The tree · Regime · Happens to the world · Plays out over the whole window
A space traffic authority among the major powers can enforce rules on manoeuvres and launch windows
Air traffic has controllers with authority; space traffic has voluntary conjunction warnings and a great deal of goodwill. Tens of thousands of people in transit, thousands of vehicles and a Belt worth of shipping need an authority among the powers that fly, with real enforcement over who manoeuvres where and who launches when. It is distinct from a ban on debris-creating weapons tests and is the regime the Slow Expanse assumes without saying.
The test: what counts as it having happened
A body established by agreement among at least the United States and China, and at least one of the European Union, India, or Russia, holds and has exercised authority over spacecraft manoeuvres and launch windows, with a published enforcement record (a refused launch window, a directed manoeuvre, or a sanction under the agreement), as documented in the agreement's text and the body's own published record.
Settled by: The agreement's text and the body's published enforcement record
The odds, by how long I live
| baselineto 2071 ± 8 | moderateto 2080 | strongto 2095 | radicalto 2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 35% | 45% | 60% | 78% | 85% |
Each column is a different guess at how long I live, from current trends (baseline) to open-ended. The number is the chance this happens before that deadline, assuming everything it depends on happens first. As of 2026-09-20.
Why these numbers: Coordination bodies without teeth exist and traffic in low orbit is already forcing the question, but an authority with enforcement over the major powers' own launches is a cession of sovereignty that took aviation a world war to reach; a little over one in three by 2071 and likely only with the longer windows. Proposed by Claude 2026-09-20 with the node's addition, accepted by John.
What this one is worth
If this happened tomorrow and nothing else changed, the chance that I live and work off Earth by 2071 goes from 0.5% to 0.5% (too small to tell apart from chance). If it turned out no, the same number goes to 0.0% (−0.5 points).
| Longevity scenario | baseline2071 ± 8 | moderate2080 | strong2095 | radical2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The headline as it stands | 0.5% | 1.2% | 3.8% | 11% | 15% |
| If this settled yes now | 0.5% | 1.5% | 4.5% | 12% | 16% |
| If this settled no now | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
This is what the site says in advance, before the thing happens. When it does, the
ledger entry that records it quotes this figure beside what actually followed, so a
reader can see whether the prediction held. Worked out at the run
2026-10-11-scan by holding this step at each outcome in turn and
playing the whole tree out again, 20,000 times per
scenario. That is a throw of the dice, so a move smaller than about
0.10 points is inside the noise rather than
a finding.
The last check
Once a week the tree is read against the news, node by node, against the test above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every check ever made on this node is on the Radar page.
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2026-10-04 Nothing new
No multi-power body with enforcement authority over manoeuvres or launch windows exists; coordination remains informal and bilateral, with US civil traffic work moving to Commerce.
Revisions
| Date | Field | From | To | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-25 | notes | 'with the Tier 4 alternative to be revisited at the methodology pass alongside item 100' | the Tier 4 alternative considered at the methodology pass and declined; stays in Tier 3 | Methodology pass item 100 (docs/methodology-pass-2026-09-25.md), part (b) declined by John 2026-09-25. Notes only; no number or tier list changed for this node. |
Notes
Added 2026-09-20 under step 27, item 20 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md, ruled 2026-09-19): raised by Gemini as a missing node; required by Tier 3 (data/tiers.toml). Moving it to Tier 4 in place of the anti-satellite ban was proposed at the methodology pass (item 100 part b, docs/methodology-pass-2026-09-25.md) and declined by John 2026-09-25; it stays in Tier 3.
Think this is wrong, missing something it depends on, or badly estimated?
Open an issue about it, or read
how feedback gets folded into the tree.
The record itself is data/R-regime.toml in the public repository.