{"id":2697,"date":"2020-12-17T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-17T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=140442"},"modified":"2020-12-17T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T13:00:00","slug":"billionaires-want-to-be-the-gatekeepers-of-the-solar-system-space-is-the-final-profitable-frontier-and-its-elon-musks-for-the-taking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/17\/billionaires-want-to-be-the-gatekeepers-of-the-solar-system-space-is-the-final-profitable-frontier-and-its-elon-musks-for-the-taking\/","title":{"rendered":"Billionaires Want to Be the Gatekeepers of the Solar System \u2013 Space is the final (profitable) frontier\u2014and it\u2019s Elon Musk\u2019s for the taking."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Space is our birthright. \u201cAmericans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery and use of resources in outer space,\u201d President Donald Trump wrote <\/a>April 6, 2020, issuing the \u201cExecutive Order on Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources.\u201d In the stroke of a pen, Trump planted the U.S. flag on \u201cthe Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies.\u201d <\/p>\n

As Trump declared these space lands and resources open for business, you could hear the cheers\u2014mostly from \u201cmoonshot\u201d corporations that have clamored to sweep away the patchy, unregularized Cold War-era space law in favor of new, unregulated corporate plunder of the solar system. <\/p>\n

While the institution of private land ownership is now widely taken for granted, it was\u2014like many so-called natural things\u2014invented. <\/p>\n

Before the muddied, grueling transition from feudalism to capitalism, peasants in Britain and much of Western Europe depended on their right to farm, forage and harvest on common, community lands. The land was controlled by local lords, but it belonged (in a loose, de facto sense) to the communities living on it and dependent upon it. Eventually, common lands were \u201cenclosed\u201d and became the private property of aristocrats. <\/p>\n

This exclusive right to land use (to own and profit from land) was the contrivance that established the new economic order. No longer held in common, the planet\u2019s resources were parceled off to strictly private hands. No longer could peasants scrape by, subsisting on the commons. Instead, they depended on the grace and favor of a wage.<\/p>\n

Life in feudal times was no bucolic idyll, but enclosure was synonymous with disaster, destitution and death for many people. This model was mirrored in the capture, theft and enclosure of colony lands, the people (and resources) of which fueled the early capitalist transition and later the industrial revolution. Capitalism must grow to persist, and as it grows it must transform ripe, unregularized commons into private fiefdoms\u2014at home and afar.<\/p>\n

So it seems only \u201cnatural\u201d to carve up the moon into stretches of valuable real estate, just like Manhattan and the metal mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After all, Earth\u2019s resources dwindle by the day, and boundless resources beyond the stratosphere could be a backstop for planetary scarcity. Never mind that our crisis of resources is, in part, the result of this system of private ownership that rewards ruthless, short-term profiteering at the expense of the long-term survival of the natural commons.<\/p>\n

This future access to a new natural commons is now a stress test on governmental priorities. As Trump proclaimed<\/a>, \u201cOuter space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s executive order to \u201cencourage international support for the public and private recovery and use of resources in outer space\u201d heralds yet another public-private boondoggle, where nominally public institutions thrash out fresh boundaries of corporate activity. As an example, look no further than SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon capsule, which successfully transported <\/a>NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station on May 31, 2020. The NASA-SpaceX crossover branding leaves no room for misinterpretation: The next small steps for mankind will be giant leaps for corporate America.<\/p>\n

To Big Business…<\/h3>\n

Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002, talks misty-eyed about a relatively near future when humanity will have risen out of the mud, setting its sights on colonizing Mars\u2014with SpaceX transportation rocketing there.<\/p>\n

In 2020, Musk began launching a cavalcade of thousands of satellites into low-Earth orbit to form the Starlink satellite system<\/a>. As of November 2020, nearly 900 satellites had been launched (42,000 are planned in total). This network will potentially seed an extraplanetary monopoly for key economic infrastructure, such as domestic internet access.<\/p>\n

Fellow billionaire escapist Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, has been romanced by the wealth among the stars as well, founding his own aerospace company, Blue Origin, back in 2000. \u201cWe are going to build a road to space,\u201d Bezos said in 2019.<\/a> \u201cAnd then, amazing things will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bezos has invited us all to cosplay his daydreams with the Amazon-funded, interplanetary sci-fi thriller The Expanse<\/em>, in which a roll call of stock anti-heroes (the rogue policeman, the war-beleaguered pilot, etc.) tumble through a far future when only wise plutocratic innovators can plumb interstellar riches and deliver the solar system from interstellar war.<\/p>\n

Microsoft, too, has its fingers in the intergalactic pie, launching Azure Orbital in September 2020 to enable satellite operators on its cloud computing platform, along with a SpaceX partnership <\/a>the following month.<\/p>\n

According to Forbes, 2019 was a record year for private space investments, with \u201cventure capitalists [investing] $5.8 billion <\/a>in 178 commercial space startups worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Earth\u2019s billionaires burnish the power of new stratospheric tech, Trump launched Space Force, the first new branch of the U.S. military in more than seven decades. \u201cSpace is the world\u2019s newest war-fighting domain,\u201d Trump said.<\/a> \u201cAmid grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital.\u201d<\/p>\n

Space exploration has long been tied to military ambition. From its Cold War founding, NASA\u2019s task was to advance the practical interests of the American state as it squared off against the Soviet behemoth. The new field of battle included space-guided missiles and satellite technology. Astronauts are still generally selected from the ranks of the military. Grumman (now better known as half of Northrop Grumman) made parts for both the NASA spacecraft that leapt into the great unknown and the military machines that waged war in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

As the shadow of nuclear war retreats in the bright light of a digital dawn, the mission of Space Force is to protect the economic and military infrastructure (communications and surveillance technology) seemingly threatened by rival global powers (namely, Russia and China) gearing up their own military space operations.<\/p>\n

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty<\/a>, signed by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, attempted to guard against the militarization and the privatization of our shared stratosphere. The treaty limited governmental (and non-governmental) bodies from sending nuclear weapons into space and prohibited the annexation of the moon and temptingly mineral-rich asteroids. As the treaty outlined, any country could use and explore outer space but there could be no \u201cappropriation\u201d of astral territory. It was, at heart, a disarmament treaty\u2014one whose ropey legalities were enforced by the now-defunct Cold War brinkmanship between its main two signatories.<\/p>\n

The treaty never foresaw the dizzying rise of private enterprise clamoring for a slice of the sky. Nor did it foresee the slow shelving of publicly funded U.S. space exploration (especially the manned variety) that would allow venture capitalists to stake their claim in a new space scramble.<\/p>\n

With all new technology, regulation lags behind it, forced to play catch-up. Sean Casey, for example\u2014formerly of NASA and now at Silicon Valley Space Center\u2014has championed a \u201cregulatory framework that allows for the growth of the industry.\u201d Congress has obliged, and the purview for private commercial space ventures has been wedged wide open.<\/p>\n

The 1967 treaty had been interpreted by the United States in a manner akin to maritime law; just as no country owns international waters (making for open fishing), no country could own space (but loads of moon dust and modest astral bounties could be hauled back to Earth). The SPACE Act of 2015<\/a>, however, elaborated on President Barack Obama\u2019s expanded use of public-private partnerships for space exploration, making near-Earth asteroids available to commercial ventures. This law paved the way for the 2017 American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act<\/a>, designed to \u201censure that the United States remains the world leader in commercial space activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of the first asteroid-mining companies have collapsed<\/a>; Planetary Resources and DSI, for example, failed to raise enough money to build the needed speculative infrastructure. But the prize is too big to lose. The race is now to secure ownership frameworks in anticipation of mining technology eventually catching up to ambition. The SPACE Act slashed that red tape, and things are looking up. In November 2020, for example, founder of Trans Astronautica, Joel Sercel, said<\/a> \u201cfive years ago was, we think, the wrong time\u201d for asteroid mining, but there is reason \u201cto go to asteroids in the near term.\u201d<\/p>\n

…And Beyond!<\/h3>\n

The halcyon age of space exploration, when all American men took giant steps for mankind, looms disproportionately large in the collective U.S. imagination. In reality, the era was astonishingly brief. After President Richard Nixon ended the Apollo missions, every subsequent president promised to renew that muscular spirit of idealism and conquest. So far, no one has.<\/p>\n

In 2018, Trump instructed NASA to defund <\/a>the International Space Station by 2025. NASA is increasingly reliant on private companies to deliver on its contracts. In fact, the Trump administration\u2019s FY2020 budget included $363 million to \u201csupport commercial development of a large lunar lander that can initially carry cargo and later astronauts to the surface of the Moon.\u201d And NASA\u2019s Artemis program aims to put people on the moon by the middle of the decade as a commercial enterprise. It has also tapped three companies\u2014Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and Orbit Beyond\u2014for a $253.5 million project<\/a> to develop robotic landers partly for \u201ccommercial enterprises.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, SpaceX has been busily launching people off the planet. With its government contracts, it has grown from a $52 billion valuation in July 2020 to more than $100 billion <\/a>three months later. <\/p>\n

NASA still carries out extraordinary amounts of research\u2014 research that has provided the basis for the \u201cgenius\u201d leaps forward of the Silicon Valley aristocracy. Economist Mariana Mazzucato notes<\/a> that private innovation is often rooted in publicly funded research, to say nothing of the mammoth taxpayer-funded task of building initial infrastructure. Indeed, the aeronautic industry was largely dependent on government haulage and courier contracts until dwindling costs made commercially affordable flights possible, which crisscross our skies today. When it comes to space exploration, neoliberalism has reformulated the capacity of public bodies (and their spending, organizational and disciplinary frameworks) into a huge tendering system for the benefit of for-profit contracting corporations.<\/p>\n

Recent years have seen an explosion of spacefaring venture firms and private spaceflight startups. Spaceflight offers \u201crideshares\u201d for satellites wanting to hitch lifts on bigger ventures. Planet offers digital satellite imagery, and Spire Global deals in satellite-driven data analytics \u201cso that businesses and governments can make smart decisions.\u201d Axiom Space and billionaire Richard Branson\u2019s Virgin Galactic are two of many companies attempting to pioneer\u2014aka capture the market\u2014in luxury space travel. Orion Span promises an \u201cauthentic astronaut experience\u201d in its Aurora Class Space Station, a luxury space hotel <\/a>complete with high-speed internet and zero-gravity ping pong, for which it charges $9.5 million a trip. At the most harebrained extreme, the so-called Space Nation of Asgardia <\/a>offers a warped utopian experiment in off-world living\u2014part cult, part country club, part time capsule, part political refuge\u2014and another exercise in satellite development and data management.<\/p>\n

Three of the most tantalizing opportunities\u2014and perhaps the most competitive markets\u2014are those for communications infrastructure, asteroid mining and missions to the moon. Anyone who owns or runs a monopoly on satellite communications infrastructure can charge rent. SpaceX formerly acted as a transport service for other enterprises\u2019 satellites; today, its Starlink promises a whole new infrastructure of its own. Mining initiatives like the U.K.\u2019s Asteroid Mining are prospecting the estimated $700 quintillion<\/a> of rare earth minerals in the asteroid belt. Those materials are key to the manufacture of digital technology and robotics\u2014rare on Earth, but abundant in our sky.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moon is hot again,\u201d said Jack Burns, director of NASA\u2019s Network for Exploration and Space Science, in an interview <\/a>with the New Yorker<\/em>. The moon\u2019s low-gravity conditions, its proximity to Earth and its natural resources make it a prime hub for further space exploration, refueling and commercial operations. <\/p>\n

Bezos has expressed an interest in using low-gravity conditions for heavy industries, such as mining and manufacturing. Made in Space, a California startup, already has produced fiber optic cables in space. Moon Express is one of a number of companies planning to send commercial missions to the moon to mine for things like water (precious in space) and platinum (precious on Earth).<\/p>\n

In 2017, the head of China\u2019s lunar exploration program compared the moon to the Diaoyu\/Senkaku Islands\u2014a collection of uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea with enough strategic importance to cause decades of conflict among Asian nations. Many suspect oil is under the sea near the islands. <\/p>\n

The Artemis Accords<\/a>, signed in October 2020 by the United States and seven other countries, tries to lay out norms and suggestions for avoiding conflict over space resources. Any anxiety about such an agreement has not dulled the ambitions of the venture-corporate forces that underwrote it.<\/p>\n

