The Foundation Society is an organization founded for the specific purpose of establishing settlements of its members in space.
The Foundation Society first gained recognition for its successful lobbying efforts with the governments of spacefaring nations to establish property rights in space. The system it caused to be enacted is based on the Homesteading laws of the American frontier: a corporation or even a person can claim an orbital location, an asteroid smaller than 10 miles in diameter, or a plot of land up to 10 miles by 10 miles in size, so long as it does not interfere with any other active claim. The claim remains valid so long as the claiming entity actively uses its claimed property; claims not in active use for four Earth years revert to unclaimed status and are available for another entity to claim.