Technological developments usher new opportunities for humanity to tap into the vast resources of outer space. But the current international regulations of outer space activities were adopted in the 1960s, with a narrower assessment of space use and capabilities, and must be re-evaluated. Current scholarship, however, is fixated on a static regulatory approach, proposing the installment of comprehensive regimes. Such models fail to account for the different incentives, goals, and capabilities of the participants in outer space. Building on the New Haven School of International Law, this Article offers a novel theory of regime evolution for outer space regulation, adapting the regulation at each stage of development to the optimization of normative international values, based upon the anticipated interactions of the participants involved, their goals, and their incentives. The Article begins with a review of positive law. It then applies the New Haven School methodology and identifies the participants and normative international values. The Article proceeds to pinpoint the difficulties associated with each type of static regime proposed by other scholars and, finally, develops a novel regime evolution approach to space resource regulation.

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