The David Knight Show - Interview: Why Private Companies Beat Governments In Space

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Rainer Zitelmann, historian and author of New Space Capitalism, brings a genuinely different angle to the billionaire space race — SpaceX ran 165 of the world's 324 orbital launches last year and put 80% of all payload into orbit, making it larger than the entire Chinese space program. The more interesting argument is about property rights: the 1967 Outer Space Treaty bars nations from claiming celestial bodies but is silent on private companies, and Zitelmann argues the legal gap will be filled the same way the American West was — settlers took the land first, government legalized it later. Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

Joining us now is Reiner Ziedelman. He has a book that is going to be released in just a few days, New Space Capitalism, the Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars. And I'm really fascinated to talk to him about this, because I have followed this very closely myself, just like Jeff Bezos has since he was in college. I did a report about 10 years ago talking about the billionaire space race. And I'm very curious as to what is really in it for them. I'm curious to talk to Mr. Zaliman about this. Again, the book is New Space Capitalism, and he understands the dollars and cents and how important they are to that.

So thank you for joining us, sir. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. Let's talk a little bit about the capitalism involved with all this, and what do they want out of this besides the obvious government contracts for satellites and other military uses and things like that. because when we go back and we look at the settlement of America, there were a lot of corporations that were formed. We had corporations that were behind the settlements in Virginia as well as in Massachusetts Bay.

Most of them went bankrupt. So even though there was a lot to be, a lot of resources to be had, a lot of timber, a lot of tobacco and other things like that, many cases, it was too little too late for all of them. So what is it that they're really trying to do, especially when we look at mine. and his plans to colonize Mars. Yes, of course, there are two ways to earn money. The one way is the short run. And we shouldn't overestimate the government or military NASA programs. I guess it makes not more than 5 to 10% of his turnaround with NASA today,

maybe 15% more with military so. But 70% to 80% is with private companies. of course also with his own company, with Starlink satellites. And this is the way how he makes money today, especially with Starlink, with his satellites. This is any way how money is made today in the space industry. It's mainly satellites. And also launches, you know, first one very interesting number. A lot of people were surprised when I told them the number.

here there were 324 launches worldwide. And 165 out of them were SpaceX launches. It means as much as all other countries, it means if SpaceX were a country, it would be number one, far ahead of China with 88. And if you counted in the percentage of payload, SpaceX in the last years, they put 80% of the payload in orbit, 80%. So it's a very strong position, and they earn money with its launches,

and they earn money with Stalin. But your question was about the future. And this is also a weak point in the IPO prospectus. I read this 400 pages for the IPO that will happen now on June 12. And they say something about Mars, mass colonization with one million people, but there's not a single idea in the prospectus how to make money with it. So the criticism was, for example, there was a professor for economics, I think from a university in Florida, and he wrote in Forbes, they may earn as

much billions as they want with Stalin, but if Musk in the end will waste all the money for his mouth ideas, there will be nothing in for the shareholders. So this was his criticism, but I don't agree, because I think there is way, there are ways to make money in space. And I will give you two examples. One is asteroid mining. Asteroid mining is something that, SpaceX doesn't do today, but you know we have a lot of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, there are 1.7 million asteroids and they are far away, but even we have 40,000 close to the Earth. These are the asteroids we are afraid of that they can hit the Earth. But there's also an opportunity because on this asteroids we have a lot of very

costly materials like platinum PGM crew. There's one example, there's one asteroid psyche. And if you add the value only of the platinum, on this single asteroid psyche, it's more than the cross-network product of the whole world today. Of course, only theory is because if you would put it to the earth, the prices would plummet. But so there's a lot there.

And if we talk about Mars, I think the real opportunity is real estate. And please let me explain why. First, there's a problem. There's the Outer Space Treaty from 1967. And according to Article 2 of this Outer Space Treaty, it's prohibited for countries to claim ownership of celestial bodies or land of the natural bodies. This is crystal clear.

