New House Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars
By Rainer Zitelmann
Skyhorse Publishing, 2026.
Pp. 304, $32.99 (hardcover).
The 1968 movie 2001: A House Odyssey was eerily prescient. On a mission to Jupiter, astronauts Frank and Dave get their information on the equal of an iPad, one thing that will not be invented till 2010. And when their onboard laptop, HAL, goes rogue, the narrative anticipates immediately’s anxieties about synthetic intelligence with uncanny precision.
The movie additionally foresaw the enlargement of enterprise and commerce into area. One character travels to the moon on Pan Am. He stops at an orbiting Hilton, which features a Howard Johnson’s “Earthlight Room” lounge. This stuff, sadly, haven’t come to move. However which will change if Rainer Zitelmann has something to say about it. His current e-book, New House Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars, argues that increasing property rights and free markets past Earth’s environment is our greatest hope for spurring a brand new area age.
“House capitalism,” he writes, “is the one approach humanity will ever have the ability to colonize Mars or mine asteroids.” Whereas wanting forward, Zitelmann additionally exhibits how the area economic system is already starting to growth, regardless of challenges from what may be referred to as area collectivism.
From Apollo to the House Shuttle
When Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon in 1969, Zitelmann was a 12-year-old area fanatic. He printed a newspaper that day and bought it to his German classmates, filling it with details about area and rockets.
It had solely been six years since John F. Kennedy made a speech at Houston’s Rice College calling for a person to land on the moon earlier than the tip of the last decade. Success required a nationwide effort by which price was no object. It was, in impact, a quasi-military contest with the Soviet Union that, at its top, consumed 4.5 p.c of the US authorities finances.
In the present day, greater than half a century after the fictional occasions of 2001: A House Odyssey, we’ve neither business flights to the moon nor orbiting Hiltons. Now we have not even returned to the moon because the final Apollo mission in 1972.
In hindsight, it was in all probability naïve to count on in any other case. Past offering a morale enhance, the Apollo program supplied no sensible advantages commensurate with its price. On Earth, life went on. Wars, poverty, illness, and disasters continued as earlier than, demanding scarce assets.
NASA understood this. As Wernher von Braun, typically referred to as the daddy of the American lunar program, stated on the time, “Now we have to point out that spaceflight is beneficial, and even worthwhile, for individuals on Earth, and actually, area initiatives ought to start to pay for themselves.”
The area shuttle, which flew its first mission in 1981, was designed to be reusable and convey down prices. Over its 30-year lifespan, it offered spectacular footage for night newscasts, together with spacewalks, docking with the Worldwide House Station (ISS), and touchdown on Earth somewhat than dropping into the ocean. However it finally did not treatment what Aldrin referred to as “the excessive prices of area entry.”
Zitelmann blames this on authorities inefficiency. He writes that the number of Rockwell to fabricate the shuttle in 1972, as an illustration, was a political reward from President Nixon to California, an vital swing state. Moreover, cost-plus contracting ensured that the non-public companies working for NASA had little incentive to manage prices.
The shuttle even failed to create space journey safer. Two in-air accidents claimed the lives of 14 astronauts. (The Apollo program had claimed three lives, and none in flight). In 2011, the shuttle program was discontinued, and American astronauts started hitching rides to the ISS on Russian rockets.
Enter SpaceX
That modified on Might 30, 2020, when Elon Musk’s firm SpaceX carried two astronauts from Florida’s Kennedy House Middle to the ISS. It was the primary crewed launch from U.S. soil since shuttle flights ended, and the primary ever by a non-public firm.
Reasonably than merely contracting with and directing the non-public sector, NASA had begun permitting companies similar to SpaceX to compete to hold payloads into orbit. Up to now, Musk has dominated this competitors over rivals similar to Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin. Of 324 world area launches in 2025, SpaceX was liable for 165. China was second with 88, and Russia third with 17.
