Space is indeed the province of us all, if for no other reason than the technologies which bring its abundance ever closer were impossible without public funding. The money spent on the International Space Station alone totals some \$150 billion, a similar figure to that of NASA’s Apollo missions.<sup>\*</sup> From the V2 to Sputnik, and even today’s SpaceX, the costs of space exploration have been socialised. It is only right, therefore, that the gains be as well. Private business was incapable of even launching a liquid-propellant rocket into orbit until 2008, sixty-four years after a V2 left the Earth’s atmosphere. So much for private sector innovation.
Capitalism has a number of useful features. Yet none of its shortcomings match its inability to accept natural abundance. Facing such conditions for resources – as with information, energy and labour – production for profit begins to malfunction.
All of this can be explained by the fact capitalism emerged in a world fundamentally diferent to the one now coming into view. That meant it accepted a diferent set of presumptions – ones it took as permanent, but which were, in fact, contingent. Faced with a limitless, virtually free supply of anything, its internal logic starts to break down. That is because its central presumption is that scarcity will always exist.
Except now we know it won’t.
Mining the Sky
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\* In 1973 dollars it was calculated to have cost \$25.4 billion.