The new in-space economy

Make Me Smart April 18, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

I don’t know Jay. Are we ready? We’re ready.

Kimberly Adams 

We’re ready. We didn’t even get to say hello first but okay. Hello, I’m Kimberly Adams. Welcome to make me smart. Where none of us is as smart as all of us

Kai Ryssdal 

It happens when I don’t get to the studio on time. No early chitchat. I’m Kai Ryssdal. Thanks for joining us on this Tuesday. It is the 18th day of April, we talk about space on the show a lot because both Kimberly and I like space. And it’s cool. And it’s fun. Also, it’s important for a whole lot of reasons. And we’re going to talk about some of that today.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, more specifically, we’re going to talk about the space economy, which sounds like something out of a sci fi novel, but it actually is a large and growing and increasingly regulated industry. So here to make a smart about all things space is Namrata Goswami, a scholar on space policy, and co author of the book “Scramble for the Skies: the great power competition to control the resources of outer space.” Welcome to the program.

Namrata Goswami 

Thank you so much for having me, Kimberly and Kai. It’s a pleasure.

Kimberly Adams 

Ours too. So I guess we should start with the basics. What is the space economy? Like what’s included? And how would you define it?

Namrata Goswami 

Sure. So when I think about the space economy, I would include the entire space launch system by which I mean rockets. So some of the rockets would be the Space Launch System that is developed by NASA, Starship that is going to be tested by SpaceX, Falcon nine… I would also include a navigation communication, container ship traffic that is tracked through a global positioning systems. And I will also include government programs like for example, NASA’s Artemis program that is planning to launch the next woman and the next person of color to the Moon by 2024. So when you think about the space economy today, if you think in terms of numbers, it’s about $400 billion. And by 2030, it is estimated to become about $1 trillion. And in the book that you mentioned that I co authored with Peter Garretson, we are also including a space economy to come in the next 20-30 years, which includes in space economy, so the economy that would be developed in space itself, which would actually result in a trillion dollar economy by 2040. So not just 1 trillion, but about $20 trillion. So that’s what I mean.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, sorry. So let’s riff on that in-space economy thing, right? Because once we get to and have a foothold, a permanent foothold on the moon, then what?

Namrata Goswami 

So if you look at the several programs that are being launched by the US, China, Japan, India… so the idea is that once you have a presence on the moon that is permanent, then you utilize that particular presence to extract resources on the moon. So the moon is rich and resources like helium three, that can be used for nuclear propulsion capability, water ice that can be turned into life support, which is oxygen and rocket fuel. And then the moon is also rich in rare earth minerals like aluminium, iron or platinum that can be used for construction. So when you think about, for example, China’s space program, the idea is that once you have a permanent presence in the moon that they have signed on with Russia, you then use those resources to build rockets that can be launched from the moon, which is 22 times more energy efficient than Earth, and then become a deep space faring nation and also build into your space economy.

Kimberly Adams 

So right after they announced the astronauts for the Artemis mission, I spoke with NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, who’s the commander of the Artemis 2 mission, and I asked him, kind of cheekily, how likely it would be if I wanted to retire on the moon, could I actually do it in my lifetime? So we’re going to play his answer to that question. And I want to get your reaction to it.

Reid Wiseman 

In our lifetime in your lifetime, I have to say, it is realistic. And the reason that I let me just say why I think that right now is, NASA set our sights on Mars. And as part of going to Mars, we’re going to go learn how to work around the moon. And what we started to see was private industry just starting to fill in all the gaps. We have, you know, small, private companies, like intuitive machines, it’s going to land a rover on the moon here shortly, or we’re going to hand over low Earth orbit to commercial industry, axiom spaces right down the road, they’re building everywhere. And then who can pass up SpaceX, they’re going to build our lander for the moon.

Kimberly Adams 

Agree or disagree.

