees.
They have safety standards and liability.
They have disputes and enforcement mechanisms.
They have economic power asymmetries.

On Earth, we’ve spent more than a century building labor protections—often after disasters forced the issue. In orbit, the hazard profile is different, the rescue options are limited, and the dependency relationship is extreme. Rubenstein highlights the point sharply: a worker may depend on an employer not only for wages and healthcare, but for “basic access… to food and to water—and also to air.” citeturn1view0

That last dependency—air—changes everything. It means “quitting” is not just leaving your job. It’s leaving your life-support system. If the company controls life support, transportation, communications, and medical care, then even a well-intentioned employer can become a de facto sovereign. Not by legal claim, but by practical control.

This is why “space labor” can’t just be an extension of terrestrial employment law with a few clauses about radiation exposure. It’s closer to maritime labor + remote industrial safety + military-grade life support + international law, all mashed together inside a pressurized module. And we haven’t even decided who the regulator is supposed to be when the workplace is in orbit but the employer is incorporated in Delaware and the crew is multinational.

A comparison: offshore oil rigs, but with fewer exit options

If you want an Earth analogy that gets you part of the way there, think of offshore oil rigs. They are remote, dangerous, and dominated by a small set of companies with specialized capabilities. Workers live where they work. Evacuation is possible, but not trivial. Accidents can be fatal and cascading.

Now remove the ocean and replace it with a vacuum. Replace the helicopter with a spacecraft. Replace “storms” with “micrometeoroids and orbital debris traveling at kilometers per second.” Add radiation. Add communication delays if you go beyond Earth orbit. And add the fact that, unlike the ocean, outer space is governed by a patchwork of treaties and national frameworks that were written when “commercial space labor” wasn’t a realistic scenario.

That’s the workplace Rubenstein is pointing at, and it’s the workplace that Bruey’s prediction accidentally drags into the spotlight.

The ownership problem: you can’t own the Moon… but you can own its “stuff”?

Loizos highlights one of the central tensions in modern space governance: the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says that outer space is “not subject to national appropriation” by sovereignty, occupation, or any other means. It also frames exploration as the “province of all mankind,” and makes states responsible for national space activities, including those conducted by non-government entities. citeturn3search0turn1view0

So far, so idealistic.

But then the United States passed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act in 2015. Among other things, it states that U.S. citizens engaged in commercial recovery of space resources are entitled to the resources they obtain—to “possess, own, transport, use, and sell” them—while also clarifying that the U.S. is not asserting sovereignty over celestial bodies. citeturn2search7turn1view0

This is the legal hair-splitting Rubenstein calls out with an analogy: saying you can’t own the house, but you can own everything inside it—and really, worse, because if you take the floorboards and beams, you’ve effectively taken the house. citeturn1view0

It’s a useful analogy because it exposes the core question: At what point does resource extraction become appropriation in practice? International law has not settled that question. Even high-quality legal analysis acknowledges the issue remains contested. citeturn3search6turn2search7

Why “space mining” isn’t just a sci-fi hobby anymore

Loizos points to startups positioning themselves to exploit this legal and economic framework, including asteroid mining efforts and lunar resource extraction ambitions. citeturn1view0

This is not simply because founders love the romance of prospecting. It’s because there are plausible economic reasons to want certain resources in space:

In-situ resource utilization (ISRU): Using local materials (like water ice) to produce propellant, oxygen, or building materials could lower mission costs and enable sustained operations.
Strategic materials: Some actors argue certain lunar or asteroid resources could be valuable for energy or industry—though timelines and economics are debated.
Logistics flywheel: Once there’s a market for delivering, extracting, processing, and transporting resources in space, an ecosystem of suppliers can emerge—similar to how terrestrial extraction industries create service economies around them.

But here is the ethical catch: even if the economics work, the first movers may lock in access in ways that are functionally exclusionary. If a small number of entities extract finite resources first, everyone else is left negotiating from a weaker position. Rubenstein makes the point in plain language: once one actor takes it, others can’t. citeturn1view0

The Artemis Accords: governance by coalition (and by leverage)

To manage the growing reality of space resource activity and cooperation, the U.S. and NASA introduced the Artemis Accords in 2020: a set of non-binding agreements intended to establish principles for responsible civil exploration and use of the Moon, Mars, comets, and asteroids. citeturn2search1turn2search0

In Loizos’s reporting, these accords are presented in the geopolitical light Rubenstein emphasizes: they formalize a U.S.-preferred interpretation of how resource extraction can coexist with the Outer Space Treaty’s non-appropriation principle, and countries sign partly because they don’t want to be “left out” of the emerging space economy. citeturn1view0

By January 2026, 60 nations had signed the Artemis Accords, with NASA noting that Portugal became the 60th signatory on January 11, 2026. citeturn2search1turn2search0

The Accords are not a treaty, and they don’t magically resolve the underlying legal disputes. But in practice, they can shape norms. If enough capable actors behave as if resource extraction is legitimate under certain rules, that behavior can become customary—especially if the alternative is paralysis.

