The Final Legal Frontier: Star Trek and the Evolution of the Space Law

In October 1957, the launch of Sputnik transformed outer space from science fiction into reality. What had long belonged to magazines, books and cinematic fantasy suddenly became a domain of power competition. Throughout the Cold War, the Space Race (roughly 1955–1975)  a fast pace period of space exploration, unfolded technological rivalry and ideological spectacle with the United States and the Soviet Union, projecting visions of modernity, power, and destiny beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Space was being called the next frontier of human achievement. At the same time when rockets and satellites were trending in the Global North, another vision of outer space was taking shape on television screens, Star Trek (1966). Star Trek is one of the most influential works of science fiction in history, highlighting that its impact goes far beyond entertainment to serve as a mirror of Earth's social problems (Coffey, 2025). In this essay, I will argue how Star Trek influenced the tone, the vocabulary of space law and politics that rule the space industry today.

In 1966, Star Trek premiered in the United States. As opposed to the militarised logic of the Space Race, the series introduce a totally different future: space and peaceful exploration, scientific cooperation, and a unified humanity. Its message was aspirational, optimistic, and morally charged. Space was not to be conquered or owned, but shared and explored.

A year later, in 1967, the Outer Space Treaty initiated the foundational principles of international space law, declaring outer space “the province of all mankind” (UNOOSA, 1967) and committing to its peaceful use. While the treaty was a product of diplomatic negotiation rather than TV writers rooms, its language and assumptions echo the same utopian imaginary created by Star Trek. Both the treaty and the series emerged around the same historical moment and articulated a shared vision of space as cooperative, universal, and progressive. It is clear the science fiction behind Star Trek did not anticipate space governance but helped shape the narrative framework through which the treaty was articulated.

In examining the Outer Space Treaty alongside Star Trek, one of the most striking similarities I identified is the way both texts frame science and exploration as the primary purpose of human activity in outer space. The first article of the Outer Space Treaty explicitly states that outer space shall be explored and used for the benefit of all countries, emphasising scientific investigation as a central justification for human presence beyond Earth. Military activity, while not entirely excluded, is tightly constrained, particularly through the prohibition of placing weapons of mass destruction in orbit.

A remarkably similar logic operates in Star Trek. The USS Enterprise is repeatedly described as a science and exploration vessel, tasked with research, discovery, and diplomatic engagement. Although it is equipped with weapons and capable of military action, these capacities are consistently framed as defensive rather than primarly objetive to its mission. The narrative insists that the ship’s primary purpose is not domination or conquest, but knowledge production and peaceful exploration.

This parallel is significant because it reveals how both fiction and law construct a moral hierarchy of space activities. Scientific exploration is presented as neutral, benevolent, and universally beneficial. In both cases, the presence of military power is acknowledged but rendered secondary, allowing space to be imagined as a domain driven by curiosity rather than conflict. This framing plays a crucial role in legitimising human expansion into space, as it aligns technological advancement with ethical responsibility.

One of the clearest ways in which Star Trek illustrates the influence of fiction on space governance is through its explicit insistence that outer space requires rules, institutions, and ethical limits. Far from presenting space as a lawless frontier, the series constructs a dense framework of norms regulating human conduct beyond Earth. Central among these is the ¨Prime Directive¨,  which restricts interference, exploitation, and domination, framing restraint as a marker of moral and civilizational progress (Garst, 2020). Space exploration is portrayed as an activity conditioned by shared rules and collective responsibility.

A similar logic underpins the Outer Space Treaty. Rather than granting states expansive rights over celestial bodies, the treaty establishes foundational principles that limit behaviour in space, including the prohibition of national appropriation and the commitment to peaceful use. Just like the Prime Directive, the treaty operates less as a technical manual and more as a constitutional framework, articulating what humanity can or can not do in space.

Although the institutional contexts differ, both Star Trek and international space law imagine governance beyond the nation-state. In fiction, this role is embodied by the United Federation of Planets; in reality, it is reflected in international bodies such as the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (Magilton, 2024). Together, they express a shared narrative in which space is not governed through unilateral power, but through collective coordination, reinforcing the idea that exploration beyond Earth demands cooperation rather than conquest. Futhermore, another similarity is that the Outer Space Treaty states that space can inspire us to cooperate. We can see the same statement in the Star Trek series, the Federation of Planets is massive, resulting in cooperative undertaking by a several diffenrent species. In Earth we can see the same thing with the International Space Station, a large space station that was assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies (NASA , n.d.).

Another parallel that I found is the idea that humanity does not enter space as a neutral actor, but carries its political and moral values with it. In Star Trek, the United Federation of Planets is initially composed of a relatively small group of member that share broadly liberal values, including cooperation, rule-based governance, and a commitment to scientific progress. These values are presented as universal principles that naturally extend beyond Earth. As the series expands its scope, these norms increasingly function as the default moral framework through which space is ordered and governed.

