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WHEN I was a kid, only a few governments could afford to send people into space. By and large, this continues to be true. Though much has been made of the billionaire space race, what often goes unsaid is that the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin relied on enormous investment from the US government, through NASA, to advance the experiments that would allow them to launch civilian astronauts.

Such public-private partnerships aren鈥檛 entirely new. Corporate actors have always played a role in US spacefaring efforts: military contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have long had a seat at NASA鈥檚 table, providing launch rockets and spacecraft development. One thing that has changed, however, is the people involved. These days, NASA is working alongside companies with fewer ties to the defence industry, companies that also happen to be strongly identified with billionaires 鈥� especially Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

This has triggered a new personality-driven space race and, with it, a re-evaluation of the power dynamics. Increasingly, the public conversation seems to assume that government organisations like NASA are no longer leaders in space. Instead, NASA has been relegated to client (for getting astronauts to the International Space Station), funding source and launch management support. My own understanding is that this transformation in attitudes isn鈥檛 an accident, but rather began intentionally under the George W. Bush administration in particular. The goal? The commercialisation of space, the next capitalist frontier.

I am under no illusions about why NASA came into existence. I know it is a product of the cold war between the US government and the government of the Soviet Union. I make a point of saying this was a conflict between two governments because everyday people were caught in the middle, with little say over the power plays of their leaders. In different ways, people on both sides of the Iron Curtain weathered a terrifying time, filled with extraordinary amounts of propaganda and a militarised space race that each nation鈥檚 leadership articulated as proof of political supremacy.

鈥淚鈥檓 concerned that human expansion into space will exacerbate colonial logics and growing inequalities鈥�

Part of the propaganda I grew up with was that the US was a real democracy. The United States is, in theory, a democracy where the people can have a say in what NASA does. I say in theory because, to quote Langston Hughes, 鈥淎merica never was America to me.鈥� As a settler colonial nation that built its wealth through dispossession and slavery and followed those acts up with a long and ongoing campaign to deny many citizens the right to vote, the idea that the US is a democracy can seem a bit laughable.

But an interesting idea arises out of the false narrative that the US is a true democracy: a space agency for the people, by the people. This week, I have been thinking about this possibility a lot because I have recently been at a two-day workshop that brought interested parties together to discuss the future of the space economy. I think that most of the attendees came in concerned about the opportunities space provides for economic growth 鈥� plans are already afoot to mine the moon and asteroids, for example.

There were a few sceptics like me who were concerned that accelerating human expansion into space will exacerbate colonial logics and already growing economic inequalities. What right do we have to exploit other planets the way we have exploited Earth?

In two days of conversation, I was the only person I heard bring up the importance of labour rights advocates having a say in how it all pans out. There was little acknowledgement of billionaires鈥� dependence on public finance, on the taxes paid by workers across the US that helped to launch their commercial space-flight ventures.

One person told me that a particular billionaire, some of whose workers are currently suing because of alleged workplace racism, was entitled to everything he had because he had earned it. I said my concern wasn鈥檛 with merit 鈥� I mean fine, give him an award 鈥� but rather how we can create the conditions where everyone has what they need.

You might think that has nothing to do with space. But I think space is part of what we need. Every human community has a long-standing relationship with the night sky. It is part of who we are. The problem is that, right now, very few of us have a say in what happens to the night sky, how humans get to space or what we do there. That has to change. Instead of giving space up to billionaires, maybe we should all be working to make good on the idea of a space agency that supports humans living in good relations with each other.