Space Economy

How SpaceX Is Making America Uncatchable

Jun 10, 2026 · 24:50

SpaceX, carrying 90% of everything launched to orbit this year, is selling the coming back: from caravels to railroads, frontier fortunes went to whoever could return, not just depart. Frontiers reset Maslow's hierarchy to survival, making picks and shovels the most durable business. Useful space is tiny: Low Earth Orbit, where Starlink's 6,000+ satellites block rivals, Geostationary Orbit's 1,845 slots, and a Switzerland-sized ice patch at the Moon's south pole. Ice is water, and its oxygen liquefies into rocket fuel, so whoever builds the Moon's first gas station controls the only refueling point before Mars—why Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Amazon, and China race to get there. With Planet Labs' satellites and the rocket equation, it weighs generational wealth against a dot-com bubble.

Who Owns the Moon's Cell Towers?

Mar 30, 2025 · 8:11

NASA is building the first-ever GPS network for the Moon because the aging Deep Space Network—14 antennas built in 1960 that can only listen to one spacecraft at a time—can't handle the surge of lunar missions. The episode explains how the Artemis I mission alone consumed 1,774 hours, or 23% of the network's capacity, forcing the James Webb Telescope to wait 70-80 hours between connections instead of its usual 12. With payloads going parabolic and China racing to dominate space, competition for lunar territory—especially the South Pole, where water ice is known to exist—makes a dedicated Moon network an inevitability. Intuitive Machines, the first private company to land on the Moon, won a nearly $5 billion NASA contract to build the five-satellite Cislunar Network, capable of streaming 4K video and delivering GPS-level navigation accuracy.