The legal and political contexts for discussion of Outer Space over the past eighty years demonstrate continuity with the law and politics of empire over the past four hundred years. The early modern logic that states need to expand in order to preserve themselves does not appear to have left us - this is not surprising because it was a logic that was rooted in the rise of the system of sovereign states. This expansionist ambition underpins the conceptualisation of new space. That newly conceived space is outside positive law jurisdictions and, accordingly, when contemporary jurists address Outer Space, they return to the natural law debates regarding property and sovereignty that were employed to understand empire in the past.
Given the largely metaphysical nature of these questions, it is very unlikely that they will be resolved. What is more likely, however, judging by the experience of the past, is that certain actors, such as corporations, will employ the concepts that are most suitable to the justification of their own ambitions. What appears to be an anarchical environment will produce a new wave of empires which strengthen Space-faring states. At the same time, a number of other actors, notably companies, will establish their own empires with various degrees of autonomy from the states that served as their platforms. Those people who would like to see Space remain a common heritage of humankind, unable to be appropriated, are likely to see their wishes surpassed. But if they wish to stop this juggernaut, they need to address not just the immediate plans for the habitation and development of Space but the strange metaphysics of the system of states and their agents, the corporations.