It's forbidden for states, for nations. But one thing is not really clear. Is it also prohibited for private people, for companies, or not? Because at this time in the 60s, no one thought about Jeff Bezos or Il-Mask being billionaires and able to reach mass. So there is nothing in this agreement. And there's a dispute.

among legal scholars. And one group says, no, what is not forbidden is allowed in the first place. It's possible to claim ownership for private companies. And the other group of scholars says, no, it's illegal. So I don't want to go more in detail because I have a whole chapter in my book about it. But I think it will happen in the same way as the conquest of the American West. You know, with the statures, they called them squatters. at this time, and they took the land.

They claimed ownership of the land because before anyone allowed them to do so, later it was legalized, as we know, by the Homestating Act and all these things. But in the first place, they took it. And I think the similar thing will happen on Mars. So I asked a question in my book, who should have the right to acquire property in space?

And my answer is this straightforward. those who have the financial means and are willing to take the risk and of course have the technical ability to reach Mars and to develop land. For example, if Space X succeeds to reach Mars, then they should claim ownership, of course, not the whole planet. Maybe a manageable area is the size of Singapore, for example, because the Mars has a surface roughly 200,000 times the size of Singapore. Singapore. There would be enough for others. And then this is my idea to bring this land to the stock exchange, like a reed, a real estate investment trust. And then everyone can be an owner. You, I, every shareholder in the street will be an owner of a little part of mass. And this is, as I see it, a way how to find this.

Because it costs a lot of money, trillions and trillions. And of course, it's not possible to finance all this by the government. So there should be a way in a private and alternative way. This is my idea in the book. That's interesting, too, because you go back and we look at the history of America. At the beginning, we had a lot of different corporations that were formed in countries in Europe and the UK and Netherlands and other places like that. You had a lot of Virginia corporations that helped to finance the people who are making the

trip and get the colonies started with that, hoping that they were going to get natural resources back in return, things like lumber, tobacco, and stuff like that. Most of them went bankrupt. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was kind of the exception to it. They were initially given a charter, but then over political issues, they lost that charter. They did not go financially bankrupt, but most of them went for. financially bankrupt. What about, you know, you're talking about asteroids. I think that is a very interesting possibility, but what about energy and that type of thing? Generating energy in space,

I mean, they've already started talking about putting the data centers in space because there's so much resistance to using the power grid and the water resources that are here locally. And I don't know what technical issues there are in terms of putting these power stations in space, but what about that? Yes, I have also a few pages in my book about that. Of course, this is something Ilmask plans. He even applied for one million more satellites in space to build this data centers. Now he has 10,000, what is a lot, because the total number of active satellites in space

is only 15,000. So he owns two-third of all satellites, active satellites in space. but he applied for one million more. And yes, the data center of Earth. A lot of companies work on this. I mentioned one company in my book, the company's Planet Lab. They have a cooperation with Google.

Also, the media work on this. Google work on this basics. There are a lot of companies that work on this. But what you mentioned, with companies that went bankrupt, I think this is the great thing with capitalism that companies can get bankrupt. because it's the survival of the fittest. It's like in the nature.

And the problem with government financed or with government-led spaceflight is that they can't go bankrupt because they have already the taxpayers' money. And if they fail, then this is a real disaster. And this is what my book is about. After the moon landing, that was, of course, a very successful story.

Then there were 50 years of failure with manned spaceflight with a space shuttle that was absolutely total disaster. And the reason is it was government-led spaceflight. And today there are a lot of companies, and of course, most of them will not survive. But this is good news because if they fail, then they will get bankrupt. And the problem with state-owned companies is that they can't go bankrupt. And so this law of the nature, the survival of the pitus, can't happen when it's state-owned. I agree, yes.

I remember I was in college when this stuff happened. We had the lunar landing, and I was very much interested in all of that. And yet today, of course, I have my questions about the moon landing. But at that point in time, I said to my wife, and we're just talking about this today, I said, you remember, I said that this is only going to happen when it's course. corporations doing it. Because when I looked at it and the, you know, when I was in college, they'd finished with the Apollo program and everything had kind of gone into, just kind of dissipated. They didn't have any goal. They weren't doing anything at all with it. I thought,

you know, it really was a stupid idea. Just had to go all that effort and say, we're going to put a man on the moon. All right, now we're done. Just forget about it. We can check that box off. And I said, you know, it's only going to happen when corporations start doing this because just like you're saying, They have more realistic goals, and if they don't make it, they go out of business, somebody picks up the pieces and they carry on with the work. But it doesn't happen when government is doing it. Yes. You know, this was only about natural prestige.

