How SpaceX Violated the Outer Space Treaty with the First Private Astronaut to Enter Space — and Why That's Good for the Company
Space experts, especially spacesuit designers, have a completely different attitude to this story. For them, what happened is an event of enormous significance (all because they understand the enormous complexity of what was done). And also for lawyers associated with space law: they generally stated that SpaceX in particular and the United States in general violated the space treaty.
Why does something that doesn’t seem like anything special to a person on the street so seriously excite experts in space and its laws?
A ship within a ship
Every spacesuit designer understands the meaning of the words: “An extravehicular suit is a spaceship.” In fact, at 13:12 Isaacman did not go into outer space, but began testing a mini-spaceship in it. And the tests are very risky.
To understand what we are talking about, it is worth going back in time to March 1965. The Berkut spacesuit, in which Yevgeny Leonov was the first person in history to go into space, was also “soft” — without a rigid frame. Because of this, under the internal pressure of 0.4 atmospheres, it inflated to such an extent that Leonov had difficulty bending his arms and legs. And this despite the fact that before the flight he trained his limbs for months — for example, he constantly squeezed a 90 kg expander. More than 95% of living men in principle will not be able to squeeze such a thing even once — but he did it many times.
Still, bending his arms and legs was a huge problem. The suit, made of multi-layered, heavy-duty fabric, was so deformed that the cable that ran through his sleeve to the camera shutter just “squeezed” bulging sleeve. There were so many problems that after 12 minutes, when Leonov finished his tiring exercises in the spacesuit, he could not properly enter the airlock hatch: the spacesuit had become too wide. It was necessary to bleed the air from 0.4 to 0.27 atmospheres without coordinating with Earth, and only then, with great difficulty, was he able to enter inside.
But the adventures did not end there: at that time they did not yet know that after opening the hatch, temperature deformations on the illuminated side of the space structure make it difficult to close it completely back. That is why Voskhod, on which Leonov and his partner flew, caused sharp pressure surges of almost 1.5 atmospheres (highly enriched with oxygen). One spark from an accidental sharp movement – and they would have burned up, as the crew burned up a couple of years later Apollo 1 during ground training inside his ship. There, too, the oxygen pressure in the atmosphere was too high.
This time, the hatch was also not quite as expected. It could not be opened using an automatic drive, so it was closed and opened manually, just like in the 1960s. There are also vague rumors about some damage to certain sections, although there were no unplanned air leaks from the ship.
So it's no surprise that while the Crew Dragon hatch was open for nearly two hours today, the actual “spacewalk” — that is, time spent above the hatch — lasted only 12 minutes for each of the two private astronauts. Leonov, after all, was outside for the same amount of time, despite his very intense training.
And this is despite the fact that Leonov's spacesuit had its own supply of “portable” oxygen. And the new SpaceX extravehicular spacesuit is only an “umbilical cord”, a tube that goes inside the Crew Dragon and supplies the person in the spacesuit with air. All industry experts were very interested in how exactly Jared Isaacman would move away from the hatch with this “umbilical cord”: if it twisted, the air supply would clearly not go according to plan. The answer to their expectations was simple: Isaacman did not move away much. His “experimental program” boiled down to attempts to bend and straighten his limbs, without really leaving the hatch, standing on something like a ladder for a small pool.
Only this ladder led to the largest pool in the Universe – open space.
A decent “dangling by the umbilical cord”
And yet the apparent simplicity of SpaceX's first spacewalk should not deceive anyone: it is a huge technical achievement. It is not that Leonov almost died on his first spacewalk, and his American colleague, who made the second in June 1965, could barely open or close the hatch.
The thing is that in such a complex business as spacesuit construction, there are many pitfalls that can easily end in death. In 1991, an astronaut of the shuttle Atlantis (mission STS-37) while working in outer space unknowingly pierced his glove with a rod. If the rod had not accidentally gotten stuck in the hole, the problems could have been very significant.
The scale of SpaceX's literal feat can best be assessed by the history of previous American spacesuits. In 2013, the water removal system on one of them malfunctioned, and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano nearly drowned in outer space: water literally began pouring into his mouth. Technically similar (though less dangerous) incidents in the spring and summer of 2024 forced NASA to abandon the use of all its spacesuits on the ISS. Therefore, now only Russian cosmonauts can go into space in Orlans, which are free of such problems.
Why did NASA suddenly have no EVA suits in space this year? It's not because they were poorly designed: all of the agency's EVA suits are physically over forty years old. They are simply old and worn out. They are patched up by hand on Earth after use in space. But no matter how you patch the fabric, the heat-removing water tubes, and much more, they are still too old — which is why incidents like this happen.
Why not replace them with newer ones? NASA tried and tries this every day for many years. In the 2010s, all such attempts were abandoned: it turned out that the costs of the necessary developments were too high, literally billions of dollars. Resuming the production of early spacesuits, “Shuttle” or “Apollo”, would not have been cheaper, because even the companies that produced them no longer existed in their original form.
