This Week in Space 226: Who Owns the Moon?

0:00Coming up on this weekend's space, NASA's Roman Space Telescope is finally on its way to unlock mysteries of the universe. We've got two spacecraft on their way to Mercury and who would want to own some real estate on the moon. We get down to it with Dr. Rayner Zittleman, author of the new book, New Space Capitalism, which is all about property rights in space. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by OutSystems, the leading agenic systems platform. OutSystems is helping their customers modernize operations by enabling them to build, modernize, and operate enterprise systems, starting from any coding tool in a governed, agenic engineering model. Without systems, you can coordinate and govern your entire agenic workforce within your enterprise ecosystem and accelerate impact with industry-proven, agenic solutions that are pre-built, governed, and customizable to your business. It's time to innovate at the speed of AI without compromising quality or control, which is why thousands of enterprises worldwide trust out systems for their mission-critical apps.

1:04Teams of any size and technical depths can use out systems to build, deploy, and manage AI apps and agents quickly and cost effectively without compromising reliability and security. Without systems, you can accelerate ideas from concept to completion. It's the leading agenic systems platform that is unified, agile, and enterprise-proven, allowing you to build your agenic future with AI solutions deeply integrated into your architecture. OutSystems, build your agenic future. Learn more at outsystems.com slashtwitt. That's outsystems.com slashtwitt. Podcasts You Love. From People You Trust. This is Tilt. This is This Week in Space, Episode 226, recorded on September 4, 2026. Who owns the Moon? Hello and welcome to another episode of This Week in Space, The Who owns the Moon Edition.

2:08I'm Rod Pyle, Editor-in-Chief, and I'm here with my dear old friend, Tark Malak, how are you, sir? I would say dear young friend, but I'm doing quite well, Rod. How are you doing today? You're not that... you're young to me, but you're not young to other people, so don't get carried away. I'm fine. I'm fine. Scandalous. But you'll be the youngest guy of the podcast today. So there you go. Because today we're going to be speaking with Dr. Reiner Zidleman, author of the new book, The New Space Capitalism, to talk about how capitalism and property rights could dictate our future in space. It's a very interesting topic, so I encourage you to stick around. But first, and don't let this dissuade you, we have another space joke. Space jokes. From the friend of the show, Bruce McCandless. Bruce! Hey, Tark! Yes, Rod! Why did they ask not to take down his Tinder profile? I don't know why. Because he was trying to avoid his SpaceX. I love it. We have Tinder space jokes now. Yeah, we had one that was that same riff on SpaceX about two years ago, but it was a different.

3:12So thank you for that, Bruce. You're always welcome to provide more, and we will use them until the cows come home. Now I've heard that some folks want to swipe left on both of us when it's joke time in this show. Never. But you can help by sending us your best, worst, or most of the different space joke to us at twistertwitter.tv. We'll be happy to blame it on you in the air, regardless of whether it gets a rimshot or a groan or whatever. And swiping left means you don't like the person, right? Or do I have a groan? I don't know. I've been happily married for two decades or I should have. Yeah, I never had a groan. I don't use such sites. So I may have botched that, but we'll see. Well, anyway, let's go on. I think you're right. I think you're right. Headline news. Headline news. I think it was a bit draggy today, I think. Yeah, yeah, it felt a little, a little off, a little off. So I'll catch up to her one day.

4:13So we, I believe both of us had people down the cape to cover the launch of the... I heard your guy ask his question in the press conference. Nancy Grace. Oh, did you, well, we had two. We had Bert Dick and Jordan Strickler. Yeah, I heard, I heard, I heard Bert's, I heard Bert's question. Okay, up there in Mona. We had three people. They have the Roman Space Telescope, $4 billion. Space Telescope. A bargain. So I ended up, yeah, a bargain, right? Because of the fact that these were built out of leftover, leftover spice satellite buses that national... Oh, we got a video for folks watching the video of the launch launch on a Thalcon Heavy rocket by SpaceX. They're rarely used Falcon Heavy. Yeah, I think it's like the eighth launch of it. Yeah, it's a shame because it's really capable. And it could be taken as to the moon. Yeah, it could. With astronauts and everything. Exactly. But for folks who may not know, the Roman Space Telescope is NASA's newest flagship space observatory.

5:14It is, it is going to the Lagrange point two. And unlike the Hubble Space Telescope or James Webb, which are built in their varying wavelengths to zero in on a specific part of the universe like a star or a solar system, this Space Telescope has a wide field view. It's something like a hundred times the field of view as the Hubble Space Telescope. And they're talking about the science campaign that's going to look at 20 billion with a B stars to be able to hunt for dark energy and dark matter, to be able to really refine how many candidates for exoplanets and habitable worlds that they're actually are, that sort of thing. And in fact, it's going to create images that are so large that there isn't a TV, like 4K or otherwise on the planet that can actually display an entire image in its entirety. You need something like this. Yeah, yeah, full because it's, these are going to be billion pixel images on the small side and the biggest ones are going to be a trillion pixels.

6:16You know, if I had a dollar for every one of those pixels, I'd be almost as rich as Elon Musk. Right, one of the big, the actual optical pickup is, so I remember writing about this, like, the L and like 2016. At that point, it already been a long journey of, it's a spy telescope. Now, we don't need it anymore. We're going to give it to NASA. Okay, we're going to call it W first. W first, wide field and wide infrared space telescope. I think it was what that sounds like. I just call it W first. And that went on for a long time. Then it finally morphed into this. But the actual optical train, I think, dates back to late 90s, early 2000s. It's been around a long time. It's got new, it's got like a new avionics, new all sorts of upgraded stuff for now. Right. But like the core of it, the heart of it was built in the 90s for the National Reconnaissance Office's Space Telescope. A spy satellite program. And you've got to wonder if they actually saved any money at the end of the day using, it's a little bit like the SLS and recycled shuttle engines.

7:18I even looked into it and I didn't when I wrote the story because it was, that was not the focus of it, but you got to wonder, was there really a benefit to this? But hey, we're glad it got off the ground and it's our best by far coronavirus ever. Yeah. Not dedicated to looking at the sun, but to looking at other suns. It's an active coroner, Gaff II. It's the first of its kind who actually moves and stuff on the telescope. We're as opposed to already being like a static filter that's there. And so this is actually like a brand new piece of science that could revolutionize our search for alien planets, a habitable world, that kind of thing. And it's going to be some time. It's going to take about 60 days of commissioning, six months of final test and stuff. We expect the first images to come from this space telescope in January of 2027. So it should be something like a site to see. I got to see this telescope when they're wrapping it up to ship it down to Florida. For launch from the Goddard Space Flight Center, but a very cool thing to have concurrently now operating with James Webb

8:22and the Hubble Space Telescope, which I'm going to remind everyone is over 30 years old. Right? So this could have a long life ahead of it in terms of what it's the science that we're going to get from it. A couple of small things of interest. This was a mission where it's the first time I've ever seen it. The President of the United States called during the post-launch press conference to congratulate everybody. And the NASA Administrator, Jared Isaacman actually got up in the middle of the press conference and left. And then came back and put President Trump on speaker phone where he hailed the project and how great it was for everybody. I would be remiss if I didn't point out that during his first administration, Trump and his leadership did try to cancel this mission. And it was survived by Congress approval because it was already built by that point for the most part. And it was a free space telescope. And they tried to cut some of the budget as well earlier this year.

9:22And it sounds like Isaacman might have had some discussions to save that money before it became finalized. So there's a bit of a duality that that phone call presented there too. But politics aside, a very successful space telescope launch. And I think that the, it only gets better because now we get the photos and all of that. And it's nowhere near as complicated a deployment. I was going to say it looks like it has a couple of dozen mechanical functions as opposed to the 460 or whatever web was. Oh my gosh, it had to go perfectly right. That was terrifying just to get the virus. And I just got to give a hat tip to, I mean, we had three people there. We had Josh dinner at Monisha. Reva said it was her first launch ever. And it was a fucking heavy and Chelsea goad. But Josh dinner with 45 minutes remaining to lift off decided to leave the space center and drive to a hobby lobby in Titusville, which for folks who don't know is like a town that is really close to the space center.

10:26Because the program that tracks where to get a sun crossing said that if you're in that hobby lobby parking lot, you will see the rocket across the sun and lo and behold, Josh was able to do it. We've got a picture of it online line 22 if we can show it. I don't know. But yeah, there it is. All right. Isn't that amazing? What is it shoot that with? With the cannon mark to something something you can find all about it on solar filter or what? Yeah, he had a solar filter that another photographer let him borrow. Yeah, because that would burn out your sense or that is spectacular. Josh, I know, man. And he told me today that the sun was behind the building. That the launch site was behind the building. So he did not know where it was going to be. So as soon as they called lift off, he just hit the shutter on the sun, hoping to get something. Well, I'm sure it was a high in Canada DSLR. He put it on full automatic fire went.

11:27I'm sure he has like a million photos. That is pretty spectacular. I did have a couple more things to say though. There were two other things that I do want to shout out. A blue origin is now officially going to Mars. NASA picked them this week to build their Mars telecommunications. You completely messed up my headline read. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Have communication needs at Mars order from Amazon. Oh, there you go. I thought I'm sorry. I didn't even just. Wow. And if you have Amazon Prime, the delivery is free, right? That's right. NASA. But no, NASA apparently doesn't have Amazon Prime. They are spending $700 million to have blue origin. Build this for them. Rod, why do you think NASA needs a telecommunications orbiter at Mars? Because they lost. What was the one that just went down? Was it Odyssey, right? Was Odyssey, yeah. Yeah. Because they count on multiple relays for the Rovers and future Rovers.

12:31Yeah. And like their most powerful one right now is the Mars arachonesis orbiter. And it's a bit long too. Which is old. Yeah. 2005 is when it launched. And so. And so. So this is this is kind of going to be a Vanguard. It's going to be a high powered communications relay satellite for future missions to get there, you know, including orbors, but also, you know, if they get more sample return, they're going to need that. They are going to send. Remember three at least helicopters to Mars. If not more than that on their nuclear mission. So they're going to need it for that there too. And this and for whatever other commercial stuff that can that are going to be coming out on the way. So so the the interesting thing, though, is that Blue Origin, which has not launched anything to orbit yet. Aside from a demonstration flight with their or a couple flights actually right with their new Glenn. That the interversive like their spacecraft they haven't launched to Mars yet. This is they beat rocket lab and rocket lab has already flown a couple spacecraft tomorrow.

13:32So I don't know what rocket labs are going to do. They're behind on their Venus mission, but we'll have to see. But you know who's not behind. Japan and Europe at Mercury because after eight years, they're a Bepi-Columbomission. And this is online 24. Their Bepi-Columbomission has begun the official arrival process at Mercury. And that means that this week, I think as yesterday as we're recording this, the two spacecraft, there's two of them. There's one for Europe and one for Japan. They're both orbors. So it's going to be the first time we've ever had two orbors orbiting Mercury at the same time. But they rode the same kind of space tug, the Mercury transfer module, I think is what it was called. And on Thursday, they separated from it. So they've started their final, final approach. They have flown by nine different, they've made nine different planetary flybys. They've flown on Mercury a few times. If we were Earth, Venus too, in order to slow themselves down enough to go into orbit around Mercury.

14:37And in November, these two spacecraft will separate into separate spacecraft and then go into their final orbits to begin their final missions. But they have to get away from this tug in the first place. And it's been a long time, eight years, to get to Mercury. You'd think that it would be so close to the Sun and so close to us, it'd be faster. But there you go. It's interesting that one of them, I don't know which one from the picture you just put up, has a solar panel about the size of my dining table. And the other one has solar panels about the size of a football field. What's that all about? Yeah, well, well, they are different in size because they're doing different things. The European orbiter is much larger. And it's kind of like the mothership for Japan's, Jackson's spacecraft, which is called Mio, which is going to look at the atmosphere and plasma environment as I understand it. Whereas the orbiter from the European Space Agency is going to really detailed mapping. And so look in this image, you can see that the two spacecraft are together.

15:38And the Japanese spacecraft is inside that little cylinder thing, that's actually a sunshade to protect it from the harshness before it gets deployed. So it'll be very interesting to see how they work together over time. And what they build on the messenger mission, which was the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, NASA's probe, which also took forever to slow itself down to get down there too. So. All right, very good. Well, we'll stick around. We'll be back in a moment to discuss property rights off Earth with Dr. Rainer Zidleman. So stick around. Hey guys, this week in space brought to you this week by Helix Sleep. Oh, it's Labor Day, the perfect time to give your bedroom the upgrade it deserves. Instead of struggling through an other night at tossing and turning, treat yourself to the deep restorative sleep you have been dreaming of. You don't want to settle for mattresses made overseas with questionable materials. You need upgrade to a Helix mattress, proudly assembled and shipped from Arizona in the US of A.

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17:41And they Helix delivers a mattress right to your door. They have free shipping in the US. Oh, and rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. The happy with Helix guarantee provides a risk-free customer first experience ensuring you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. Go to Helix Sleep.com slash space for 27% off site wide during the Labor Day best of web offer. That's Helix Sleep.com slash space for 27% off site wide. That's exclusively for listeners of this week in space. So make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you this offer and September 13th. And if you're listening after that date, don't worry. They've always got great deals. Check them out at helix sleep.com slash space now back to space. And we are back with Dr. Randir Zidleman, an author and historian who's got some very interesting things to say about property ownership in space and how capitalism is going to continue to drive new space to Everk greater heights.

18:47Randir, thank you for joining us today. It's a pleasure having you here. Thank you for inviting me. So primarily at this point, do you spend most of your time as a writer or an analyst or what kind of is your daily work? Yes. Today I'm doing my research. I write books the last year's every year one new book. And I produce every year one new film. For example, next week I go to South Korea. This will be my next film. I produce films about a problem about Sweden, about Germany also about Vietnam. So that's that's what I'm doing. So can you say your producing these films are these like economic analyses or these more travelogue type things? No, no, it's about economic history. For example, Vietnam was one of the poorest country in the world in 1990 with 80% living in poverty and today it's only 3%. And the film is about how did it happen? This reduction of poverty with free market reforms.

20:02And this is these are the topics. And yes, this has also something to do with the book because the last books and films that I had these were analysis about countries. And I showed that more economic freedom brings more prosperity and helps to increase the standard of living. And after dealing with a lot of countries, then I looked for industry that were almost 100% government led some decades ago, the space industry. And only very few people could imagine that it would be private sometime and to see what happens there if you add more market and less governments. So it's a similar question as if I started for example Poland or Vietnam. That's interesting. I was going to say like the book is what we really want to talk to you about like today too. I've got my copy here. New space capitalism, the entrepreneurial path to the stars.

21:09But I do have a question right now that I ask everybody and it's about how they found an interest in space because an economist and entrepreneur like yourself, usually not the first person I would think would be really interested in. So the point where you'd write a book or a few on the subject, what was your, I guess, introduction to space or space exploration and why did you find it interesting? This was exactly when I was 10 years old. I'm born 1957. And so this was two years before the first moon landing when I was 10 years old. And there was a science fiction series in Trump TV. And I was so fascinated. It was all about space. And at Carnival, when the other children, there were a cowboy or Native Americans. I was an astronaut. And in my children's room, there was a huge poster from a set on five rocket and another very, very huge poster from the moon.

22:28And it was all around space. And even I started editing a newspaper. It was called Galactic Sighting, what means like Galactical newspaper when I was 10 years old. And I sold it to my class cameras and teachers. And I reported about astronomy. This time I read a lot of books about astronomy and space. And then there was the moon landing. Of course, we had a special edition about the moon landing and all this stuff. So I was very fascinated by space. And I wanted to be an astronaut, this was by gold. But to be honest, it was not all the decades in between. All the time, I was interested, but not as intensive as I was as a kid. And then it came a few years ago that I that I read about Elon Musk and about SpaceX. And I saw that something happened in the space industry.

23:39That an industry that was more or less government led before became private. And this was an interesting question for me as an historian, an economic historian, because this is the same that happened in the countries that are analyzed. I analyzed. I mentioned this before. And I saw countries like Poland and Vietnam that were socialist with means of production or nationalized without any private property, no free market. And then I analyzed what happened with a free market reform. What happened with a space industry is something similar. I let me explain it a little bit how how I mean it. I have a theory. Maybe it's not a theory, maybe more metaphor. Imagine a test tube with two ingredients market and state our capitals and socialism.

24:41And then I watch as a historian what happens if you add more market and what happens if you add more state. One example for adding more state like Venezuela, what was a free capitalist country. And since Hugo Chavez came to power in the end of the 90s, they added more state state state. And the result is now that 80% of the population lives in poverty. 8 million people fled from Venezuela because they forget to build this wall. What socialists usually should do as we know in Germany. And then on the other hand, when you add more market as I did in Poland, what was one of the poorest countries in Europe in the 80s and now it's since decades Europe's growth champion. And the reason is because they added more market in this test tube. So if we talk now about the space industry, I think this is exactly what happened in the last decades. It's not without government and the countries that I mentioned is also it's not pure free market, not pure capital. But I don't think about pure capital or pure free market.

26:00I think also about this relationship between the two, how does this change? And so I found with this space industry that the same happened that I saw in some countries adding more market means that it becomes more, much more efficient. That's amazing. That's very interesting. It's really interesting how you and I were all like the ground for the news and it kind of creeps up on us, right? The commercial side of things were now it's kind of normal. But right now with your expert eye, you can see how it's actually changed the economy and the economics of the entire industry just in like 10, 15 years, it seems. Well, and not directly related to that, but I have to say, Rainer, you and I are sort of of brothers and arms here because I was born probably about six months before you. So we're about the same age grew up looking at a lot of the same stuff, you know, became aware of the Gemini program.

27:05What I went to my school library to look at books about space and rockets. They're all kids books. All the rockets look like a V2, you know, and space was only von Braun's big or betting wheel and so forth. And we kind of knew already by 1964, 65, that wasn't how things were shaping up. I wish they had actually. But and I too did a space newsletter that I distribute into my neighborhood. Did you really? No, because then we didn't have duplicating machines down the street. So I used a hectograph. Hectograph was a tray with gel in it and you put down an ink master on it, then you get about 40 copies off before it fell apart. But we're getting off of the weeds here. So let's run off to a break and we'll be right back with our next urgent question. Don't go anywhere. Stand by. So Rayner, one of the core tenets of what you talk about is property ownership, which is always a difficult discussion to have about space because we have the outer space treaty on one side.

28:09We have the moon treaty kind of off to the left and then we've got the idea of property ownership, resource ownership at the very least control of resources and assets to make this worthwhile because as we've seen from the British East East India company up through the American railroad era and many other times in many different places. What seems to really drive things is a profit motivation. You could say greed, but let's just say to be fairer profit motivation, you have to be able to make one and it's going to be challenging in space. I think your premise is if you can't own what you're working, especially with regard to land. Is that a correct assessment? Yes, absolutely. Let's go a little bit deeper into this. If you do anything, you need a motive and if it costs a lot of money, you need a huge motive.

29:09And the motive for the space race in the sixties was of course the competition between the United States on the one hand, the Soviet Union on the other hand, but as soon as they planted a flag on the moon, the wind was out of the balloon. Then there was no motive any longer to go on and at this time they asked this pioneer from the Apollo program runner from Brown, what would be the next step and he said the next step should be to make it profitable. That's as you find a way to earn money with this and of course money makes the world go round, but this is what didn't happen. And so there was no longer a motive. Let's assume a kind of thought experiment for a moment. Imagine it would be possible to claim ownership over an asteroid or land on the moon or Mars if you go there successful. I think it would be such a great motive for people to go there, but of course as you mentioned, these two treaties. Fortunately, we can't forget the moon treaty because it's signed I think only 20 countries and none of the space fair in countries, but the outer space treaty that is signed by almost all countries.

30:28There we have this article two and according to this article, it's prohibited for countries to claim ownership over celestial bodies or land on the celestial bodies. This is crystal clear and there's no dispute among space lawyers that this is prohibited. But how about companies and how about private people? There's nothing in the outer space treaty, but because I think in the 60s when they negotiated the treaty, almost no one could imagine that some decades later there would be people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, we have the money and the technical skills to go there. There is nothing in the treaty and there is a dispute among space lawyers. There's one group that's also forbidden for private companies and private persons. There's another group that say no, it's nothing in there and it's allowed. The only thing that is clear that it's not clear and of course this is not not a real good situation for investors.

31:30So I think it's the main question for me today for the future and space is a private property question because now they want to build a small city on moon or Elon Musk, you know, even he claimed to settle one million people on Mars. But how would you do this without private property? In the last 100 years there were more than 24 experiments with socialism on earth, so without private property and they failed without any exceptions. And so I think it's ridiculous to assume that something that didn't work on earth, no work that now it should work on moon or Mars, no, of course not. And we have this experience that socialism doesn't work and this other space treaty is in a way for some interpretation like socialism. But today I think it's not so bad that it's prohibited for countries to claim ownership. Why should they?

32:33So this is maybe an opportunity for private companies and the idea in my book, my argument is this if someone is able to reach Mars for example and start to build something there, they should claim ownership of course not the whole planet and manage the area. Let's give an example if SpaceX will be able to reach Mars and start to build there something they should claim ownership maybe an area the size of Singapore we spoke of about Singapore before and the Mars surface is 200,000 times larger than Singapore. So I mean there would be enough place for others and if you want to make it a little bit smaller, man happiness maybe also enough. And then he should bring it to the stock market. This is my idea because this would be a way to finance all the things.

33:34And then everyone could be owner, every shareholder, you, me, everyone because you have to find a way to finance it. It costs a lot of money. Of course you can send a group of astronauts again with this taxpayer's money to Mars, but you can settle a million or not thousand or 100 people on Mars or moon with taxpayer's money. So you have to find a way how to finance it. And you know I may maybe the reason why I see this way I'm a rare combination of an economic historian on the one hand and a real estate investor on the other hand I've spent almost 20 years in the real estate industry as real estate investor. So I thought why we shouldn't have reads like you know this real estate investment trust like moon read or master read or read with an asteroid. So let's assume someone someone is able to go to an asteroid and start mining.

34:38I think he should claim ownership of this asteroid bring it to the stock market as real estate investment trust and then everyone could be a shareholder and this is I think a realistic way to finance all this but because you have to find ways how to finance all this things. You know and it's interesting that you bring up like the stock market because in the in the course of your book coming out I think we were at the same dinner where like that same week SpaceX is own IPO you know set a like a world record like of all time at their value at their valuation of of two trillion and that's just like an earth company let alone you know if they go to psyche right the the all metal asteroid which I think is going to be a real estate investor. So I think it's been valued at something quadrillion right dollars in terms of how much minerals it has and you set up by some kind of trust to develop that I'm sure that you'd be able to find a lot of a lot of people that would want a piece of that so.

35:42Yes for example you mentioned psyche this is only one of a lot of very valuable asteroids between miles and Jupiter as you know we have I think between one and 1.7 million asteroids and you have even 40,000 near earth asteroids not all of them are valuable but a lot of them and some of them for example their their worth of course only a theory is as high as the whole cross product of the whole world for one year. Or even more of course only a theory because if you would bring all this platinum to earth the platinum prices would blunt but anyway there are a lot of resources and I think of course a lot of people would be interested to invest there you need also fantasy for this and you see it even today there are people I think it's not realistic but you know that there are people who even today try to sell. Parts of the moon like this house is name I think hope yeah I have a deed I have a deed for the moon yeah a one square acre so yes of course this is a little bit crazy because only to claim ownership doesn't mean you really own something though otherwise I could sell you now maybe 1,000 planets or even solar system and maybe with discount or something like this no only to claim ownership doesn't mean there's even one one woman living in the world.

37:10So I think it's not realistic it's the kind of fraud. How would it be when it be really realistic and if spaceship is going there and start mining there with all the other planets that are in the world. How does platinum no I think it's the best and the only way to be honest to see it because really state is the biggest asset class on earth I think if you sum up everything it's like 400 trillion or something like this. The biggest asset class and it belongs to no one not to any state not to any government what I think it's great so I will give you an analogy how I think this will happen if you look back in the history of America when the when the first settlers when they conquered the West it was this way they claimed ownership for peace of mind.

38:28First they went there and they claimed ownership and that was not legal at this time it was only later it was legalized by the homestead act but the first thing was for settlers or they called them squatters at this time to go and claim ownership and it happened by the way in the very similar way in Vietnam and in China after the end of communism. The peasants left their collectives and then they claimed ownership of land what was illegal at this time but later on with this economic reforms from things you are pink in China or the so-called doymoy reforms in Vietnam it was legalized and so I think yes some people criticized me I had an interview with a German real estate newspaper a few weeks ago and she taught me oh what you say is not legal. It sounds like Wild West was negative word for her. First of all I think Wild West is not so bad because without Wild West there wouldn't be the United States today but Wild West means first there's the entrepreneur or the farmer or the settler of course later you need to share it for some reason but the sheriff is not the first person to go there all the courts the first one is the entrepreneur and the settler and later on only later on

39:55there will be the sheriff and so I don't know whether it will happen this way or not but as an historian I look back in history how did it happen in the past and I think why should it be very different in space. Well and we're going to talk about that sheriff later but I want to thank you on the platinum discussion for pointing out you know we hear a lot of people talk about asteroid mining and oh we're going to bring back platinum we'll get rich very little talk about how you get it back to earth and any quantity and almost never other than one interview I did for a 2019 book of mine with Steve Jervitson almost never does anybody say yeah but that's going to sort of crush the price of platinum if you bring down 40 tons of it in one fell swoop. It is interesting to think about what we can do with rare earth elements from asteroids though but before we do that let's go to quick break and we'll be right back so stand by. So Rayner at this point we buy the bulk of our rare earth elements from China which you know depending on what side of the fence you're on but certainly if you're in the business that uses them like some of my conductors is probably a little scary because that supply could be throttled any minute like OPEC did with oil back in the 70s and you know asset being able to own assets is based becomes more a more

41:19peeling but of course then that raises the question of our near peer space I don't want to say adversary but China doing the same thing so once we try to legitimize ownership of resources and land in space of course the risk is in some people's mind that China will get their first and say great. Here we are in Mars we want those frozen water deposits and we want valus marinara because it's got nice low altitude for landings with less propulsive fuel needed or something like that any thoughts on on that competition. Sure absolutely I think China is the biggest threat in my book I have one chapter only about China and I started a lot the Chinese economy there's a lot of misconceptions about the Chinese economy a lot of people think that's it's like communism or 100% planned economy this is not true.

42:23I have a good friend at the Beijing University his name is wine Chung and he says every time our success or thought because it was not because of the state but in spite of the state we came from 100% state and then we choose it. Unfortunately G.P. goes again in the direction more government at less market what I think it's very bad but even he and this is important even G.P. understood that space is not possible to do it only by the government. So 12 years ago he allowed private space companies what is really an exception and today you have I think something like 450 private space companies in China and the big role model is of course space X and yes first they try to copy it they try to copy everything and a lot of people

43:29maybe left that them all these Chinese they can't do anything else as copy but I think it's crazy because the first thing if you learn something is always to copy think about children they copy everything from their parents in the first years of their life later when they become teenagers they don't copy everything they got opposition having some fights and finding their own way but so they became adult now in China and I have this example from the German automotive industry we were number one in the world as you know with our BMW Mercedes-Fulls running and they left all about China but now they left about us because first they copied and then they innovate in the next thing and even make things cheaper make things better in a way and I think this could happen with space yes and if they were the first on Mars or now maybe the question is also for the moon yes China signed also the outer space treaty so it's also prohibited for China to claim ownership but you can cancel or quit the outer space treaty with one year notice

44:48and this is something I'm afraid of they go to Mars or to moon and then they they they they they leave the agreement and they they claim ownership of moon or Mars this can happen this should be a reason for the United States and for private companies to be to to really hurry up and to understand it I think who dominate space will dominate the the the earth and if we don't want the China is dominating the whole earth it's also for with a military questions then you should really speed up and and hurry up the the question is whether China would allow someone to come into existence like Elon Musk who is so powerful and famous so this is their problem with with with their political system because there were people like in another industry you know check ma for example the founder of Ali Baba and he became he was the richest man a few years ago in China and became very famous and then the government went against him and he got a lot of problems and I don't think that China would allow someone to become a member of the world

46:05and become so really famous and influential as Elon Musk in the United States and so I think in the competition between the United States and China we should be aware that our biggest strength is what made America great this is capitalism competition private enterprise and we should get a lot rid of this bureaucracy I think there's still too much bureaucracy in space also in the United States not so bad as it is in Europe of course but I think this is the main question in the competition between the United States and China who will give more freedom to the market it's not about claiming any goals as we had it now I think it was in December this space paper from the Trump administration for with such goals like 50 billion investment or 1000 launches the year I don't think so much about claiming this goals but much one part would be give more freedom to the to the space industry and it the development went in a good way and you know this is also a topic in my book that I analyzed how did it happen

47:25that something like SpaceX was possible and what a lot of people don't understand some people ask me is the science fiction with us what you're talking about new space capitalism as I know it's not because for last year as you know of course we had 324 rocket launches and 165 out of them were SpaceX so it means SpaceX were a country it would be number one far ahead of China China had 88 launches and they're not the only one even rocket lab from Peter Beckton New Zealand they had 21 rocket launches with 100% success rate and this is even three times more as Europe we had only eight launches last year so I think it's very important to understand that all the success today it's because of private entrepreneurship imagine how would the United States do it without SpaceX today I think number four or five maybe so this is very important to to to understand

48:33okay I've got another question that I'm going to ask but I think the answer might be kind of long so why don't we jump to a break early and we'll be right back stand by Hey everybody Leo the port here and I'm going to bug you one more time to join club twit if you're not already a member I want to encourage you to support what we do here at twit you know 25% of our operating cost comes from membership in the club that's a huge portion and it's growing all the time that means we can do more we can have more fun you get a lot of benefits add free versions of all the shows you get access to the club to a discord and special programming like the key notes from Apple and Google and Microsoft and others that we don't stream otherwise in public please join the club if you haven't done it yet we'd love to have you find out more twit.tv slash club twit and thank you so much

49:34Render you've been talking largely about private ownership of controlled land and resources and of course you mentioned the outer space treaty and the difficulties there but I wonder given the kind of dynamics are going to take place in any given launch and landing and operation site either on the moon or Mars so let's talk about the moon for instance we go somewhere near the South Pole where everybody thinks they want to be in the long run and we set up a couple landing pads and a couple of nuclear reactors to supply power especially for operating in one of the permanently dark or mostly dark regions. There's every argument in the world be made that you should have an exclusion or safety zone claimed that could be miles across either for radioactive effects or for the effects of a lift off from the moon or a landing with these these very sharp particles going out at almost orbital velocities so can you have a de facto lane claim based on either safety or

50:42operational concerns that acts as de facto ownership of land. Yes and no of course this was of course I'm not the only one the first one who is aware of the prop man in this or autumn is a caught I think it's signed now by 60 countries they have this about the so called safety zones what is if you start mining for example of course you have to to build something like how do you call it a fence or a bridge or anything but it's not a private ownership it's maybe it's can it comes in way close because it can take not it will take not only years but maybe decades and if you have received safety zones therefore decades rose the difference to to private ownership but I think the biggest and most important difference from is that what would not work with this to bring it to the stock market then you can make the safety zone but it's something completely different as really legal property property right and so I think it's a way or step in the right direction is the same

52:08in this Artemis called that they say it's not a violation or not they say it's not necessarily a violation of article two of the outer space treaty if you take the resources there from asteroids or from from the moon so these are always also ways to go around the problem and I think it's better than there's nothing but I don't think that they really solve solve the problem it's it's only like maybe first step in the in the right direction and I have to be the next steps. I'm really curious about like the idea Raynor like how you see like the start off because a lot of what we're talking about it's it's a it's a discussion of a missing framework on how like commercial operations in space might work but someone has to be first and I was really struck when you were speaking at a recent dinner at kind of a scenario

53:20where you were suggesting that like someone has to be bold if it's SpaceX or maybe SpaceX has a customer that's going to do something but that that someone has to be first to go and do it before any of the frameworks that we have can be tested and I'm curious how that scenario would work to really I guess open up this whole thing because my I guess my understanding up until I met you was that yes we have this outer space treaty and this framework on how things should work but no one can enforce anything because there is no sheriff like you said earlier there's no one on the moon right now with the sign that says off my lawn and that kind of thing but someone has to be first and so how would that evolve like if Elon Musk and Gwynne shot will say we're going to we're going to land on the moon that's starship part that pad that's our pad now because our starship is there and I guess come and come and get it if you want I'm just curious how you would see that working out.

54:22I think the good thing is that it's one thing is crystal clear and outer space treaty that for countries for states it's prohibited to claim ownership I think this is a good thing. So and there are lawyers with very good arguments that say no it's not for the government it's not possible it's prohibited but for private companies it's loud and they have a lot of very good arguments for this of course I know there are others who discuss and who against it but it is a position or an opinion where you have very good arguments. Where you have very good reasons whether it's not prohibited in the first place it's allowed and of course what would happen for example he would go there and claim ownership and then the question is whether for example the United States would recognize it or not because this is not prohibit you have to distinguish between claiming ownership as a kind of a question.

55:34So if you want to accept ownership as a country what is not allowed or to accept as a country that someone else claims ownership it's possible for example that the United States or some other countries say okay must claim ownership and we we we are we accepted not only maybe one country but several countries of course there will others who say no we don't accept it but this is a similar situation today with this Artemis of course there is a lot of things that are not going to be accepted. There are a sign by 60 countries and what there is about resources, space mining, China and Russia they say no we don't accept it it's against the other space. So it will be a similar situation then and the question is who can enforce it on the moon or on Mars you have no no army and no police no weapons and nothing like this. The question is everything will happen on earth and the question is what what should they do against them if the United States and I think this is the question of political lobbyism to say that the United States as soon as someone claims it to us first and I think it's fair that it belongs to those people who go there first.

56:53Think about it in a more in a moral way if I if I ask the main question who should have the right to own it I or you know I don't have the money to go there I don't have the technical skills to go there I've no not any rocket to go there why should I own something there but I think the person who's willing to take the risk who has the technical skills to go there also has the technical skills to go there. The technical skills to start develop something there that makes the investment takes the risk has the ability I think it is fair that this person should be the owner as it was on on on earth I made this analogy to the settling of America of the United States the only differences that at this time they were the native Americans and of course you can give the argument that that's the way that they are. We stole the land from there yes but there are no native margins or no no it's living there on the moon so it makes things a little bit easier and I think it is fair and this should be incentive you know you should get reward for it's it's always in in the economy in every system if you are willing to take the risk if you are willing to make an investment if you have the skills I think it's like a.

58:22It's it's morally good found it that that you are the one who should own it but I think and this is my idea it's not that you own it and that then you will not share it with others because then you can finance it my ideas then to bring it to the stock market and then in the next step everyone can be owner every shareholder in such a real in real estate investment trust can. Can can I ask that stock market concept is that something that would be part of an existing framework or would we need like a like a completely separate space stock market like stock exchange for off world. Are you sure or is there a place where you know a European company could be in the footsie or other equivalent we're owned by a British company space.com it so I follow that with.

59:24Or the or the New York stock exchange if it's space X or or NASDAQ you know that kind of thing would it would each one have their own space offshoot or should we have a separate space stock exchange that is a central place for all of these things okay I don't know how to have my but I think the first one would be of course or maybe maybe on the New York stock exchange or whether nasty or whatever but. Maybe later like NASDAQ we have a whole segment with with a lot of Asteroid treats and land on the moon land on the miles and whatever and maybe sooner or later it became an whole new segment I think it's similar let's give me another analogy maybe if you I think you're my age then you should know this movie once one upon a time.

1:00:24In the West so yes and you know this was about this farmer who bought a piece of land he I think he was from Ireland in the desert and they called him crazy why does he buy this land in the middle of the desert he's crazy he's stupid but he was smart because he knew that there was more than a year there and that the railroad had to cross it and it will and his. His idea was that it will increase in well in value later on and this is how investments in the real estate market happen for example friend of mine he's very rich he's a billionaire and he bought close to Munich a lot of farmland decades ago and it was very very cheap from the but later it became a development area to build houses and so he became a billionaire is it's a.

1:01:24Always that you have if you invest on the stock market it's like to having a picture about the future you have a idea maybe this area is more valuable at the others went in the end the on the the the it will be the decision will be on on those stock exchange every every day with prices there will be. As for every other stock hundreds of thousands or millions of different opinions about this and this is I think the the fairest and best way and of course there will be also speculation and there about the future I think there will be not huge difference you have this whole segment to with the so called reads the real estate investment trust you can even today buy.

1:02:24The piece of land property and I think it's really work in a similar way so you've kind of addressed this but I just wanted to to put a finer point on it you know the conversation we're having makes a lot of sense especially from a traditionally United States focus perspective but I think there are those in Western Europe some in the US and certainly in other parts of the world. That would consider what we're talking about to be a form of imperialism colonial colonial roots and of course colonialism implies as you pointed out that there's an indigenous population that you're you're putting to task but in the case of Mars in the moon obviously that's not the case unless you count microbes on Mars. But a lot I think a lot of the smaller players out there who are non space powers I mean I think this is one of the issues with the moon treaty right that the non space powers would be given way too much say in that.

1:03:26You know I can't do anything on the moon for the next 80 years but I want to have a say in how the lands allocated because I don't want the leftovers when Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos take all the good stuff right so yes any thoughts on that. This is a typical socialist idea I'm not able to do it and I don't want to spend money I don't have the ability but they should share it with me in the end this is a typical socialist idea. Now but there's also this this woke people don't underestimate them I have a lot in my book about especially the discussion about Mars. There's for example one author her name is Rubenstein usually she does more gender studies and all this stuff but she wrote also book about space travel and she's absolutely against colonization of Mars and moon. Her first argument is maybe there are microbes on Mars and we can't violate their their rights because the Mars should belong to the microbes.

1:04:35So these are people usually they don't have so much respect for private property but when it becomes comes to microbes on Mars or it's right don't do anything against them don't violate their rights. But you know we we don't even know it's not true whether there are any microbes on Mars or not and so she has another argument even the rocks on Mars have their own rights and she says we we can't violate the rights of the rocks and she proves her argument with the with for example is one thing when the first man who landed on the moon in 1969 when they tried to do the same thing. They tried to to plant the flag on the moon it was a kind of difficult to do it and her argument is this was the what the moon said we don't want to have you there and go away there and so of course this is very crazy and I think almost everyone would laugh about them but don't estimate them.

1:05:45But even inside NASA inside NASA today inside NASA working groups I have their examples in my book about working groups inside NASA who are against capitalism against imperialism against colonialism with a lot of woke and left wing stuff I thought that maybe Trump made an entry because he ended this DEA things but now I learned a friend of mine. Send me an email that some of these people are even inside there in important position so don't underestimate this people as historian I learned one thing there is no idea and no ideology that is so crazy that there will be not any people to try to realize it in reality. This happens so often in history and the problems is that that's the more people who think more in a rational way like entrepreneurs that they are underestimated they are this is a stupid forget there no they can be very very dangerous and of course as you mentioned it has also to do something with envy when there are a lot of countries who are not able to go there and say we want to have a part of it and this is so.

1:07:08I wrote an article about it a few years ago in economic affairs about this discussion about space colonization and I have also a chapter there in my book don't underestimate this like left wing and woke people they can be very very dangerous and they were very often dangerous in history and they will be alter in the future. I personally attend this day away from discussions about woke but I will say I have endured for decades the argument about rocks have rights and how do you apply the ideas of Gaia to the moon and Mars and so forth and I have a certain amount of sympathy for people who don't want us to exactly replicate there what we have done here but there are limits and I have to confess personally

1:08:08I use soap every day in antibiotics a couple of times a year the micro the microbes the microbes the microbes the microbes yes so so there we go a rain or I just say something real quick the road I just want to say that just like with the 49ers like when the gold rush and whatnot like the people that really made out for the miners right it was the folks that were selling the pickaxes and the close that's what we should do we should make a company to like sell whatever the space equivalent is for that right for for this for this new area that's coming up I think we just need to study rainers book and learn how to become successful in our in our post post journalism careers which will not make us wealthy right here Rainer where can we get your book oh everywhere Amazon or bronze noble you can get it everywhere and the funny thing is that I had another interview a few weeks ago and someone told me that he gave his book to his teenage children it was a boy and he was as I was when I was young fascinated by space but more or less

1:09:23left leaning politically what is very often the case today with young teenager especially in the United States and after reading the book he became not 100% pro capitalist but he had some doubts and so maybe if some parents listen to us we have this left leaning children and they want to maybe get them make them think about it twice at their house that was face please give them this book maybe it can help a little bit well I can tell you with some confidence I have family members that are left leaning that are also quite fun of capitalism so you can have the two living in the same room folks I'd like to thank everybody for joining us today for episode 226 that we're calling who owns the moon Rainer besides your book where's best place for us to keep up with your research and your papers online yes it's here Rainer's sightmen that come I published very often articles there in English language if you scroll there on the on the website like 2026 for example today I published an interesting article in the Washington examiner

1:10:37examiner today with a question was Hitler socialist because it's was a topic of my first doctoral dissertation and you know Elon Musk is very interested in this topic of course he understands much more about space than about history but in this case I made the case he's right and yes Hitler is a socialist you know in a way and so you can find it today in the Washington examiner but you can find it also on the website there Rainer's sightmen dot com but you can't ask I prefer people going to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and Google for my books I wrote 32 books that I translate in 35 languages and I think 15 of them are available in in English so a lot to read very good and hopefully royalties coming in Tark where can we find you doing your thing I'll just I'll just point out real quick that you can also find a great article about property rights in space by

1:11:40a doctor's little man at space calm which he wrote for us as an as an op-ed there too so it was really interesting read but no you can find me at space calm as always kind of coming down from our our recent flurry of activity with the Roman space launch and then this week's Pepe Colombo news which was exciting and uh and if you like video games you can find me at space tron plays on YouTube too so on the socials at Tark J Malik so I will never do that but you can always find me at pilebooks.com or at astermagazine.com magazines that I edit and you can drop us a line at twist at twitt.tv we welcome your comments suggestions ideas and space jokes new episodes this podcast publish every Friday on your favorite pod catcher so make sure to subscribe tell your friends and give us reviews hopefully nice ones you can also follow the twitt tech podcast network at twitt on Twitter and a facebook and twitt.tv and Instagram and please consider joining club twitt it helps the network it helps them like us and you'll be able to hear these things without ads so there you go.

1:12:45thanks everybody it's been a real pleasure. Rainer thank you for joining us today and especially so especially so lit at night for you and Berlin thank you so much. it's not late in the night thanks a lot I appreciate it and I'm happy to come back thank you. good all that's good because we only got through about half the questions thanks everybody we'll see you next week bye bye.