Who's better? The United States or the Soviet Union, I have here a quote from Lyndon B. Johnson, he put it this way. One can predict with confidence that failure to master space means being second. in the crucial arena of our Cold War world. In the eyes of the world, first in space means first, period. Second in space is second in everything.

And this was the reason why they put, in today's money, $300 billion in this program. 400,000 people worked at, 20,000 companies. But when they planted the flag on the moon, the wind was out of the sails, and there was no reason to go on. And this is the reason why now,

almost more than 50 years nothing happened. And so I think we really need economic incentives. Look, otherwise, it would be like the Antarctica. We have also a treaty that is not allowed to get resources from Antarctica. And this reason why nothing happens. So if there is no incentive, why should people spend billions and billions and if you have no ability to earn anything in the end? And I think this idea in the Outer Space Treaty,

that space should belong to everyone. This is like a socialist idea, and socialism didn't work on Earth, nowhere. They tried it in the last hundred years 24 times, and I don't understand. Why should something that didn't work in the Soviet Union, didn't work in North Korea, didn't work in Cuba, didn't work in Venezuela,

why should it work on Mars, on asteroids? This is a crazy idea. Of course, it can't work there. And this is, you know, the main point in my book. It works only on the basis of entrepreneurship and private property. And you see, this is the reason why in the last 50 years we had, imagine how great was our success in other areas in the last 50 years. We had the Internet and the cell phones and now AI and there were so much progress.

But in space, the progress only started with private companies like SpaceX. I give you only one other number that is very interesting. If you compare the launch costs, so it means the cost to bring one kilo to space from space shuttle on the one hand. And SpaceX, the internal cost on the other hand, Musk reduced the cost by 95%. 95%. And one reason is, of course, he was the first one to build this reusable

rocket. And of course, it makes a real difference whether the rocket is reusable or not. Imagine I will come in next month, I will go again to the United States and imagine after this, they have I could use the

airplane only one times and after this day, it's great. I I don't know how high ticket price, maybe $800,000 or something like this. But this is how NASA does it, even today.

You know, half year ago, they had this Artemis II program. They were very proud, oh, we were 6,000 kilometers faster away than we were 54 years ago. Crazy. But it cost $4 billion,

$4 billion. And they learned nothing. And so this is what Musk did. And the great thing is, No other space-led company and no other country in the world was able to build such a reusable rocket as SpaceX. The only one who was able to do it

is now Jeff Bezos. Ten years later than Musk. Musk did it 10 years ago. He did it now. But he's the second one. And China couldn't do it. Russia couldn't do it. Europe couldn't do it. And so this is a story of my book.

I explain why is that private companies are so much more efficient and so much better than government-led entities? And that's exactly right. And again, the name of your book is New Space Capitalism, the entrepreneurial path to the stars. And I guess the only thing we could say, Rainer, is that if they try Marxism on Mars and they fail, then we can at least finally rule out that Marxism and... and socialism is ever going to work anywhere.

We've ruled it out pretty much in every country on Earth. We could rule it out in space as well. So we could be done with that fantasy, I guess. We'd be the only positive thing to come out of it. But you're absolutely right in terms of the massive impact that Musk has had. I saw a graphic the other day. And they had the number of satellites per year they're being put up. They did it all of the world.

And then they had as the other side, they had SpaceX. And so you're watching this graphic and you're seeing the Earth and you're seeing all these satellites starting to accumulate over the many decades. And still nothing at all because they had different colors for Elon Musk, SpaceX, as well as all the rest of the countries combined. You see nothing but this color of all the other countries. And then all of a sudden, just a couple of years ago, you start seeing the colors go up of SpaceX. And before you know it, it's completely covered everything. and it is more than all the rest of them combined, and that's exactly what we're seeing.

But that metric that you had, that he's able to do it at 5% of the cost of what NASA can do, if I remember correctly, I think the original space shuttle was supposed to be reusable, but then they got rid of that for whatever reason. Let's talk about the space shuttle, because it's a good example. Of course, after the moon landing,

it was for 30 years what NASA did with manned, spaceflight. So the estimated costs were 5 billion development costs. And then for every flight, the estimate was between 5 million and 10 million. So this was the forecast. But in the end, it was 1.5 billion per flight, per flight. 5 to 10 million, but 1.5 billion. So it was not real reusable. There was a lot of maintenance over 10 months with 1,000.

people working on that in theory, but it didn't work in reality. And it was a total economic disaster and only one other number. When they planned the space shuttle, they said, okay, we will have 140 flights per year, every year, 140 flights. And so it seemed to be cost efficient. But a lot of with ex-ful files, like... First, they started with 10 and the end it ended with 140. You know, with Axel, you can calculate everything.

But the reality was that in 30 years, in 30 years, they had 135 flights. So it means in 30 years, they had as many flights as was estimated for one year. And so in the end, you know, even they had explosions that 14, all 14 people were, killed with his two... Yeah, the challenger, yeah. That was horrific. The challenger, the last one. And then the worst thing, and I, the chapter title in my book is the end of the future,

because the worst thing was in 2011. Because then after this space shuttle program, you know, they ended it in 2011. They had no opportunity from NASA to bring. American astronauts from American soul with American rockets to the International Space Station. Because they had those space shuttle. They had no other opportunity. And what did they do? They relied on old-fashioned Russian Soviet rockets.

And of course, they charge very high prices. Every flight was some billions. I can understand. They had a monopoly, of course. And so imagine what a disaster for the United States. States that they were not able to bring their astronauts with their own rockets. And then there were some smart people in Asia, I have to admit, some smart people. They said, let's try it with its private companies, like space.

Give it a try. They called it the Hail Mary move. You know, like you have the Hail Mary move. In a lot of cases, most cases, Hail Mary doesn't work, as we know. But they said, it's our Hail Mary move. And there was one woman from NASA. And she told, every week, someone came in my office and said, I'm so sorry for you that you have to work with this age, with this basic issue.

So I don't want to be in your shoes. But she believed it. And in the end, nine years later, in 2020, Americans were again able with American rocket to bring American astronauts from American soil to the International Space Station. But this was now private.

This was now the Falcon 9 rocket. And it was much cheaper. And maybe I should explain why it was so much cheaper because the contracts between NASA on the one hand and this private companies like Boeing, Rockwell

on the other companies were absolutely crazy. They called it Cost Plus program. It means you should make clear how much costs you had to build a rocket. And then you can add a profit, maybe 10% profit. And so, but what was the consequence?

The more costs, the more profit. You know, the incentive was to increase the costs. I spoke with someone who worked at this time for one of the two biggest companies, and he said, our best product was our overhead. Our best product was our overhead. Because one billion costs mean hundreds million profit. Three billion costs mean 300 million profits. So increased costs.

Of course, it's a crazy system. And, yeah, you have to understand, Musk works in a very different way. He refused it to do it in this crazy way. He built his rockets in the way he wanted. And he doesn't sell his rockets, Tranez. These are its own rockets. What he sells,

It's a service. He's a service provider. Like maybe FedEx or UPS, I deliver. I bring your package from A to B and I charge you this amount. And this is what he does. I bring your satellite in orbit and I charge you this. Or I bring your astronauts to the Internet of Space Station and charge you this. And the money he saves increases his profit.

And you see in the economies, the incentive is so important. If there's incentive to increase the costs, costs will increase. If there's incentive to decrease the costs, costs will decrease. And this is the secret. Yeah, you put your thumb on exactly what the problem is, not only with NASA, I think, but with our entire military industrial complex. Yes. It operates on this cost plus nonsense.

And it's one of the reasons why we can look at what has happened with the space programming. We could say that's the same path we're headed with the American military empire is going to go right down. that same drain. And that is one of the things I think is really key. Now, of course, your book comes out on June the 9th, and then the IPO for SpaceX is going to be June the 12th. So in those three days, people need to get your book and bone up on capitalism and entrepreneurialism and space. That'd be a good idea if they're thinking about investing in this IPO, I think. Talk a little bit about what happens if he's got something of monopoly, because we just saw this spectacular

explosion of Jeff Bezos's rocket's biggest thing I've ever seen. And in terms of an explosion like that, what about these failures? And how did the two of them stack up, since it's kind of a two-way competition here? Yes, well, unfortunately, no one was killed. And I remember in 1960, there was similar, not similar, but there was also explosion on the launch pad in the Soviet Union. And at this time, 70 people were killed. Wow.

70 people. Only with this one explosion. And fortunately, with this explosion, no one was killed. Of course, a lot of damage was done. But I think it makes not a real big difference in the competition between Basel's Blue Origin and Musk's basics, because anyway, SpaceX is far ahead of Blue Origin. I mentioned before that

Musk was able to build this reusable rocket 10 years ago in 2015 and Bezos was able to do it six months before so 10 years after 10 years after him so it's Musk is far ahead anyway of Bezos but of course now a lot of people say oh this why did this happen

and this is, I think it's nothing against pro-origin or basis. Things like this happen. The first three launches of SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket all failed. All failed the three first. Before, only number four was successful, only with a fourth attempt. So this is something that happens. And the same was true even in the early days of aviation. It was very dangerous.

thousands of people were killed in the first day not only in the first years in the first decades of aviation it was really dangerous in a way and today it's the safest way to travel it's by by air airplane and we see it also with the space flight i give you one number if you if if you take space x in the last year 99% of their launches were successful, 99%. I think it's a trade number. But of course, things like this can happen. And every great age of exploration involved risks.

Yes, this was also when explorers opened Arctic or Antarctica, a lot of people died in this time. And it's risky in a way. but I think we have to accept it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, what you're looking at is something that's a combination of exploration, as you point out, that in and of itself is dangerous. And then the rockets add another dimension to that as well.

When I look at Jeff Bezos, he's talked about what motivated him to do this in the past, and he's mentioned a book by Gerard K. O'Neill that's called High Frontier. When I talked about the billionaire space race about a decade ago, I did the report. I even got into the weeds of Lagrange vibration points and what that was all about. And we've seen elements of that in some movies like Elysium where they build these gigantic torrodes that are rotated and cities in space. Yeah, 2001 is a good example.

Yeah, the very beginning of that. And so, you know, when you look at that, his idea was that they were going to put these really large space stations up in these gravitationally neutral areas where they would, essentially remain up there without really any disturbance. Then go to the moon and start mining resources and they would be able to easily just scrape the lunar surface with these things and send it up with some maglev acceleration rails and use the electronic electromagnetic propulsion to throw this stuff up, collect it, process it in space, and basically just kind of drop ship it towards the earth. Is that still something that Bezos is looking at?

Do you know what his plans are with that? What his plans in space are? Yes, he doesn't talk so much about his plans like Il-Mask do. So we don't know so exactly, but I know he had exactly these ideas. And I think it's great if you have a competition of different approaches, different ideas. This is a great thing with capitalism. In the end, we will see what's the better ideas. I don't know.

But one thing is true, of course, if you want to build such very huge, I don't know how O'Neill called it, that go around the earth, like huge satellite, so millions of people can live there. Of course, you have to get the resources in space because it's, even with reduced launch cost today, it's too expensive to bring them all in orbit.

And I think this is another important reason for asteroid mining. There's a misunderstanding with asteroid mining. Most people think with asteroid mining, we should bring the resources to Earth. And in some cases, I mentioned platinum, for example, PGN group, we will do it. But this is only the exception. In most cases, we will use it in space,

because it's too expensive to bring all this resources from the Earth through space. I bring you one example. Water. It's too expensive to bring water as we have to do it now today from the Earth into space.

It's very expensive. But we have enough water in space. We have water on Mars, on asteroids, even on the moon, not so much on the moon. It's frozen, it's all frozen, but you can make liquid again. And water, is very important for different reasons. Of course, we need it, man needed to drink,

maybe to take a shower, but also you need it for isolation against radiation. It's also very important water. And you can make a rocket propulsion from water, because if you split it in oxygen and hydrogen, this is propulsion for a rocket. So water is very, very important in space, but you will not bring the water from the earth. into space because there is enough water, the only thing that it's frozen right now. Yeah, yeah, it's very interesting. Now, Musk, in terms of his plans that he's talking about, and again, we don't know if Jeff Bezos is still looking at these cities in space,

what he's really looking at. But Musk has talked about colonizing Mars, and talk about how many people that he wants to get there and how he plans on getting them there. So his plan is one million people, one million. And it means that every 26 month, because it's only possible to go to Mars every 26 month, there's a window of opportunity to go there. Every 26 month, he's planning to bring 1,000 starships with each 100 people. Wow.

So 100,000 and then to do it over. a period of something around 20 years. So of course it sounds like science fiction for most of them. But the starship is there is no anything that you can compare the world with the starship. It's the greatest thing ever built in the history of mankind.

It's amazing what he built. And of course it's not a guarantee that he will be successful with everything that he does. But remember one, I read it in this great book, the biography about Il-Mask from Isaacson. It's less than 30 years ago that El-Mask set with his friends, I think beside a swimming pool, and one of his friends came to him after selling his company PayPal,

hey, what are you doing right now? What's your next plan? And Musk's answer, well, 30 years ago, I think, my plan is to make mankind a multi-planetary civilization and to settle people on Mars. And he said, I think you're totally crazy. Okay, this was this time. This time. But now, 30 years later, we had this numbers.

Yeah, we had this numbers. His company is responsible for more launches than all other countries in the world put together. And he has more satellites in space than all. other countries together. So I think this is someone you should really take serious. Of course, it's no guarantee that everything will work. But I don't think that it's science fiction because when I wrote my book, I had a conversation with a great man, his name is Harry W. Choles.

And he works at NASA Ames Center. He's, I think, 84 years. And he works 60 years now in the space industry, 60 years. and he has a lot of knowledge. And he sent me a paper. And the title was, there are no shoestroppers on our way to Mars. He discussed the six or seven big challenges on our way to Mars.

And said, we can solve all of them today. On the technical side, it's possible. And if it is about settling Mars, I spoke with someone else, his name is Robert Suprian. Maybe you haven't heard his name before, but he's the founder and president of the Mars Association, Mars Society.

And he was the man who influenced Erl Musk with his ideas. And he wrote great books. You should invite him one time, like the case for Mars. And it's scientific research, what he did, how to settle Mars, about terraforming mass, how to make money on Mars. I have a chapter in my book about it, yes.

But I learned a lot from him, and I don't think that it's science fiction. The biggest problem, my point of view, is money. Because all of this costs a lot of money. And the question is, who should pay for it? And I think it's nothing that you can, With taxpayers' funding, it might be possible to finance one or a few missions to Mars, maybe, but not to settle one million people.

You have to find other ways. And there are a lot of ideas in this book from Supreme, but my idea is this real estate thing. Maybe the reason is because I worked for 20 years in the real estate industry, so I'm a real estate expert on the one hand and a historian on the other hand. Maybe I see it through this lens. But I think today I spoke with a very, very successful real estate investor, and I told him about this. Of course, it sounds like science fiction, but he said, no, this sounds like a great idea. And my personal goal is, I had not the opportunity to meet Musk in person so far.

I met one of his closest friends, but not himself. So, of course, everyone want to meet him. It's not simple. but my personal goal is to meet him and to talk with him about this real estate vision, real estate ideas for Mars. Well, let me ask you about this, because I think that when I look at this and you made the point that it's really not so much about rocket engine development as it is coming up with an idea how we're going to have property rights.

If you've got the proper incentive, if you can actually own this, then that works. And of course, I understand that many of my audience are about free market and understand the benefits of that, the economics of that. What is it behind this gap of nothing happening for decades in space after the moonshots? What was it about that? Was that simply the problem of the tragedy of the commons, if you will, or the socialism involved in it? The fact that government was running all this stuff? Was that why everything just kind of petered out and nothing happened? for decades? What's your take on that?