There’s also a hard realpolitik dimension: when one coalition builds the dominant architecture (technical standards, interoperability norms, logistics routes, and—yes—contracts), the rest of the world may face a choice between joining the framework or building a rival one. Loizos notes that Russia and China are not among the signatories. citeturn1view0turn2search0

The Wolf Amendment: the geopolitics baked into collaboration

Rubenstein argues that a healthier approach would involve more meaningful multilateral governance—potentially via the UN’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS)—and, in the U.S. context, reconsideration of legal barriers that restrict cooperation with China. citeturn1view0

The TechCrunch piece mentions the Wolf Amendment, a U.S. law dating to 2011 that restricts NASA and other federal agencies from using funds to cooperate bilaterally with China or Chinese-owned companies without specific certifications and approvals. Loizos also notes that legislation was introduced in Congress in July of the prior year to make the Wolf Amendment permanent. citeturn1view0

Whatever one thinks of the merits, the policy effect is clear: it complicates the “just cooperate” answer. Rubenstein’s rebuttal is that if we can imagine building space hotels and million-person Mars migrations, we can imagine diplomatic and scientific collaboration too. It’s a pointed reminder that “impossible” often means “politically inconvenient.” citeturn1view0

Space debris: the rare ethical problem everyone agrees is bad

If space law is a philosophical wrestling match, space debris is a simple horror movie premise: we keep leaving junk in orbit, the junk hits other junk, everything becomes more junk, and eventually your satellites can’t safely do satellite things. citeturn1view0turn3search12

Rubenstein and Loizos highlight the scale: ESA’s debris portal reports tens of thousands of trackable objects and far larger modeled populations of smaller debris. For example, ESA’s statistics cite 54,000 objects larger than 10 cm (modeled), and also note over 1.2 million objects in the 1–10 cm range, and 140 million objects in the 1 mm–1 cm range (modeled). citeturn2search8turn1view0

Loizos also references “more than 40,000 trackable objects” as part of the urgency framing; ESA’s debris portal is in that same ballpark depending on definitions and time window, and importantly highlights that not all objects are tracked. citeturn1view0turn2search8

The fear scenario is often called the Kessler syndrome (or Kessler effect): a cascading chain of collisions that increases debris density and can make certain orbital regions effectively unusable. citeturn3search12turn1view0

Why debris is the “unsexy” issue that could define the century

Debris doesn’t trend like rocket launches. It doesn’t have charismatic CEOs. It doesn’t come with “the future is now” keynote music. But it may become the single most consequential near-term governance issue because it’s a classic tragedy-of-the-commons problem—and because everyone’s incentives align around avoiding catastrophe.

Rubenstein notes this alignment explicitly: the U.S. doesn’t want it, China doesn’t want it, industry doesn’t want it. Space garbage is bad for everybody. citeturn1view0

That matters because it suggests a practical route to cooperation even when other topics are politically radioactive. If you can’t agree on who gets to mine the Moon, you can still agree that turning low Earth orbit into a junk-filled blender is suboptimal.

A modern twist: space sustainability as cybersecurity’s cousin

In the last decade, cybersecurity matured from “IT problem” to “national and corporate survival issue.” Space sustainability may follow a similar arc. It starts as an engineering nuisance—tracking conjunction alerts, executing avoidance maneuvers, designing deorbit plans—and ends as a strategic necessity.

There’s also the uncomfortable intersection with cyber risk. Modern satellites are software-defined, networked, and sometimes operated in large fleets. If satellites lose maneuvering capability—whether from malfunction, space weather, or cyberattack—the collision risk increases. Recent popular coverage has highlighted worst-case modeling like a “Crash Clock” scenario, reflecting heightened concern as the active satellite population grows. citeturn3news17turn3news16

Even without going full doomsday, the takeaway is practical: sustainable orbital operations require not just better hardware, but robust software, resilient communications, and shared rules.