Just One More Frontier <\/h3>\n

The eye-watering upfront costs of these exploratory, high-risk, high-reward endeavors can be absorbed by Silicon Valley venture capitalists and the personal fortunes of its aristocracy. A concentration of capital stands ready to risk big money to secure a stake in future markets (which will double down on its power in existing ones). The point is to ensure a slice of the territory everyone else will be clamoring for. <\/p>\n

This form of \u201ccreative destruction\u201d<\/a>\u2014an idea developed by economist Joseph Schumpeter, understood in neoliberalism to describe the boom-bust cycle of innovation\u2014is often packaged in the mythology of moonshot genius that drives human progress. But Schumpeter\u2019s theory has a less discussed underbelly: Such creative destruction is usually twinned with market capture. As competitors are tossed onto the scrap heap of history by their own sudden irrelevance, oligarchies and monopolies flourish.<\/p>\n

The riches of the asteroid belt make earthly mining look positively parochial. The problem is that a sudden, vast supply of (formerly) precious metals would make market prices plummet.<\/p>\n

Journalist Aaron Bastani, author of Fully Automated Luxury Communism<\/em>, notes that satellite-delivered digital information has the potential to replace our earthbound Internet networks with \u201cspace-based global Internet<\/a>\u201d\u2014the way music streaming has replaced CDs and CDs replaced cassettes and vinyl\u2014or to at least render them much cheaper (through, for example, open-access 3D printing). SpaceX and Blue Origin surely share a goal to make space transport cheaper. The question is, for whom?<\/p>\n

These ventures train their sights on infinite excess, with dwindling marginal costs as the supply of key materials and digital resources expands. This paradigm is great for those interested in the advancement of human civilization, but not so much for a grinning billionaire\u2019s fixation on the bottom line. <\/p>\n

At first glance, expanding industry beyond Earth sounds like a pragmatic fix to the earth-shatteringly simple dilemma faced by capitalism: that it must grow to survive, but the planet it grows upon is finite. But to maintain profit margins in conditions of plenty (a demand of industry), legal and political fixes are required. If you exclusively own mining rights to asteroids rich in platinum\u2014and precious little platinum is left on Earth\u2014you can charge whatever you like for platinum. The diamond industry perfected this technique decades <\/a>ago. (Elon Musk\u2019s family fortune comes partially from a Zambian emerald mine<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Hence, the focus of the new space race is not on the production of goods or their most efficient sourcing, but on ownership of land and transport networks. In this latest phase of capitalism, as national growth slows, productive industries dwindle and wealth concentrates in fewer hands. As economist Thomas Piketty has observed, this phase is accompanied by a pivot toward rent-seeking as a profit mechanism.<\/p>\n

In other words, the scramble for space is the scramble to own satellites and \u201cstarways,\u201d gatekeep the riches of the solar system and charge rent on the moon. Against this backdrop, Space Force might seem retrograde, a warped nostalgia for a time when the space race was about petty terrestrial wars rather than Musk\u2019s supposedly enlightened vision to colonize Mars. <\/p>\n

In reality, the two visions go hand in hand. Military might physically captures and secures territory, enforces the American political and legal apparatus and ensures business can function (even on the moon). <\/p>\n

The darlings of this new space age paint their vision as daring futurism, a wild-eyed libertarian dream of human elevation. But history repeats and the story is old. Like Bezos and Musk, Cecil Rhodes\u2014mining magnate and premier villain of the British Empire\u2014also succumbed to dreams of wealth in the night sky. \u201cExpansion is everything,\u201d Rhodes said<\/a>. \u201cI would annex the planets if I could.\u201d Where technology opens up the yawning unknown of new territory glittering with potential profit, private enterprises hustle for dominance\u2014backed by the military and legal capacities of earthbound nations. <\/p>\n

Colonialism in space is not some post-humanist utopia, but the age-old dominion of land barons and mining magnates, billionaires sloughing off the wreckage of one planet and setting out for the stars.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Space is our birthright. \u201cAmericans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery and use of resources in outer space,\u201d President Donald Trump wrote April 6,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2698,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2697\/revisions\/2698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}