Reusability is on the core of SpaceX’s enterprise mannequin. By reusing costly rocket elements, the corporate has pushed its estimated price of every launch all the way down to roughly $15 million to $22 million, in keeping with Zitelmann. That compares with about $1.5 billion to launch the area shuttle.
This has helped create an area economic system that employed some 400,000 individuals globally in 2022, in keeping with Zitelmann. In the present day, it performs a crucial function in GPS navigation, climate forecasting, supply-chain logistics, and synchronized visitors lights.
The Subsequent House Economic system
Zitelmann sees area as a serious development sector. Sooner or later within the not-too-distant future, scarce minerals may be mined from asteroids. Knowledge facilities may be inbuilt area. Orbiting photo voltaic panels would possibly transmit vitality to Earth. The moon and Mars may be colonized as locations for individuals to journey, dwell, and work—one thing each SpaceX and Blue Origin are already working towards.
However none of that is prone to occur with out giant non-public investments. Doubtlessly standing in the way in which are agreements such because the 1967 Outer House Treaty, which the US signed.
“Outer area,” it reads partially, “together with the Moon and different celestial our bodies just isn’t topic to nationwide appropriation by declare of sovereignty, via use or occupation, or by some other means.”
The Moon Settlement of 1979 goes additional, declaring that “exploration and use of the Moon shall be the province of all mankind and shall be carried out for the profit and within the curiosity of all international locations, regardless of their diploma of financial and scientific improvement.” Although not signed by the US, it may throw a authorized wrench into makes an attempt to earn a revenue in area.
Reinterpreting and renegotiating such agreements might at some point gasoline the authorized specialty of area legislation. Within the meantime, newer agreements push again on a collectivist notion of area.
In 2015, President Obama signed a invoice permitting US residents to personal, transport, and promote legally obtained area assets. In 2020, Trump signed an govt order rejecting what Zitelmann calls “the notion of area as a world commons.” Now 70 nations have signed the Artemis Accords, which give an extra authorized foundation for the extractionion of extraterrestrial assets.
Radicals see this as a brand new colonialism, akin to that which enslaved and oppressed tens of millions of individuals between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. The distinction, as Zitelmann factors out, is that locations just like the moon, Mars and asteroids don’t have any individuals, or beings of any kind that we all know of, to be oppressed.
Essential students similar to thinker Mary-Jane Rubenstein aren’t persuaded. In its drive to use area, she accuses the West of bigotry towards substances similar to rocks which have the proper to be left alone. Such arguments appear to treat humanity, and positively capitalism, as a illness finest quarantined on Earth. And whereas they might sound metaphorically spacey to most People, Zitelmann believes they’re a hazard if left unchallenged.
“Whether or not area capitalism has a future or not will first be decided on Earth,” he writes, “within the battle between those that advocate freedom, property rights, and progress on the one hand, and people who espouse statism, egalitarian ideologies, and oppose progress on the opposite.”
One group that will not thoughts oppressing rocks is the federal government of China, which has emerged as the primary competitor to the US in area exploration. In 2003, China put people into orbit. In 2019, it turned the primary nation to land a craft on the far aspect of the moon. And in 2021, China constructed its personal area station, which stays in use.
Zitelmann notes that China’s area program, like its economic system, is a hybrid of presidency management and personal enterprise. In the end, he believes the winner of the brand new area race will probably be decided by which nation higher empowers its non-public sector to take initiative and dangers.
An Optimistic Future
For me, studying New House Capitalism was a breath of contemporary air. From 9/11 to social media habit to the specter of synthetic intelligence, the twenty-first century has not all the time supplied a lot purpose for optimism. It’s straightforward to really feel pessimistic, if not dystopian, in regards to the future. However a brand new area age affords a extra hopeful imaginative and prescient. From lunar holidays to zero-gravity basketball, thrilling potentialities could also be nearer than we predict.
How quickly such issues grow to be actuality will, because the e-book argues, rely on whether or not we permit the revenue motive to work past Earth’s environment.
“Gravity might disappear in area,” Zitelmann writes, “however financial legal guidelines don’t.”
