Space: The Final Economic Frontier

Forty to fifty years ago, space stations and commercial space travel were part and parcel of nearly everyone’s vision of the 21st century. We all remember the “Pan Am space-plane” arriving at the enormous rotating space station in the early moments of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But 2001 has come and gone, and today’s state-of-the-art is the 1970s vintage space shuttle design and the cramped and incredibly expensive International Space Station.

As so often happens, economic realities have kicked the .....