Mission Drift: How Institutional Complexity Keeps New Space Off Course

The growing role of private companies has renewed public interest in space, along with visions of multi-planetary futures and promises to democratise access to space. Yet the New Space sector remains bound by substantial institutional constraints that limit both innovation and who can take part.

Drawing on institutional theory, this paper examines how competing logics – the state’s view of space as a sovereign domain, the market’s view of it as a commercial opportunity, and a marginalised community view of space as a commons – interact to form a “closed world structure” that insulates the field from critique. Using topic modelling and critical discourse analysis, it studies how this structure is created and maintained in language, and how it pushes space ventures towards mission drift while keeping alternative organisational forms from gaining legitimacy and support.