How the United States could apply the principles of its historic expansion to establish a sustained presence beyond Earth.
By: Caesar Kalinowski IV | Date: September 22, 2025
In his first inaugural address, President Thomas Jefferson called upon Americans to act “with courage and confidence” in pursuing “our own Federal and Republican principles” across the entire North American continent. Unlike Europe, where armies had fought over the same land since well before the Roman Empire, Jefferson argued that Americans “possess[ed] a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation.” This vision laid the foundation for what would soon become the United States’ largest acquisition of territory: the Louisiana Purchase, which nearly doubled the size of the young nation and now constitutes almost a third of the continental United States.
By the 1840s, politicians rallied around the notion of American Manifest Destiny to help promote settlement expansion in the West and rally popular support for a war with Mexico over Texas. American private settlements flourished with the support of federal troops stationed at sparse outposts, who provided a measure of stability and security for those moving West—while devastating Native American communities indigenous to the lands. Largely ending in the late 1800s with the territorial acquisitions of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, America’s industrial revolution benefited enormously from the significant private and public resource acquisitions made through expansion.
America once again stands at the vanguard of exploration with the official establishment of the United States Space Force in 2019—Earth’s first military force dedicated to national and international interests in space. With similar courage and conviction, the United States is positioned to be the foremost nation in the exploration, mineral exploitation, and the development of a sustainable presence in our solar system and beyond. Applying those appropriate and beneficial tenets of the first American Manifest Destiny, our Nation can and should promote and exercise a similar combination of private and public cooperation in the stabilization and exploration of space. Ultimately, this New American Manifest Destiny will allow the United States to further its technological and manufacturing capabilities, acquire extraterrestrial land for population expansion, and position itself as the preeminent power in the solar system.
Tenets of the New American Manifest Destiny
Founded in the notion of American exceptionalism, American Manifest Destiny in the 1800s was based on an absolute belief that Americans were destined to expand West from their Eastern colonial roots. The major tenets of American expansionist policy in politics and popular culture included beliefs in (1) the special virtues of the American people and their institutions; (2) the mission of the United States to redeem and remake the West in the image of the agrarian dream; and (3) Americans’ irresistible call to accomplish this essential duty. But American expansionism was not without its problems.
Before the conclusion of the Civil War, control of most newly acquired territory involved subjugation and expulsion of native populations with the secondary result of expanding slave-holding states. America’s associated Indian Removal policy—whether personified by Jefferson’s professed desire for Native Americans to assimilate and become “civilized” or President Andrew Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Act and Trail of Tears—likewise relied upon discrimination and the brutal use of military force.
Although we do not know if the unexplored reaches of space are occupied by other life forms, learning lessons from America’s past transgressions are nonetheless crucial to our nation’s consideration of future space expansion. America should espouse and exemplify the special virtues of American people, democracy, and institutions—thereby opposing China’s considerably more militaristic goals—in order to invest ethically in long-term space development and stabilization. Acknowledging Americans’ “irresistible destiny to explore” the hostile, furthest reaches of space need not also include the hostile methods of the past. Instead, America should evaluate and commit to exploration methods and first contact policies that set the standards, such as the SETI Protocols, meant to avoid potential conflicts and allow for a unified Terran response to life beyond our planet.
Neil Armstrong stands beside the American flag after becoming the first human to set foot on the lunar surface during NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, July 20, 1969.
The Costs of Commitment to Space Exploration
Beyond establishing a moral commitment to expansion, the New American Manifest Destiny must also reflect a national commitment to develop technological and human resources that allows us to secure the future of space for our citizens. By incentivizing private exploration and material exploitation in space through stability operations and outposts, the United States will gain early access to much needed mineral sources, which would prevent a reliance on Chinese sources and spur sustainable growth. To do so, however, Congress will need to appropriate or reallocate substantial funds—and make key determinations regarding current treaties and restrictions—that would support the necessary technological developments and force expansion throughout the solar system and universe.
In particular, America must commit to funding early technological advances and proficiencies that represent necessary precursors to both long-term success and defending the expand our national presence in a borderless frontier. These advances directly support this new mission by focusing on advancing American capabilities to (1) transport personnel and material into and through outer space in an economically feasible way, (2) maintain personnel and facility health during long-term space deployments, and (3) establish outposts and maintain long-distance deployments for security and stability of private space exploration and exploitation.
Legal Considerations: In 1967, major space-faring nations signed the Outer Space Treaty (“OST”), which provides the basic legal framework for space travel and exploration. Currently signed by America and 130 nations, the OST specifically states that “[o]uter space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” The OST also mandates that “[o]uter space … shall be free for exploration and use by all States …, and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.” Effectively, space law currently is hinged on the concept of “the common heritage of mankind,” whereby any person can explore or exploit outer space resources. In order to assert any form of control, America would either need to affirmatively break its treaty obligations by claiming territorial sovereignty, broker a treaty with other superpowers for the shared use of facilities, or support occupations by nominally private entities that act as unofficial extensions of American forces.
Economically Feasible Transport In and Out of Earth’s Atmosphere: To escape the vast majority of Earth’s gravitational pull and pass the Karman Line (~100km), we currently employ technology and methods too expensive for large scale material and manpower deployments to space. Once in space, transportation technology is still insufficient for long distance space exploration. Not only are current single use rockets too expensive and material dependent, but travel is too slow in terms of time. The nearest edge of the asteroid belt is 478.7 million km away, and the record for fastest manned space vehicle (the Apollo 10) moved at 39,897 km/h. At that rate, without factoring pickup or slowdown time, it will still take well over a year to reach the edge of the belt. Whether in the form of a chemical propulsion air-to-orbit system, a hypervelocity ram accelerator, a “space elevator,” or nuclear-powered propulsion engines, the United States will need to find a more economical way of moving personnel and material into and through space.
Living Conditions and Expansion in Space: Both for initial deployments into space as well as long-term outposts and exploratory missions, additional research will need to be done on the long-term effects of low gravity, feasible living conditions, terraforming, and sustaining long-term mining operations. Beginning with a moon outpost, we can advance necessary technologies related to robotic mining, sustainability, and inhabitability while still remaining within a distance that can accommodate mishaps. Next, we should expand further into space through new outposts at stable Lagrange Points—leveraging advanced artificial intelligence and robotic 3D printers sent before human occupants. With proper investments, the atmosphere of these first outposts on other moons could potentially be used to create breathable oxygen and manufacture the fuels needed for the return trip to earth. These outposts would then act as waystation for private developers, with U.S. military forces providing security against criminal activity.
U.S. and Soviet crew members of the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project during the first joint rendezvous and docking mission in orbit, July 1975.
The United States must once again stand unified at the frontier of expansion and embrace a New American Manifest Destiny, defined by a commitment to the special virtues and irresistible destiny of the United States in the ethical exploration and exploitation of space. The time for such a commitment is now, before mineral shortages lead to military conflicts on Earth or other nations are able to assert their interests first. Otherwise, we risk ceding our fate beyond Earth’s atmosphere to rival powers, such as China or Russia, whose models of governance and resource exploitation do not prioritize our national commitment to individual liberty, democratic accountability, and the protection of human dignity for all.
Caesar Kalinowski IV is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a constitutional lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, where he regularly advises major corporations on emerging technologies. The views expressed in this article are his own and not necessarily those of his firm or its clients.