So who inherits the stars? Three futures hiding in plain sight

Loizos’s framing, through Rubenstein’s lens, effectively asks whether we are building a future of:

Conquest: space as the next frontier for state power or capital expansion
Dystopia: warnings turned into product roadmaps
Speculative alternatives: space as a setting to try different ideas of justice and care citeturn1view0

This taxonomy is useful because it maps onto how tech evolves in the real world. The first commercial deployments usually follow money and power. The second wave responds to backlash and externalities. The third wave happens only if we deliberately design for it.

If you want a mildly funny but accurate tech-industry translation:

Conquest is the “growth at all costs” phase.
Dystopia is the “we didn’t anticipate this misuse case” phase.
Speculative alternatives is the “governance and trust” phase—if we survive long enough to get there.

What we’re not talking about (but should): the labor stack of space

Space discourse loves hardware: rockets, engines, habitats. But Bruey’s claim and Rubenstein’s critique point to a different stack: the labor stack. If humans are doing industrial work in space, what has to exist for that to be ethical and sustainable?

1) Space labor rights: beyond “don’t die”

“Worker safety” in orbit isn’t just PPE and checklists. It implies:

Medical standards for radiation exposure, bone density loss, and long-duration health monitoring
Right-to-return guarantees (and funding mechanisms) so a worker is not stranded by cost or employer discretion
Independent oversight of life support, habitat safety, and incident reporting
Collective bargaining or representation mechanisms that still function in remote, controlled environments

The uncomfortable part is that most of this requires enforcement. And enforcement in space is… not straightforward. The Outer Space Treaty makes states responsible for activities originating from their territory, including private actors. That suggests the governance will, at least initially, be national. citeturn3search0

But the moment you have multinational crews, internationally financed habitats, and operations that span jurisdictions, “which country’s labor law applies?” becomes less a trivia question and more a potential court case with orbital consequences.

2) Insurance, liability, and the problem of “air as a service”

Rubenstein’s point about dependence on employers for air is easy to quote and hard to operationalize. In practical terms, it raises questions like:

If a worker is injured, who pays for evacuation?
If a company goes bankrupt, who maintains life support until everyone returns?
What happens when an employer and employee dispute intersects with mission safety?

On Earth, these are handled through labor law, insurance markets, and government oversight. In orbit, you may need new frameworks—possibly including bonded financial requirements, escrowed return funds, or mandatory third-party operations audits.

3) Migration narratives: from “space pioneers” to “space precariat”

Jeff Bezos has argued that millions could live in space in coming decades, with robots doing much of the work because they are cheaper. Bruey countered that humans might be cheaper than machines for certain tasks. citeturn1view0

Either way, there’s a risk that space settlement narratives become a glossy wrapper around a familiar economic story: people with capital build the infrastructure; people without capital do the hazardous work; and the rhetoric of “opportunity” masks dependency and limited bargaining power.

To be clear, that outcome is not inevitable. But it is a default trajectory unless countered by governance. On Earth, “labor market dynamics” are shaped by laws, unions, public pressure, and enforcement. In space, those constraints are weak by default, because the environment itself makes workers reliant on a small number of operators.

Resource extraction: the lunar version of “terms and conditions apply”

One reason the space-ethics conversation is hard is that reasonable people can agree on the goals and disagree on the mechanisms. Many space advocates argue that extraction is necessary for sustainable exploration: if you can use local resources, you lower costs and expand access.

But “access” can mean two different things:

Access for missions (technical feasibility)
Access for humanity (political and ethical legitimacy)

The Outer Space Treaty’s language about benefits “for all countries” suggests the second meaning is foundational. citeturn3search0

The 2015 U.S. law is oriented toward enabling commercial actors, while stating the U.S. is not asserting sovereignty over celestial bodies. citeturn2search7

Those two ideas can coexist in a narrow legal sense, but they can conflict in a practical sense. If a few early actors extract key resources and develop the infrastructure to control logistics, then “for all humanity” risks becoming “for everyone who can pay the toll.”

What would a fairer resource regime look like?

Rubenstein suggests handing more control back to the UN and COPUOS. citeturn1view0

In practice, a fairer regime could include elements like:

Transparent registry of extraction sites and operational zones
Environmental impact assessments (yes, even for the Moon)
Benefit-sharing mechanisms, such as fees that fund space sustainability or scientific initiatives open to all nations
Dispute resolution frameworks with international legitimacy

These aren’t radical ideas; they resemble how we manage scarce resources and shared domains on Earth. The difficulty is getting the most powerful actors to accept constraints when first-mover advantage is so tempting.

