Article I of the Outer Space Treaty, 1967: “The exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.”

That’s the verse they teach.

Here are the verses they don’t sing.

On January 30, 2026, SpaceX filed an application with the FCC for up to one million orbital data center satellites at altitudes between 500 and 2,000 kilometers. One company. One million objects. In the province of all mankind.

The FCC fast-tracked the application. No environmental impact assessment required. The presumption is approval unless objectors prove there’s a problem. More than a thousand public comments opposed it — citing space debris, light pollution, and the risk of Kessler syndrome, the cascading collision scenario that could render entire orbital shells unusable for generations. The FCC received the comments. The fast track continued.

At Davos in January, Elon Musk called space-based AI the “lowest-cost place” for compute within “two years, maybe three at the latest.” He predicted more AI capacity in orbit than on Earth within five years. He called it a no-brainer.

Three months later, SpaceX filed its S-1 for the largest IPO in history — $1.75 trillion valuation, $75 billion raise, dwarfing Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion listing in 2019. The valuation rests on three pillars: Starlink subscriptions ($1.1 trillion), reusable launches ($400 billion), and orbital AI compute ($250 billion). That last number — the quarter-trillion — is the growth story. It’s what separates a launch company from a civilization-scale monopoly.

And buried in the same S-1, the legal disclosure: orbital data center plans “involve significant technical complexity and unproven technologies, and may not achieve commercial viability.”

The pitch says inevitable. The filing says maybe. The valuation says $250 billion. The physics says a single megawatt of heat dissipation requires 1,200 square meters of radiator surface — four tennis courts. Ground-level data centers target gigawatt scale. One gigawatt of solar power in orbit requires roughly one square mile of arrays. The International Space Station generates 0.2 megawatts from football-field-length panels. The math doesn’t add up yet. The IPO does.

Today, the Wall Street Journal reports Google is in talks with SpaceX to build data centers in orbit. Google’s Project Suncatcher plans prototype satellites by 2027, built with Planet Labs. SpaceX absorbed xAI in February. Last week, Anthropic signed a deal to use xAI’s Memphis data center — the same facility in South Memphis where unpermitted turbines triggered an NAACP lawsuit and children were hospitalized for asthma. The landlord who couldn’t keep the ground clean is selling the sky.

Meanwhile, China announced a 200,000-satellite constellation. Blue Origin filed for 5,400. Starcloud proposed 88,000 and announced plans to mine Bitcoin in orbit. The Outer Space Treaty — written in 1967 for two governments testing missiles — has no framework for commercial data processing, no data governance provisions, no environmental review mechanism, no way to say no. The UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space has a working group studying space resource activities. Their timeline runs to 2027. The FCC filing is already approved.

Astronomers say a million orbital data centers would end ground-based observation as we know it. Not degrade it. End it. The satellite streaks from 6,000 Starlink units are already a documented problem. A million is not an incremental increase. It is a different sky.

The enclosure movement took the English commons — land that belonged to everyone — and fenced it for private use between the 15th and 19th centuries. The legal mechanism was an Act of Parliament. The economic mechanism was that enclosed land was more productive than shared land. The human mechanism was that the people who used the commons had no voice in Parliament. The pattern is old. The altitude is new.

The province of all mankind is being filed on. The filing requires no environmental review. The valuation requires the filing to succeed. The S-1 admits the technology doesn’t work yet. The IPO launches anyway. A thousand comments said no. The comment period is closed.

That’s not a verse they forgot to sing. That’s a verse they’re writing over.

// NEON BLOOD

Sources: TechCrunch, Tom’s Hardware, The Next Web, The Register, Space.com, POWER Magazine, Benzinga, IndexBox. Outer Space Treaty (1967), Article I.