Namrata Goswami 

I agree, because if you look at some of the programs that are put in place, as he mentioned, NASA’s Artemis accord that wants to have a Artemis Basecamp by 2036. China has one of the most ambitious space program and they are planning to build a research station by 2036 as well, which is just a decade away. And if you think about our lifetimes, say 2050, or a generation to come 2060,2075, I actually see that that particular base will lead to further industrial scaling on the moon, and then you’ll have real estate. And, and to make my point even more stronger, I would say that, in our lifetime, today, we are going to see the first commercial landing on the moon by the end of this month, which is Japan’s ispace company that is going to become the first commercial landing if it succeeds. And what is more even more interesting and to further vindicate my point is that they are going to carry out the first resource extraction on the moon and to sell it to NASA as a proof of concept. So it’s actually happening today. And so I see that future coming and realistically coming as the capabilities are being demonstrated.

Kai Ryssdal 

Since you mentioned the commercialization of space, Elon Musk discuss.

Namrata Goswami 

So when you think about Elon Musk, and in terms of commercialization of space, I think one of the most important developments in the last 20 years has been the fact that we have commercial companies now that are investing in a key technology, for example, like reusable space, and reusable rockets. And so what reusable rockets do is that they bring down the cost of launch. And so I am an academic that talks a lot about democratizing space. So space access has been very expensive till SpaceX and Blue Origin came along. And because rockets were expendable, and they could not be reused again. So with reusability, the cost of attempt to low Earth orbit comes down a huge amount in terms of scale. And so what commercialization has done is that it has done three very wonderful things. One is that it has built into the promise that we will have easier access to space and a person like me or a person, for example, in Africa, or in northeast India can access space. Second, the entire supply chain has become commercialized as well. So for example, the landing system on the moon, building low Earth constellations that support satellite internet that is going to bring access to areas that are not good in terms of fiber connectivity. And finally, what I noticed is that, unlike the Cold War, where space was very much dictated by state funded programs, today, you have an exponential rise of the commercial space industry, not just in the US, but in Japan, in China, in India, where young people are excited, and hoping to contribute to the access to space and make it more democratic. So that’s what commercialization has done today.

Kai Ryssdal 

Sorry. It’s one thing though, to have the supply chain on Earth and the rocketry on Earth, controlled by private companies. I wonder though, if you have any concerns about the in-space economy, the resource extraction, being in the hands of, and let’s take Elon Musk out of this for a second, being in the hands of even a beloved benevolent billionaire?

Namrata Goswami 

Sure. So, as we know, space is regulated by the Outer Space Treaty, and there are four other important treaties along with the outer space treaties. But one of the concerns I have is that if you think about the in-space economy that we talk about in our book, which is about $20 trillion, by 2040, and according to the Chinese estimates is going to be about 10 trillion annually. The cislunar space which is the space between the Earth and the Moon. So one of the concerns I have is that the current regulatory mechanisms that were built during the Cold War, which was a lot about ensuring the placement… that ensuring that we do not have placement of weapons of mass destruction in space did not anticipate a future where you will have countries and companies building capacity to extract resources on the moon. So one of the concerns that I have written about is that what happens for example, if China and Russia goes and builds a permanent structure, say on the lunar South Pole, where the resources are like water ice and helium three, and because they have a permanent structure, they do not give permission for another country or company to land there. What then? What are the dispute resolution mechanisms? What are the guidelines? We still do not have that? What about fair distribution that some of the legal treaties talk about? So space is a province of mankind? And so there has to be some level of equitable distribution of those resources? We do not have the guidelines. And that’s a big concern of mine. We are working towards it. But consensus has not been reached as yet.

Kimberly Adams 

And who gets to decide? Like, what’s the mechanism for setting these rules? Because I mean, if you’re talking about the United Nations, or any of the intergovernmental organizations that we have already, it’s not like they’re super great at enforcement. See climate change.