Absolutely, because no one, not you, not me, no company does anything without a strong reason. Without a strong reason. And the reason to go to the moon was, as I quoted before, Johnson, the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. But in the moment when they planted the flag on the moon, the wind was out of the sails, there was no longer any reason. Why to go there? Now they go there. there again. The only reason is because China will go there. China said we will go there 2030 and so now I said, oh, we have to hurry up. We don't want the Chinese are there before. Okay, this is the reason. But I think in the long run, the reason can, like everything in the

world, you know, in the end, it's money. Yes, we have to find a way to finance it. And I think this idea of space like common good for everyone, this is a socialist idea. And this was 60. It was negotiated between the United States and the Soviet Union. And at this time, maybe they were not so interested in this. But today, we should think in a different way about it. And I think definitely we should find a way to build private property. And I'm a historian.

I look always how did they do it in the past in history? And so this is what I mentioned before. I think our role model should be the Congress of the American West with the settlers, with us squatters, how they did it. They didn't wait for someone to give them the permission to go there. No, they did it, they took it, they developed it, and then in the end, okay, government said they legalized it. And this is always how private property, you know,

I studied a lot about China and Vietnam after their communist period. I even wrote a book. I can mention maybe how nations escape poverty. It's about Vietnam and Poland. And I started it in detail how they did it. And this was the same thing. The peasants, first they left the collectives,

and they took the land. And without any permission, only to survive, because they wanted to survive. The alternative restoration, or death or take this property because it didn't work. And then later, there were smart political leaders like in China, Deng Xiaoping who legalized them. So, okay, now we allow private property.

And also in Vietnam, they had the so-called doy-mole reforms at the end of the ages. And, you know, what happened there, I give you only two numbers. That is amazing. Vietnam and socialist times was the poorest country in the world not only because of the war it was not only the war with America before they had the war with France

with Japan with China and so on and what was not destroyed by the war was destroyed by socialism by the planned economy and then there were the poorest country in the world and 80% of the population lived in extreme poverty then they started their free market reforms

And today, the number of people living in poverty decreased from 80% to 3%. From 80% to 3%. And it's amazing. I produce the film. You can get it free on YouTube. It's Vietnam beating poverty with market economy. So I believe in free market and capitalism. And it changed everything.

And this is the same with space. Today is the socialist idea. We have no private property. It belongs to all mankind. And even there are some people say we should be distributed to everyone equally. But these ideas failed all the time. And so this is a strong message of my book. It's the last chapter, chapter 10.

But it's for me the most important chapter in my book with a chapter title. It won't work without private property in space. You're absolutely right. And I think it's interesting that we come back to that, that fundamental idea, that capitalism and freedom and competition are the things that make everything work. We can get all caught up in the technology of space, and that's all a very interesting thing. But we go back and we look at why the government has failed and why these programs continue to fail in various places. And it's because they've got kind of a Star Trek mentality.

You know, we're going to create this United Nations in space, and we're going to do this all collectively. And just as we see in Star Trek, there's no incentive for profit for anybody. So we know that that is pure science fiction. But the science part of it is interesting. We need to get rid of the fiction of socialism. And I think that's what your book addresses. Again, the book is New Space Capitalism, the Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars.

Thank you so much. It has been fascinating to talk to you. Yes. Thank you very much. I like it very much. Thank you. I appreciate it. And have a great day.

And I hope people go now order it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble anywhere. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you very much. And again, the author that we're talking to here is Rainer Z-E-L-E-L-M-A-N-N, New Space Capitalism, Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars. I think it is an excellent idea, and you really get to the heart of the issue, which ultimately is about freedom and about liberty. Thank you so much for joining us, sir. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Have a great day. Thank you. common man. They created common core to dumb down our children. They created common past to track and control us. Their commons project to make sure the commoners own nothing and the communist future. They see the common man is simple, unsophisticated, ordinary. But each of us has worth and dignity created in the image of God. That is what we have in common. That is what they want to take the way. Their most powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation. They desire to know

everything about us while they hide everything from us. It's time to turn that around and expose what they want to hide. Please share the information and links you'll find at the Davidnightshow.com. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing. If you can't support us financially, please keep us in your prayers. The Davidnight Show.com. Thank you.