Lessons From The Age Of Exploration For A Cislunar Economy

Since the early days of the United States, two classically liberal values have been foundational to our rise as a global power: private enterprise and cultural tolerance. According to Russell Shorto’s classic “The Island at the Center of the World”, these American ideals­ were first set in motion by the Dutch in New Amsterdam, a century before the “original” 13 colonies came to be.

These early Dutch settlers reflected their country’s values, laws, and priorities as they established a multicultural society in present-day Manhattan that eschewed military conquest and placed the highest premium on free markets, cultural tolerance, and individual rights strikingly familiar to the United States we know today. It was those values that set America up to eventually lead the free world.

So, what do 16^th century Dutch explorers have to do with the cislunar economy? Leading with trade and commerce over brute force is the best way to win the long-game, and these early settlers knew it. Centuries later, at the dawning of an exciting era of space discovery and commerce, America must reflect and rediscover this buried colonial past and again prioritize these values to successfully lead the greatest exploration endeavor since.

It seems that the Pentagon is primed to agree – including Frank Kendall, a West Point graduate, soldier, former Under Secretary of Defense, and current Secretary of the Air Force, which includes the toddling Space Force. Secretary Kendall has said publicly that cislunar is not a high priority for strategic defense, that the first priority should be to support the terrestrial fight. Handwringing over a strategic defense of cislunar space, he argues, is a more distant need compared to the proximate concerns of hegemonic authoritarians, especially “China, China, China.”

Secretary Kendall is right, of course, and learning the value from our Dutch history of promoting commercial trade ahead of militarization is the key. Advancing a commercial cislunar economy, even by the Space Force, is integral to Vice President Harris’ whole of government’s strategic objectives, thanks to the innovation and drive of America’s commercial space companies.

Those of us in the industry cannot help but agree with no longer investing valuable defense dollars weaponizing cislunar space with custom government solutions because they already exist commercially. Instead, the Pentagon must promote the whole of government approach that lays the foundation for another 500 years of successful commerce. Encouraging these early commercial companies’ boldness, just like the Dutch government did with its banks, trading companies, and entrepreneurs on that frontier will set cislunar exploration on such a course.

To be sure, it will not be easy to change the industrial culture we built to beat the Soviets, but commercial companies are already developing and deploying solutions for many of the capabilities the government needs today. For less than one percent of the cost of developing its own, the Space Force can buy off-the-shelf cislunar systems and services. By not investing increasingly scarce R&D funds to unnecessarily militarize this new domain with government designed systems, the U.S. will avoid unnecessary diplomatic tensions with some of our space-faring competitors.

Subscriptions to ultra-low-cost commercial communication and surveillance systems can ensure that anyone in space can communicate with their colleagues and families, even autonomous systems back on Earth, in real-time. For pennies on the dollar, free nations (and not just our military) can gain awareness of what the Chinese are actually doing, and not what their propaganda machines or our industrial complex might be hyping.

There are a few companies already leading the way in the cislunar economy, including Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based company that is well on its way to putting commercial landers on the Moon next year and the first ever to reach the Lunar South Pole. As an end-to-end capability deployment, it will also deliver the first lunar commercial data-relay satellite to communicate back to Earth.

After Intuitive Machine’s recent announcement of a SPAC deal to realize its vision, I was able to catch up with Steve Altemus, co-founder and CEO to get his take on the cislunar business. “While we may be the first, we have competitors that force us to bring our best every day” he tells me.

There are no budget gimmicks in their business plan, just innovation and delivering results to customers. Steve adds, “leveraging this innovation would allow the Space Force to avoid slow, expensive, custom solutions,” something more than a few commercial space companies have been grousing about.

The revamped National Space Council has put a healthy emphasis on a whole of government approach, and that is long overdue. More than anything else, inadvertently sliding into an overly militarized vision for space is shortsighted at best, self-defeating at its worst. The new government credo to “buy what we can and build only what we must” is also, Steve adds “absolutely critical for the U.S. to remain competitive in cislunar space.”

Who knows, maybe these first cislunar companies like Intuitive Machines will be written about much like the early settlers and trading companies of New Amsterdam. One day, there will be a robust, off-earth economy as Bezos, Musk, and others have dreamed, and these first few companies will define its embryonic DNA. If America can lead with a pro-commerce approach like the Dutch vision for New Amsterdam, maybe a few hundred years from now there could be a New Washington on the moon or Mars.