Dr Philip Metzger: NASA, the space economy, and why getting ownership wrong ends democracy

Every rocket landing on the moon blows dust at six times the speed of a bullet. No country has yet agreed on what to do about it. After enough launches, antennas jam, sensors fail, and hardware designed for decades dies in years

Philip's calculations show it will be cheaper to build large AI data centres in space than on Earth within ten years. Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, and Elon Musk have all independently arrived at the same number

If launch rates reach ten Starships per day, we may hit the stratospheric damage limit. SpaceX is planning one launch every two minutes globally. There is no international framework for this yet

Fully autonomous luxury communism: what it actually means, why space resources make it possible, and why it requires democratising ownership right now

Every economic revolution has produced slavery, exploitation, and war. Philip does not think we have matured enough to avoid that this time

Why a student robotics competition in Mexico might be one of the most important space programmes on the planet