Space capitalism – build it, own it

Mediation, Musings, , , , , , , ,

At the beginning of August, I started writing a story – Calliope’s Reach – set in a future around 2150 – 2200. The narrative is grounded in a landscape of space capitalism. The following week, I ran across the book New Space Capitalism [1], which connected with recent events, particularly SpaceX’s IPO.

What’s the drift? – cautious optimism for a better future. A stairway to the stars. There’s much history here, and Rainer Zitelmann covers the highlights, including the January 1986 Challenger disaster, which I watched on live TV. ( I was particularly interested in that launch because I had worked with one of the crew.)

Here’re some quotes from the Foreword by Newt Gingrich:

New Space Capitalism is a very important and comprehensive look at the next great breakthrough we need if the momentum of human development in space is going to reach its fullest potential. We have had a tragic loss of momentum from the time Americans landed on the Moon … It is as though the original cavalry expeditions that mapped the American West had not found any wagon trains to follow up and settle the areas they were exploring. Of course, in our history there were over 30,000 maps of the new regions published and given away to hopeful settlers. 

… the possibility for an entire new economy in space … will require a new legal structure.

The economic passions which had led to the opening of the West simply were not part of the space psychological ecosystem from Apollo to just a few years ago. 

The United States should adopt a policy of 100 percent write-off for manufacturing and tourism in space and no taxes for forty years on profits from manufacturing and space tourism. Given these double tax advantages there will be a flood of new investors—the equivalent of the wildcatters who in the first half of the twentieth century made the oil and gas industry so dynamic.

Here’s Zitelmann’s thesis:

My thesis: Space capitalism is the only way humanity will ever be able to colonize Mars or mine asteroids. Only when it is possible to own, buy, and sell land on other celestial bodies can humanity truly become a multi-planetary species.

He critically examines: 

… the arguments put forward by statists, who see things quite differently. In his 2022 book Space Ethics [2], Brian Patrick Green, one of many “space ethics experts,” insists: “However, commercial and industrial access to space … should not be a free for all. Instead, these private organizations still need to be regulated and still need state guidance…. It is the duty of the public sector—governments, states, and international bodies like the UN—to regulate the private sector for the sake of defending the common good for all on Earth and in space.”

I’ve also been reading about the common good.

So, here’s Gemini’s overview of the topic:

Prompt: What is space capitalism?

Space capitalism is an economic and philosophical model that applies free-market principles, private enterprise, and property rights to the exploration, commercialization, and settlement of outer space. 

Core Concepts

  • Private Enterprise Over Government: It argues that private companies and entrepreneurs—rather than government agencies like NASA—should drive space exploration because they are more innovative and cost-effective. 
  • Extraterrestrial Property Rights: Proponents advocate for the right to own and buy land, resources, and infrastructure on the Moon, Mars, and asteroids to incentivize long-term investment. 
  • Commercial Space Industries: It includes real-world and planned ventures like satellite deployment, space tourism, asteroid mining, and space-based solar power. 

The “NewSpace” Era

Often referred to as part of the “NewSpace” movement, space capitalism is visible today through private aerospace companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. These companies handle commercial launches and cargo transport, shifting the space economy away from purely state-funded Cold War models. 

Challenges and Debates

  • The Outer Space Treaty: International law, specifically the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty, currently bans national appropriation and sovereign ownership of celestial bodies, creating legal hurdles for privatization. 
  • Critical Perspectives: Critics argue that extending free-market capitalism into space could lead to the corporate exploitation of celestial resources, orbital debris crises, and widening inequality. 

Prompt: literary use: space capitalism

In literary and cultural studies, space capitalism refers to the extension of corporate power, market logics, and class struggle into outer space or onto planetary landscapes within narrative fiction and theory.

Key Themes in Literature

  • Corporate Hegemony: Megacorporations replace nation-states as the primary governing and exploiting forces (common in cyberpunk and hard science fiction).
  • Abstract Space vs. Lived Place: The friction between the profit-driven, homogenized “abstract space” required by interstellar capital and the human need for meaningful, localized “social places”. [1, 2]
  • Extractive Frontiers: Outer space is framed not as a site of heroic scientific discovery, but as a resource-mined periphery serving core terrestrial wealth.

Notable Approaches

  • Science Fiction Imaginaries: Authors use extraterrestrial mining colonies and corporate-owned space stations to allegorize late-stage terrestrial capitalism. [1]
  • Literary Geography: Critics analyze how texts map the physical and psychological dimensions of expansion, treating the cosmos as the ultimate frontier of capital accumulation.

If you’d like, I can:

  • List specific sci-fi novels that focus on corporate space exploitation
  • Explore how literary theory (like Fredric Jameson’s cognitive mapping) applies to space narratives

So, the question: Is the “new” space race just 19th-century colonial homesteading and 20th-century corporate greed wearing a shiny, pressurized suit?

Perhaps another twist on “build it, and you will own the place” vibe.

And my stories speculate that the price for mere mortals will be indentured labor as part of elaborate T&C for off-world lives.

Other settings – more vast landscapes – for solitude
Frontier myths

Notes

[1] New Space Capitalism: Contents

• Zitelmann, Rainer (2026). New Space Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars (Function). Kindle Edition.

