The Space Breakout

We are on the edge of rapidly expanding frontier in space that will allow us to think and dream big again.

Here’s some good news. We are on a path to creating a new “frontier.” A new frontier in space that will allow us to think and dream big again. A way to escape the cold clutches of a descending spiral of inwardly focused, globalized decision-making that is driving us towards an inevitable collapse (the global fertility collapse is a notable sign of this outcome). Here’s how we will open up the frontier;

• Until a decade and a half ago, a new frontier in space was an impossible dream receding into the distance. The space program was dead, killed by defense contractors soaking the government for every budget penny.

• Elon’s SpaceX blew apart this corruption with Falcon (and now Starship). SpaceX drove down the costs of space launch to a small fraction of what they were in 2010 (1/100th projected soon) while radically increasing the frequency of launches and pioneering advanced technologies (reuse, vertical landings, etc).

• Now, with launch costs set to break through the $100 a kilo level with Starship, we’re finally capable of opening up a new frontier in space. The only question that remains is how?

The Bubble Buildout

In 2023, I wrote an essay (drawing on some Boydian insights) that explored how to accelerate space development as quickly as the Internet's accelerated buildout in the late 1990s. The answer was that we needed a financial bubble to make it happen. In 2024, it became clear (at least to me) that the AI bubble was the way to build out space. Here’s why;