The role of fiction: why dystopias keep getting productized

One of Rubenstein’s sharpest observations (via Loizos) is that some tech companies “miss the joke” of dystopian science fiction and try to build it anyway. citeturn1view0

This is funny in a dark way because it’s recognizable. Cyberpunk was meant as critique, not a roadmap. Black Mirror episodes are supposed to make you uneasy, not inspire a pitch deck. And yet, time and again, the tech ecosystem treats cautionary tales as an aspirational aesthetic.

Space is vulnerable to the same dynamic. If your cultural reference points are conquest narratives and corporate off-world colonies, then you may unconsciously default to building those worlds. And if the people building the first infrastructure are primarily driven by capital returns or geopolitical advantage, then the “conquest” template becomes reality—not because anyone voted for it, but because the earliest deployments set the norms.

That’s why Rubenstein’s third category—speculative alternatives—matters. It’s essentially a plea for intentionality: if we are going to build new societies (even small ones, like orbital workplaces), we should do better than copy-pasting Earth’s worst habits into a harsher environment.

Implications for tech and industry: what leaders should take from this

If you’re a founder, investor, policymaker, or engineer in the space ecosystem, the TechCrunch article is not asking you to stop building. It is asking you to stop pretending governance will magically “catch up” without your involvement. citeturn1view0

Here are the practical implications:

1) Space companies will face ESG-style scrutiny—just with higher stakes

Investors and partners increasingly care about sustainability, labor conditions, and governance risk. In space, these aren’t optional reputational concerns. They are mission risks. A labor scandal in orbit, or a safety incident tied to cost-cutting, could trigger regulatory crackdowns and insurance shocks.

2) “Safety zones” and deconfliction will become geopolitical flashpoints

Even when framed as operational safety, deconfliction mechanisms can look like territorial claims. The Artemis Accords encourage coordination, but critics may see certain practices as de facto appropriation. citeturn2search0turn2search1

Companies operating near contested areas should assume their actions will be interpreted politically, not just technically.

3) Debris mitigation will move from best practice to license-to-operate

As orbital congestion grows, regulators and insurers will likely demand stronger end-of-life plans, collision-avoidance capabilities, and perhaps financial bonds for cleanup. ESA’s statistics and the broader concern about Kessler syndrome make this a credible near-term pressure point. citeturn2search8turn3search12

4) Labor frameworks will be the next major “unknown unknown”

The industry talks about propulsion timelines with confidence. It talks about labor and rights with… noticeably less enthusiasm. But if humans become cost-effective in space industrial work, then labor frameworks become urgent. Bruey’s prediction, whether it proves right or wrong, is valuable because it forces the question now. citeturn1view0

What should happen next: a short list of real, not utopian steps

Rubenstein is realistic that dramatic policy shifts aren’t imminent, but she points to pragmatic areas where progress could happen, including debris and environmental regulation. citeturn1view0

Building on that, here are steps that don’t require humanity to achieve a sudden consensus:

Make debris accountability enforceable: standardized reporting, end-of-life requirements, and penalties for negligent behavior.
Create minimum labor standards for off-world work: not as a feel-good manifesto, but as contractual and regulatory requirements tied to launch licensing and insurance.
Establish an independent incident investigation body for commercial human spaceflight incidents, analogous in spirit (not necessarily structure) to aviation accident investigation models.
Develop international dispute-resolution pathways for resource and operational conflicts, ideally with UN involvement to preserve legitimacy.
Separate “resource rights” from “exclusive control” by limiting scope and duration of operational zones and requiring transparent registries.

None of these steps solve the grand philosophical question of who “inherits” space. But they can prevent the worst outcome: a default privatized conquest model that becomes entrenched simply because it was profitable early.

Closing thought: the stars are big; our policy imagination shouldn’t be small

Loizos’s interview with Rubenstein ends in a place that feels both worrying and hopeful. Worrying because the incentives today favor extraction, militarization, and competition. Hopeful because, on at least one major issue—space debris—everyone can see the wall we’re driving toward. citeturn1view0turn2search8

The deeper hope is that we treat space not as a blank canvas for Earth’s familiar inequalities, but as a test of whether a high-tech civilization can build infrastructure without immediately recreating feudalism with better branding and worse air quality.

Because if the first “working-class humans” in orbit end up dependent on employers for air, healthcare, and the right to come home, then the question “who inherits the stars?” will have an uncomfortably terrestrial answer: whoever wrote the contract.

Sources

Bas Dorland, Technology Journalist & Founder of dorland.org