  • Foreword by Former Speaker Newt Gingrich Introduction
  • Chapter 1: Government Failure—The End of the Future
  • Chapter 2: The Second Space Age
  • Chapter 3: Space Exploration Without Government
  • Chapter 4: Starship—A Ship for the Future of Humanity
  • Chapter 5: The Colonization of Mars—The Defining Task of the Century
  • Chapter 6: The Treasures of Space
  • Chapter 7: Space as a Tourist Destination
  • Chapter 8: The Space Economy Today
  • Chapter 9: China’s Private Space Industry
  • Chapter 10: Conquering Space Won’t Work Without Private Property 
  • Afterword
  • Notes • Bibliography • About the Author • Index of Persons

See also:

• Space.com > Space Exploration > Expert Voices  (Op-Ed) > What history can teach us about the future of property rights in space by Rainer Zitelmann (August 11, 2026) – If SpaceX begins building permanent settlements on Mars, then ownership of some Red Planet land should initially belong to the company.

[2] Space Ethics

• Green, Brian Patrick (2021). Space Ethics (Function). Kindle Edition. 

[3] In doing research for my story Clara’s World, I segued into the topics of space ethics, property rights, and the common good:

  • contemporary assessment of utilitarianism
  • commoditization and monetization of personal data
  • the 1980’s credo “greed is good”
  • the trolley problem, as dramatized in the TV series The Good Place

Gemini cast shade on space capitalism:

Prompt: what might be said regarding the drift of space capitalism in such a contemporary context?

The drift toward “space capitalism” represents the literal and philosophical expansion of the “Greed is good” ethos and surveillance capitalism beyond the confines of Earth. Space is no longer primarily a symbol of national prestige or scientific unity; it has evolved into a hyper-commercialized domain. [1, 2] 

By analyzing this transition through our established ethical lenses, we can see how the extraction and data logics of Earth are being cast into the stars.

1. The Ultimate Utilitarian Frontier (The Corporate Defense)

Proponents of commercial space exploration rely heavily on a massive utilitarian calculation to justify the privatization of orbit and celestial bodies. [3, 4] 

  • The Greater Good Argument: Private entities (like SpaceX, which went public in a historic multi-trillion dollar market event) have successfully driven down the cost of sending payloads into orbit by roughly 90%. [2, 5] 
  • The “Multiplanetary” Calculus: Tycoons argue that the ultimate utilitarian duty is to ensure the long-term survival of human consciousness. In their view, risking lives and consolidating immense corporate power now is an acceptable cost to build a backup home for humanity. [1, 6] 
  • The Flaw: This calculation serves a incredibly narrow slice of humanity. The profits and privileges belong to the Global North and a handful of billionaires, while the “pain units”—such as light pollution disrupting astronomy or the danger of crashing space debris—are externalized onto the global public. [2, 7, 8, 9] 

2. The Deontological Extinction of the “Global Commons”

From a Deontological perspective, space capitalism is creating a severe crisis of international rights and duties.

  • Violating the Spirit of Treaties: The 1967 Outer Space Treaty explicitly states that space is the “province of all mankind” and bans national sovereignty over celestial bodies. However, modern space capitalism operates on a loophole: while a nation cannot claim the moon, billionaires are actively lobbying for legal frameworks to grant private property and mining rights. [9, 10, 11] 
  • The Infrastructure Monopoly: Scholars studying the New Space Economy warn that we are entering a “winner-takes-all” paradigm. When a single corporation owns the majority of the active satellites in low Earth orbit, a private entity effectively holds a monopoly over global communication infrastructure. Deontologists argue this completely strips away the global public’s autonomy, forcing humanity to rely on private corporate benevolence for baseline survival. [6, 12, 13] 

3. A Dystopian Reimagining of the Trolley Problem

If data capitalism monetizes our digital reflections, space capitalism threatens to monetize our physical lifelines. In a future lunar or Martian settlement managed by a private corporation, the trolley problem ceases to be a metaphor:

  • The Setup: Imagine a life-support system malfunction on a corporate colony. The settlement director must choose whether to route oxygen to a sector of low-wage mining contractors or a sector housing wealthy space tourists who paid millions to be there.
  • The Gekko Calculus: If the colony is governed by a pure “Greed is Good” framework, the lever will always be pulled to protect the paying clients and the high-value infrastructure. Without the protections of democratic social contracts (Contractarianism), human rights dissolve entirely, reducing pioneers to indentured servants whose literal air supply is linked to a corporate profit margin. [6] 

The View from The Good Place

If we return to the logic of The Good Place, the drift of space capitalism highlights a system where the “points” are inherently rigged. The billionaires driving this frontier often phrase their goals in the language of cosmic virtue—”saving humanity”. Yet, by exporting an unmoderated, extractive capitalist framework into the vacuum of space, they risk replicating Earth’s deep structural inequalities on a galactic scale. [1, 6, 11, 14] 

Would you like to examine how the Outer Space Treaty is adapting to handle corporate property claims, or look at how space-based data centers are bridging the gap between surveillance capitalism and orbital technology? [10, 15] 

Related posts

• Shadowscape – Episode 6 – “welcome wagon no more” (curiosity is a luxury)

• The romance of FTL, a stark reality