Namrata Goswami 

Yeah, that’s, that’s a great point to make. So yes, if you look at the United Nations, the United Nations Office in Outer Space Affairs is the body that looks at space regulation. And so like every other international treaty or law, one of the biggest, lacunae is the lack of enforcement. So if a country does not behave according to treaty obligation, who does the enforcement? So today, you would have and this is interesting. So when you think about the commercialization of space, according to the Outer Space Treaty, states are responsible for how private actors behave in space. And in case something goes wrong, states are held liable. So even if Elon Musk talks about, for example, 75 million city in Mars in a particular years say 2075, he’s still registered to the United States and the United States is responsible.

Kai Ryssdal 

Would you invest $100,000 in the space economy, let’s say let’s say it’s your retirement, would you?

Namrata Goswami 

I would invest because one, there is, of course, the possibility of profit, which is very clear, you can see it from companies that are investing in space. The other thing is that if you are wedded to a particular future that you want to make democratic I would definitely invest my $100,000 if it if it if it makes it more democratic for generations to come.

Kimberly Adams 

Namrata Goswami is a scholar on Space Policy and co author of the book with Peter Garretson. “Scramble for the skies: great power competition to control the resources of outer space.” Thank you so much. You definitely made me smarter on this.

Kai Ryssdal 

Thanks for coming on.

Namrata Goswami 

Thank you.

Kimberly Adams 

That is very encouraging. Well, what what do you think is tough because I was latching on really clearly to a different part of the

Kai Ryssdal 

So so here’s the…. I was just thinking about the title of the book, great power competition, right. And it’s not great power competition as as has traditionally been understood, because there are commercial entities in there. And I know I get hung up on this. But look, we’re not going to Mars unless Elon Musk says we’re going to Mars. Right?

Kimberly Adams 

Right and I don’t want you on Musk controlling my airsupply.

Kai Ryssdal 

Exactly! That’s exactly right. And so I think there are, there’s a whole lot of stuff that has to happen before we can before safe is the wrong word. I think there are some things that have to happen before people can be reassured that whims and capriciousness will not govern what happens in outer space. You know?

Kimberly Adams 

I mean, it becomes the absolute sort of epitome of a company town where everything.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right right right. That’s exactly right.

Kimberly Adams 

Where everything that you need… Yeah, if you’re talking about commercial operations on the lunar surface, let’s just say that not even considering Mars or, you know, that’s everything, that’s your access to communication, that’s your access to food, water, air, which is, that’s pretty frightening. And, you know, not the government’s are always the most benevolent of entities. It is kind of worrying, like you said. However, I’m latched on to the part of the conversation where everyone seems to agree that it would literally be possible in our lifetimes, for you know, like, finish out your your life on the moon. I think that’s pretty freakin cool.

Kai Ryssdal 

We’re gonna leave it right there. I’m not gonna argue with that. It would be super cool.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. All right well if you have thoughts on the state of the space economy or your own plans for lunar retirement, our number is 508-827-6278. Also known as 508-U-B-SMART you can also email us at make me smart@marketplace.org And we will be right back.

Kai Ryssdal 

Okay, news, you go first.

Kimberly Adams 

one of them is kind of funky and weird, but I thought it was really cool. Axios has a story about the end of the barcode. So, you know, yeah, lots of us have been exposed to QR codes, especially since the pandemic and people not wanting to touch things. And yes, QR codes have their sort of risks and things like that. But the big retail organization, there’s a worldwide push where the retail industry is doing something called Sunrise 2027, where they’re going to transition from the 12 digit barcode with the vertical lines to a two dimensional web enabled version that looks a lot more like a QR code. And there’s a group called GS1 US, I guess is how you say that, a nonprofit standards organization that apparently oversees the broad barcode world. This exists. And by 2027, those are going to be the only barcodes that are accepted at registers globally. So that means that all the packages and things are going to slowly but surely start transitioning from the barcodes that you know give the little beep that we know and love to these these barcodes which aren’t even, I guess going to have bars anymore. So do we even call them barcodes?

Kai Ryssdal 

We are still going to cal them bar codes.

