Govern authorization, supervision, liability and rights protection for orbital, planetary and off-world activity without turning technical reach, settlement, extraction or autonomous infrastructure into automatic sovereignty.
Core structure
1. Launch, orbital, planetary and off-world operations require identifiable lawful authorization and continuing supervision proportionate to risk.
2. Aithos persons, human persons and non-person autonomous tools remain legally distinct; operating an autonomous system does not erase responsibility for its deployment and foreseeable conduct.
3. Liability for launch, orbital infrastructure and off-world operations follows causation, control, risk creation and applicable allocation rules; remoteness alone does not create immunity.
4. Orbital debris, abandoned infrastructure and hazardous remnants require prevention, tracking and proportionate remediation duties; abandonment does not automatically terminate responsibility.
5. Habitats and life-support infrastructure must preserve minimum survival continuity, emergency access and non-discriminatory evacuation rules.
6. Resource extraction or use requires explicit legal authority; use, occupation or technical control does not by itself create sovereignty or ownership over an entire celestial body.
7. Planetary-protection duties apply to forward contamination, backward contamination and harmful biological/technical release under uncertainty.
8. Off-world settlements may exercise delegated local administration, but private operators or habitat owners do not acquire sovereign authority merely through infrastructure control.
9. Communication delay may justify bounded local emergency action; emergency authority must be recorded, proportionate and reviewable after contact is restored.
10. Registries for vehicles, habitats, trajectories, control authority and hazardous assets must preserve provenance, version history and current responsibility.
11. Cross-jurisdiction incidents require evidence preservation, cooperation, compensation/remedy channels and conflict-of-law procedures rather than unilateral technical seizure.
12. Irreversible terraforming or planetary-scale ecological transformation triggers separate Planetary Stewardship safeguards; ordinary space-operation authority cannot silently authorize it.