I argue that a similar dynamic can be observed in contemporary space governance. Agreements such as the Artemis Accords explicitly articulate values related to transparency, peaceful use or more like don’t go to space for war, interoperability, and scientific cooperation, presenting them as foundational principles for future activity in the Moon and beyond (NASA, 2020).

This parallel highlights the subtle but powerful role fiction plays in normalising the export of terrestrial values into extraterrestrial domains. By imagining space governance as the natural extension of liberal, rule-based order, science fiction helps render this process uncontroversial. The result is a vision of space exploration in which values are not debated, they are carried outward as humanity’s shared inheritance, even when they reflect the priorities of only a few.

It would be impossible for me to write an essay on space governance, law and science fiction without addressing the question of inequality. Both the Outer Space Treaty and more recent agreements, such as the Artemis Accords, place extraordinary emphasis on international cooperation, peaceful use, and shared benefit (Britt, 2024). On paper, space appears as a domain governed by collective effort and universal access. However, this language of cooperation coexists with a material reality that remains highly familiar: access to space is overwhelmingly concentrated in the Global North, while much of the Global South remains structurally excluded from meaningful participation (Simonelli, 2025).

This tension is largely absent from Star Trek, where inequality has been resolved. The series presents an utopian future in which geopolitical hierarchy, and uneven technological capacity no longer shape humanity’s relationship with space. As a result, cooperation appears effortless and unproblematic. When similar assumptions are reflected in legal and policy texts, they risk obscuring ongoing unbalanced of power. The repeated invocation of “all mankind” and international partnership can mask the fact that only a small group of actors possess the resources, infrastructure, and institutional influence required to shape the rules of space exploration. So for “all mankind” or for all powerful countries? Or lately, for white men billionaires?

What fiction makes invisible, the law often leaves unaddressed. By adopting a utopian narrative in which inequality has already been overcome, space governance frameworks reproduce a familiar pattern: universalist language paired with uneven access. This does not render the ideals of cooperation meaningless, but it does reveal their limitations. The promise of space as a shared human endeavour remains aspirational so long as the conditions required to participate in that endeavour are distributed so unevenly on Earth.

An illustrative example of how Star Trek functions as an ethical trial for space governance can be found in the episode “The Devil in the Dark” (Star Trek,1967). In this episode, a mining colony comes into violent conflict with a different lifeform. Initially was framed as a hostile threat to economic interests, the creatures eventually revealed to be a sentient being defending its environment. The conflict was resolved through understanding and science: The conflict was not resolved through the use of force (despite Kirk initially giving the order to "shoot to kill") instead through communication established by Spock and the medical knowledge of Dr McCoy, who manages to heal the creature's wound using thermal concrete (Memory Alpha, 2017).

This episode mirrors, the central tension addressed by the Outer Space Treaty: how humanity should behave when encountering environments and forms of life beyond Earth. Rather than asserting ownership or prioritising extraction, the story ultimately affirms restraint, mutual recognition, and the ethical limits of exploration. Crucially, the humans involved do not abandon resource use altogether; instead, they restructure it under conditions of cooperation and respect. This reflects the treaty’s logic, which does not prohibit space activity, but seeks to regulate it in a way that avoids domination and irreversible harm.

By putting this problem in fictional form, Star Trek offers what can be understood as a legal thought experiment. It allows audiences to imagine the consequences of unregulated expansion and the moral necessity of governance before such scenarios materialise in reality. In doing so, the series reinforces the idea that space is not an empty frontier, but a domain that requires ethical and institutional limits, basically the idea that sits at the very heart of international space law.

The relationship between Star Trek and the development of international space law is not one of direct causation, but of shared imagination. The Outer Space Treaty was negotiated in diplomatic chambers shaped by Cold War anxieties, strategic interests, and geopolitical bargaining. Yet law does not emerge in a cultural vacuum. It is articulated within narratives that make certain futures appear legitimate, desirable, and morally coherent. In this sense, Star Trek did not draft space law, but it helped cultivate the ethical vocabulary through which space governance became intelligible.

By presenting outer space as a domain of scientific cooperation, institutional restraint, and collective responsibility, the series normalised the idea that expansion beyond Earth should be regulated rather than dominated. It framed exploration as a moral endeavour, embedding values such as peaceful use, non-appropriation, and shared benefit within popular consciousness. The Outer Space Treaty translated similar principles into legal language, transforming utopian aspiration into juridical structure.

At the same time, this convergence invites critical reflection. The universalist language of “all mankind” and global cooperation, present in both fiction and law, risks obscuring the asymmetries that continue to define access to space. If science fiction helped imagine a cooperative future, it also helped naturalise a particular set of liberal values as universally applicable. Contemporary space governance inherits both the promise and the blind spots of that vision.

Ultimately, the influence of Star Trek lies not in authorship, but in orientation. It shaped how humanity learned to think about space: not merely as territory to conquer, but as a shared arena requiring limits, institutions, and ethical consideration. In doing so, it contributed to the moral terrain upon which space law continues to evolve.