Notes on space capitalism

China wouldn’t be putting the money into the moon if they thought it was just a land grab. There will be a market and they want to control it. It is a decade if not a century-long play.

If you want to understand what is at stake, watch General Steven Kwast’s talk “The Urgent Need for a U.S. Space Force.” Here is the key graf from that talk:

This is not a military race, this is an economic race. And if you do not have a guardian force to bring rule of law and predictability, no venture capitalists will know how to make risk decisions. No company will be able to invest. And those that do will have their hard work stolen away, because the rule of law is not codified by a guardian force. The good news is, there are more societies on planet Earth that share our values as an American society, that will work with us to do this. But right now, we’re paralyzed.

Some other important documents:

• Measuring the Space Economy: Estimating the Value of Economic Activities in and for Space
• From TechFreedom’s Jim Dunstan “In NASA’s Moon to Mars Initiative, Shutting out Commerce Gets You Nowhere"; full comments
• Gen. Kwast’s op-ed in The Hill: “Space diplomacy: A better way to combat China’s challenge” is a short version of his whitepaper: “Fast Space: Leveraging Ultra Low-Cost Space Access for 21st Century Challenges”
• Space capitalism knowledge base