It was decided to offer two companies at once – Collins and Axiom Space – to make new ones. The agency agreed to rent them for 3.5 billion dollars (the annual budget of Roscosmos). This figure clearly shows once again how true the phrase “a spacesuit is a small spaceship” is. The costs of the “big” Crew Dragon spaceship, which carries NASA astronauts to the ISS, have not yet reached even three billion dollars. And what is the result? Axiom Space is delayed with its spacesuits, and Collins… simply refusedsaying that the work was too difficult for that kind of pay.
Let's look at the seemingly simple, “soft”, and therefore inflatable, extravehicular suit of SpaceX from this point of view. Judging by Isaacman's movements in the video, he had a very difficult time, to put it mildly, he was obviously constrained. But this suit was created in just four years – and not at all for the billions that NASA allocated for its similar developments.
SpaceX: The First Outer Space Treaty Violator?
Before the launch of Al Jazeera asked two key US agencies (FAA and NASA) “on launches and space” are asked the same question: are they monitoring this SpaceX mission? The answer is in both cases was strictly negative.
Meanwhile, Article 6 of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 clearly states says:
“The activities of non-governmental legal entities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, must be carried out with the permission and under the constant supervision of the relevant State Party to the Treaty.”
Tommaso Scobba, executive director of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Security, in an interview with Al Jazeera evaluates the situation quite categorically: “This is a mission that violates Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty.”
His logic is easy to understand: NASA does not have its own manned spacecraft. The only way into space for an American today is through SpaceX ships. Can this space agency control the mission of someone without whom it simply cannot be a space agency? Or does SpaceX control whether NASA goes into space or not?
Industry experts celebrate: According to NASA and European space agency standards, the Crew Dragon spacecraft in its current form would not be allowed to carry people into outer space in spacesuits. It does not have an airlock. And although American spacecraft of the 1960s flew exactly like this, later there was a transition to airlocks, as was the case with Soviet spacecraft from the very beginning. The logic here is simple: hatches sometimes open and close with difficulty, that is, without an airlock it may not be possible to land on Earth alive.
It is unlikely that anyone will present SpaceX with a violation of the treaty: Russia and China do not need this yet. In addition, they can always try to evade recording the violation by receiving other answers from NASA. And yet, this problem will only grow over time. In 2026, Musk plans to send Starship to Mars in unmanned mode. Even if he does this two years later, it is clear that NASA will not be able to provide this flight with “continuous observation by the relevant state party to the Treaty.” NASA simply does not have its own equipment for this.
Treaty Violation as a Big Boon for SpaceX
It is important to understand that the key significance of the Polaris Dawn mission is not in the three dozen experiments it will perform. It is in the spacewalk in the first-ever extravehicular spacesuit created by a private company for private consumers, not for the government. NASA would never approve such a spacesuit, because they know that spacesuits without rigid elements “inflate” from the inside.
SpaceX's current spacesuit is deeply suboptimal, and it's clear that it will have to acquire a “cuirass” like the Russian Orlan. But another thing is also clear: the company is developing very quickly. In a few years, it will finally have a spacesuit suitable for outer space and serial production.
And without such a spacesuit, the exploration of the Moon and Mars is impossible in principle. As is known, Starship will not be able to obtain fuel for the return trip without mining Martian ice covered with a thin layer of regolith. Then this ice will have to be subjected to electrolysis and, using local carbon dioxide and the Sabatier reaction, methane will be synthesized on Mars. Together with the oxygen obtained during electrolysis, this will become an absolutely necessary step in a manned expedition. Optimists, for example, science journalist Alexander Berezina, who helped with the preparation of this article, even believe that Elon Musk will be able to land a man on Mars as early as the 2030s.
There is nothing to do without an extravehicular spacesuit on the Moon. And the companies hired by NASA cannot even test these spacesuits together with life support systems (“backpacks”). So it is possible that American astronauts will be forced to move around in SpaceX spacesuits on Selena, simply because there will be no others.
But it's not just about the spacesuits. SpaceX and NASA have fundamentally different views on space exploration in general. In the opinion of scientists working for the Agency, a flight to Mars is suicide in terms of radiation. Elon Musk, on the contrary, considers this level of radiation safe. In 2026, NASA plans to return the United States (and humanity) to the Moon, landing only two people there in accordance with the ideology vouqismAt the same time, Musk wrote on his former Twitter that the “Woukism virus” was dangerous for the States and “killed” (figuratively) his son.
Problems and tensions are growing not only with NASA: SpaceX recently officially announced that the FAA, the American regulator, is delaying the fifth Starship test for months, pushing its launch back to November at best. And all this under highly dubious technical pretexts. Given all this, it’s not hard to see why Musk is openly backing a politician who could replace the heads of both NASA and the FAA.
But what if the “political” bet doesn't work? What if NASA contractors don't make spacesuits for the moon landing in the coming years?
It could then be that civilian private astronauts, like Isaacman and the SpaceX engineers who took part in Polaris Dawn, will be the only personnel available to Elon Musk on missions to other celestial bodies. In that sense, today’s spacewalk is the first step toward making a private company at least relatively immune to the kind of government pressure it is currently subject to.
