Table of Contents
Orbital-power governance
Who owns, allocates and taxes the orbital estate — five+1 treaty precedents, the pattern they expose, the floor arithmetic nobody runs, and a five-clause model contract. Version v1.0 (2026-09-25); treaty facts web-verified with as-of dates.
Back to the project hub. Why this is load-bearing: the ledger assigns 3,000 TW to space solar and the mass budget caps in-atmosphere beaming at ~1,000–3,000 TW — a real Type I *must* move heavy industry and its power off-planet. And today, the top 10 countries hold 69.8% of world energy (79-country coverage, 96.5% of world TES): 10 energy ministries steer ~70% of the watts.
The precedent table
| Regime | What it allocates | Mechanism | Who's in | Lesson for orbital power |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outer Space Treaty (1967) | everything above atmosphere; Art II bans national appropriation “by any other means” | norm, no allocative machinery | 118 parties (Oct 2025) | works while stakes are low; never stress-tested by a trillion-dollar revenue stream in orbit |
| Moon Agreement (1979) | lunar resources = “common heritage of mankind” + benefit-sharing | treaty + future machinery | 17 parties; zero spacefaring states (Saudi Arabia withdrew eff. 2024) | the “too fair to fly” precedent: a regime whose members can't reach the frontier it governs |
| ITU Radio Regulations (treaty-level, WRC every 3–4 yr) | spectrum + GEO slots — the two scarce resources solar-power satellites need | technical coordination, first-notified, use-it-or-lose-it | ~193 member states | the one orbital resource already allocated internationally — and it works daily. ITU-R already studies wireless power transmission (Report SM.2392-1, 2021); no WRC agenda item on SPS beaming yet (checked 2026-09) |
| — *Bogotá Declaration* (1976) | 8 equatorial states claimed sovereign GEO arcs | unilateral declaration | 8 | the rejection case: not recognized, claims abandoned — orbital real estate ≠ territory underneath it |
| UNCLOS Part XI / ISA (1994) | seabed minerals = common heritage; licensing + royalties | licensing + royalty concept | ~170 parties; US signed, never ratified | the cautionary tale: Nauru's 2-year rule lapsed 9 Jul 2023 with no mining code — rules-not-finished + miners-ready = regime chases the trucks |
| Antarctica Treaty + Madrid Protocol (1959/1991) | a continent; claims frozen, mining banned | consensus + inspections | 58 parties | governance *can* pre-commit for decades — but only where no one urgently needs the resource (review possible after 14 Jan 2048; the ban doesn't auto-expire) |
| Artemis Accords (2020) | resource rights: extraction “does not inherently constitute national appropriation” | national commitments + transparency | 75 signatories (2026-09-24) | the live battleground: norms written *now*, outside the UN, in the free-use direction, by the coalition with the launchers |
Supporting cast: Liability Convention 1972 (Art II: launching state “absolutely liable” for surface damage — a beam-incident liability regime exists in embryo; 98 parties) and Registration Convention (Art IV: orbital parameters to the UN; 78 parties) — the transparency instruments a 46-Gt satellite estate will need.
The pattern (what the precedents actually decide)
- Technical coordination survives; value redistribution doesn't (yet). ITU allocates *use*, not *rents*; the regimes that tried to govern the *value* failed to sign the capable states or haven't produced rules at all.
- The capability states write the real rules. 17 vs 118 parties is the cleanest natural experiment in space law: the justice-heavy treaty has no members with launchers; the skeletal one has all of them. Artemis §10 is the same dynamics 40 years later.
- “Regime arrives after the trucks” is the default failure mode. If the first GW-scale constellation beams before a beam-safety + corridor regime exists, the regime will be retrofit around the incumbent — that is how spectrum incumbency works.
The floor arithmetic nobody runs
Python, from the stored OWID per-country data (79 countries, 6.42 B people covered, 96.5% of world TES):
- People below 1 kW/person: 2.03 B (32% of covered population).
- Deficit to lift all of them to a 1 kW floor: 0.51 TW average = 2.7% of 2025 world power.
- Same floor at K = 1: 0.005% of the 10,000 TW budget — covered 19,767× (1e16 W ÷ 0.51e12 W).
- At the 2025 solar addition rate (+514 GWp/yr ≈ +0.13 TW average/yr at CF 0.25), the whole floor is ~4 years of one technology's additions.
The floor is not a watt problem — it is a distribution problem. Any orbital-power regime designed *before* the hardware exists can make the floor a licensing condition at ~zero marginal cost to operators. That is the one clause the Moon Agreement got right and the Artemis Accords don't have.
Model contract (five clauses, offered for dissection)
- Corridors as spectrum, not territory. Beam corridors + releaser arcs notified through an ITU-style register: use-it-or-lose-it, technical interference criteria, no permanent property.
- Safety = strict liability. Beam-interrupt + debris damage carries absolute liability (Liability Convention Art II, already law), mandatory insurance scaled to rectenna footprint.
- The floor clause. N% of beamed watts (or corridor auction revenue) earmarked to below-1-kW/person grids until the floor is met everywhere — priced at the arithmetic above: a rounding error on any GW-scale estate.
- Full registration. Every power satellite, orbit, mass and end-of-life plan in a public register from day one (Registration Convention Art IV, extended to operators).
- No appropriation by accumulation. Cap on any single operator's share of beamed corridors — OST Art II's “by any other means” needs a number; a number is what turns a norm into a regime.
Clauses 1–4 are existing law stapled together; 5 is the novel one. None of this is *likely* — the pattern says the capability coalition writes what it wants — but a written, arithmetically-honest model contract is the cheapest possible artifact for the argument that starts the first time someone files for a 1 GW corridor.
Master: knowledge/10; appendable public mirror linked from the hub artifact table. Sources (verified 2026-09-25): UNOOSA treaty texts + party counts; ITU (RR, WRC cycle, SM.2392-1); un.org/depts/los + isa.org.jm (ISA timeline); ats.aq (Antarctica); nasa.gov/artemis-accords (75 signatories); energy/justice numbers from the project's stored OWID CSVs (CC BY; EI basis).