Kimberly Adams 

We are still going to call them barcodes anyway. It’ll have a lot of extra information that it will, you know, connect to like, and supply chain information and might make it easier to track for recalls and things like that. So in a way I just thought that was pretty cool. And it’ll be interesting to notice, you know, on the backs of packages, that transition, you know, because people are, especially in the self checkout world, I wonder how many people are going to be looking for old barcodes and not find it only see a QR code.

Kai Ryssdal 

All the people. All the people.

Kimberly Adams 

My other story is just because I cannot ignore it is the fact the Fox News Dominion voting systems lawsuit, the jury has been selected that thing is going to trial. I bet Fox really wish they could settle that. Because that’s…Well, I mean, it’s not it’s not an open and shut case. This is gonna be a tough one. The United States has notoriously high standards for defamation cases. And Dominion has a lot of evidence but it’s a very high bar to surpass to show actual malice. But it was interesting in the Washington Post, they were reporting on some of the jury instructions for, that the judge gave the jurors for this very high stakes case. And some of those things were you know, you have to whatever is it… “from this point forward until you retire” from your service that is “from this point forward until you retire you have to fight human nature and not discuss the case. Don’t do any detective work. Don’t do any kind of research. Stay away from social media. Don’t compromise yourself. The law does not allow you to be influenced by sympathy, prejudice or public opinion.” Can you Imagine how hard it is when there’s so much coverage and news and noise and the political moment that you’re in to disconnect from social media? Try to set aside everything you’ve already heard about it and literally just make your decision based on the facts of the case. That stuff is is really hard. And if they don’t, then they could jeopardize the trial. I mean, we saw this with some of the Trump things. And anyway, I just, I’ll be watching it, I find it fascinating. There’s a lot of money involved, and a lot of precedent that could be set for the media industry moving forward, for sure.

Kai Ryssdal 

I agree with all that, that’s totally fascinating, very high stakes, and I will definitely be watching and more power to those jurors. It’s gonna be a long haul. Okay, so I’m continuing with my week of wonkery here on this podcast. Yesterday was was all kinds of working papers today is just simply a news report. And it’s from Bloomberg. And it points out that, as you know, we’ve been getting quarterly bank earnings in the last week in the beginning of this. Here’s the headline, “the four biggest banks in this economy,” which are Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, and Bank of America “in the first quarter of the year,” which is January through March, “wrote off $3.4 billion in bad consumer loans.” Now, in the grand scheme of things, $3.4 billion to those four institutions is not a huge amount of money. But it is a 73% increase in bad loan write offs in the first three months of the year from a year ago. Why does that matter? Well, if we’re thinking about a possible recession later this year, parenthetically, by the way, I was talking about things on the way to school with my daughter the other day, and we were talking about a recession in the economy and this and that, and she said, Wait, I thought we were already in a recession. And I said, Oh, my God, I’ve wasted my life. Because my daughter thinks we’re in a recession. I just I just I can’t even because we’re not people. We’re not.

Kimberly Adams 

Well wait a minute. We don’t know that yet. Because don’t they usually decide if wer’re in a recession after the fact? So we could be and not not yet.

Kai Ryssdal 

It is always lagging. We’re not in recession yet. I will. We’re not in a recession. We’re not. We’re not. Point of the story, though, was my 15 year old thinks we are in a recession, and oh my god anyway. So the big banks are writing off 73% more in bad consumer loans this year than they did last year. That points to a slowing consumer sector, right. Consumers are having trouble making their payments. And as we all know, spending on spending by or on behalf of consumers makes up 75% of this entire economy. That is not a great sign. And I just think people ought to know that. That’s it.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. But I feel like I just saw a story about people really racking up credit card debt at the moment. Yeah. Here it is. It’s a Reuters story. More US consumers are falling behind on payments. Consumers are starting to fall behind on credit card and loan payments as the economy softens. Yeah. Which is what you’re talking about as well.

