They are cooperative at this stage my friend. They will be cooperative 'companies' with shareholdings at a later stage. We are not meeting any species for the next few decades atleast. All mining operations et all will be conducted around Mars ,Venus, passing asteroids and the like.Let's do that silently then and check on each other if
say a moon station is built and by whom?
If humanity doesn't unify before expanding in space,
we'll meet species that have and be trampled.
As for robotic exploration, the big projects are already
all cooperative for many reasons. We'll see.
Read you later, Tay.
East India company was also a company formed by entrepreneurs who invested and had shareholding agreements who were risking their money during the colonization phase. Its not going to be very different. Except that this time, India too is in the game.