Space: The Free-Market Frontier

For years, private enterprise has been poised to explore outer space and deliver benefits to people on earth — from perfecting new life-saving medicines to creating new food crops and operating floating factories for high tech innovations. But NASA’s bureaucracy has been floundering, erecting legal and regulatory barriers to entrepreneurs wishing to take advantage of operating in space.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. At that time, most Americans found it difficult to imagine that the vision presented in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey would not be in our future. Many thought that by 2001 there would be regularly scheduled commercial flights to orbiting hotels, but no such flights have materialized. In fact, fewer than 500 human beings have ever ventured into space. And the International Space Station is billions of dollars over budget and radically scaled back from its initial design. What has happened in the past three decades to delay mankind’s full exploitation of space?

The cause of the problems is found in public policy. Civilian space efforts have been dominated by NASA, a bureaucratic agency that has retarded activities in space as much as it has facilitated them. Yet, at the same time that NASA has been lost in space, entrepreneurs on earth have given birth to the computer and to telecom and Internet revolutions. Private markets are the answer.

In Space: The Free-Market Frontier, leading experts analyze how we can move from the current situation of limited access to space and truly make space a place where people can work, play, and live. This book considers how we arrived at our current situation, what signs hold the promise of a free-market future, and which policy changes might enable space to become the next free-market frontier.

Contributors:
Edward L. Hudgins
Rep. Bob Walker
Gregg Maryniak
Liam Sarsfield
Robert W. Poole
David M. Livingston
Wayne White
Dennis Tito
Tidal W. McCoy
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
Rick N. Tumlinson
James E. Dunstan
John Higginbotham
Doris Hamill
Buzz Aldrin
Philip Mongan
Michael Kearney
Ron Jones
Marc Schlather
James Muncy
Bob Werb

Press Release: Space

“The stagnation of America’s space program over the last two decades has had one positive effect—it has motivated and invigorated a growing army of entrepreneurs who understand that the future of space exploration and exploitation will fall not to governments but to the private sector. This book outlines their hopes, dreams, and realistic plans for changing the way we look at space. These pioneers are leading the way to a revolution that is long overdue.”
—Lon Rains, Vice President and Editor, Space News

Edward L. Hudgins is director of the Washington, D.C., office of the Objectivist Center and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute.