New Space Capitalism

The Capitalist Space Revolution Has Begun and the Entrepreneurs Are Winning

Elon Musk’s SpaceX now accounts for 165 of 324 global rocket launches in a single year. If SpaceX were a country, it would be the world’s number one spacefaring nation ahead of China, ahead of Russia, ahead of NASA. This is what SpaceX free market capitalism history looks like in practice: a private company rewriting the rules of exploration faster than any government ever could.

In this landmark work of private space exploration economics, world-renowned historian and economist Rainer Zitelmann delivers the first book to place the full arc of public and private spaceflight side by side in a single authoritative volume. His argument is as bold as it is rigorous: while the technical prerequisites for conquering Mars and mining asteroids already exist, the true breakthrough in the history of private spaceflight will only come once humanity establishes a legal framework for buying and selling land on celestial bodies. Property rights not rocket engines are the final frontier.

SpaceX is laying the groundwork for the largest initial public offering in history. The era of NewSpace industry capitalism innovation is no longer a prediction, it is a market event already underway. Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, Rocket Lab, and dozens of startups are competing in what Zitelmann identifies as the most consequential economic frontier since the industrial revolution.