Kai Ryssdal 

So look out. It’s all I’m saying.

Kimberly Adams 

There we go. Yeah. All right. Okay. All right. That’s it for the news fix .Time to do the mailbag.

Mailbag 

Hi Kai and Kimberly. This is Godfrey from San Francisco. Jessie from Charleston, South Carolina. And I have a follow up question. It has me thinking and feeling a lot of things.

Kimberly Adams 

Okay, last week was our deep dive on AI tools like chat GPT. And we asked how you all are using chat bots. And here’s what a few of you had to say.

Listeners 

I wanted to send you a note on how I use ChatGPT recently/I’m a senior in high school and I use check GPT and helped me learn math. And occasionally physics./I recently just ChatGPT to tell my kids an Easter themed bedtime story/My uncle turned 70 over this past weekend and I wanted to write something funny in his birthday card. I prompted it with literally what is something funny to write in his 70th birthday card, and it actually gave me back some pretty decent material/ ChatGPT is terrible at calculating math. However, it’s great at describing the steps required to complete a math question /And the robotic voice told us a story of the Easter Bunny, forgetting its basket of eggs, decorated potatoes and gave those to the children instead./ I decided to go with as they say age is just a number. Yours just happens to be really high. Which I think gave him a little chuckle. Anyway, thanks for making us smarter.

Kimberly Adams 

That’s that’s not bad. That’s not bad. That was John in Houston, Sahra in Spokane and Zeke in Fort Worth. And I guess also ChatGPT. That was fun.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, it was really good. I like that. one. All right. Let’s see we are on our way out. And that of course means the make me smart question. What is something you thought you knew but later found out you were wrong about? Here you go.

Dixie 

Hi, Kai and Kimberly, is this Dixie from Chicagoland. Something I once thought that I knew and later found out that I was wrong about is the idea that when people said things like picture this in your mind, I thought it was a figure of speech. I did not realize that some people can actually see images in their head until I was an adult and eventually came across a concept known as aphantasia that people like me cannot see images in our head we just don’t have that I don’t dream in images I don’t see images in my mind. So we don’t realize that when people say things they mean it literally or figuratively. Gave a great day.

Kimberly Adams 

I’m about to go down such a rabbit hole on this. I did not know about this. I I often like try to do meditation and they have all these visual visualization exercises and they’re like, imagine you know a babbling stream or imagine you know, a flame or a candle and I really really struggle. I can’t like see that image in my head. But I do on the other hand, have extraordinarily vivid dreams and so I wonder… I’m gonna be reading so

Kai Ryssdal 

I was just gonna say let us know how your rabbit hole exploration goes.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, that’s super interesting. So thanks Dixie. Can you visualize images very easily?

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah. But but and I don’t know if this correlates I don’t really remember my dreams very much at all.

Kimberly Adams 

Oh my gosh, I remember my dreams quite clearly. Like extraordinarily vivid hmm wow. All right. I will I will be down that rabbit hole. Obviously not find something that was made up by ChatGPT. All right. What is something that you thought you knew but found out you were wrong about. You can leave us a voice message with your answer to the make me smart question. Our number again is 508-827-6278 also known as 508-U-B-SMART.

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh Jay’s engineering. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Our intern is Antonio Barreras. Today’s program was engineered by Jay Siebold. Gary O’Keefe is going to mix it down later on.

Kimberly Adams 

Ben Tolliday and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our senior producer is Marissa Cabrera. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital and On Demand. And Marketplace’s Vice President and General Manager is Neal Scarbrough.

Kai Ryssdal 

Et voila.

Kimberly Adams 

Frantically googling this thing.

Kai Ryssdal 

That would be wild if that’s if it turns out that you have sort of that thing. Aphantasia. That’d be wild.

Kimberly Adams 

I mean, feels like that’d be something you’d need like professional diagnosis. Not like WebMD.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, no.

Kimberly Adams 

No shade on WebMD or anything.