When we gaze into the vast night sky from our terrestrial home, space certainly seems like an overwhelmingly wild and desolate place: an empty plain primed for settlement. When Star Trek debuted in the ’60s and began calling space “the final frontier,” it was in the midst of a geopolitical race to the moon with the Soviet Union. “Final frontier” became synonymous with a spirit of space expansion that is deeply, perhaps distressingly, American.

Now, with an increasing number of billionaires whipping out spaceships for their own public rocket-measuring contest, a growing movement in the space industry inspired by de-colonialist ideas wants to ensure that places like Mars don’t become the next “New World” for people in power to conquer and trash. In order to avoid repeating our historic mistakes, these scientists and policy makers argue that humans need to take a hard look at the laws we’ve established here on Earth before we boldly go where no person has gone before.

“The three dominant myths of space governance right now are that there’s no history, no victims, and no law,” Cris van Eijk, a space policy adviser with the International Astronomical Union, told The Daily Beast. Far from being an empty, ahistorical void, space is chock-full of resources, scientific opportunities, and man-made artifacts—including a rapidly accumulating pile of orbital junk. Far from being lawless, it is a place with a carefully crafted and evolving legal framework. And far from being victim-free, humanity’s actions in space profoundly impact daily life on Earth—both for better and for worse.