Category: Nonfiction
Reviewed by: Casey Suire
Title: Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier
Authors: Matthew C. Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau
Format: Hardcover/Kindle
Pages: 320
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Date: February 2025
Retail price: $32.00/$17.27
ISBN: 978-1647827168
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Space to Grow is an excellent way to learn about the current state of the space economy. This isn’t your grandfather’s space program. Instead of covering superpowers competing for national prestige, this book profiles individual companies doing incredible things in space. It’s quite an outstanding read.
Both authors, Weinzierl and Rosseau, developed this book from their work at Harvard Business School. There, Weinzierl teaches the Space, Public, and Commercial Economics (SPACE) course. Rosseau serves as a strategy manager for Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch vehicle. Despite being professors at an Ivy League university, their book is not another dull scholarly read. It is easy to read and understand the book’s contents. Their use of terms such as the First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics and the Le Chatelier Principle might make readers feel like they are sitting in an economics class. However, the economic terminology isn’t overdone and is essential to understanding the space economy.
Weinzierl and Rosseau also explain the history of several private space firms. If you read authors like Ashlee Vance, Eric Berger, and Christian Davenport, some of this background info will be familiar to you. Nonetheless, it is still well written. For two business professors, Weinzierl and Rosseau do as good of a job as many top space historians. Factual errors are kept to a minimum.
The first section of Space to Grow is how to “establish the market through decentralization.” The authors notably prefer the term decentralization over privatization. The space economy is “not a removal of the public sector’s vital role in space but an integration of the private sector into an approach where both public and private actors play to their strengths.” Later parts of the book are how to “refine the market through addressing market failures” and “temper the market through alignment with social objectives.”
The troubled history of the space shuttle program is an early topic. While the shuttle was no doubt an impressive engineering marvel, it infamously was never the cost-effective vehicle that NASA promised to Congress and the American public. In a chart of past and present launch vehicles, the space shuttle ironically has the highest cost per kilogram. Other ways to launch commercial payloads were investigated. Under the Reagan administration, the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 was signed. Commercial satellites began launching on variants of the Atlas, Delta, and Titan families of expendable launch vehicles.
The book then pivots to the 21st century with Blue Origin and SpaceX. Despite Rosseau’s employment with Blue Origin, there doesn’t appear to be any bias in the reporting of both companies. One major difference between the two is how they’re financed. SpaceX began with a $100 million investment by Musk and is also funded by many venture capital firms. The company also bids for government contracts. Blue Origin, on the other hand, is largely funded by Jeff Bezos selling billions of dollars in Amazon stock. In terms of contracts, the book details how Blue Origin decided not to bid on NASA’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) program. The company later bid, lost, and eventually won a NASA HLS (Human Landing System) contract for the Blue Moon lunar lander. Today, both companies are private. However, there is the rumored possibility that SpaceX could plan an IPO (initial public offering) for Starlink once it reaches a predictable revenue stream. Currently, however, there are no actual plans for a Starlink IPO.
In recent years, SpaceX has become such a dominant force that some observers wonder if the company holds a near monopoly over the launch industry. In 2022, inflation caused the price of a Falcon 9 to increase from $62 million to $67 million. Customers had no choice but to pay the higher price. On this topic, Weinzierl and Rosseau write that SpaceX has “dramatically lowered the price of and increased the supply of both launch and satellite internet connectivity, the opposite of the standard effects we worry monopolists will have.”
Despite the smashing success of SpaceX, the space economy can be very tough. At various points in Space to Grow, the rose-tinted glasses are removed, and challenges are discussed. There’s an old joke about how to make a million dollars in the space industry; just start with a billion. Yes, SpaceX is doing great, but what about others such as Astra and Virgin Orbit? What about the now-defunct asteroid mining ventures Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries? At least readers will learn about the Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act of 2015. What is the business case for commercial space stations? Even Robert Bigelow noted that the market for them is not large enough and will require financial assistance from NASA. What about Mars? Is there even a business case for settling the Red Planet? The book also talks about how many space companies went public with SPACs (special purpose acquisition companies). Virgin Galactic, Astra, Planet, and Rocket Lab all did SPAC deals. The results weren’t exactly stellar.
While the book devotes chapters to the likes of Blue Origin, SpaceX, Planet, NASA’s Artemis program, and the United States Space Force (USSF), there is a nice chapter on the lesser-known Japanese company Astroscale. Founded by Mitsunobu “Nobu” Okada, Astroscale seeks to remove space debris from LEO (low Earth orbit). In 2024, the company’s ADRAS-J mission successfully rendezvoused with an old upper stage of a Japanese H-IIA rocket. Space debris has been a contentious topic in recent years thanks to satellite mega-constellations like Starlink, Project Kuiper, and OneWeb. Fears are increasing that the Kessler effect could happen and that growing satellite traffic will cause collisions in LEO. Several space experts interviewed for the book identified space debris as a major concern. China is even planning its own mega-constellation called Guowang.
Speaking of China, the book brings up a survey of five- to twelve-year-olds asking what they wanted to do as adults. Over fifty percent of Chinese kids want to be astronauts. The top choice for Western children was YouTuber. To perhaps the horror of American space leaders, YouTuber beat out astronaut by a three-to-one margin. For those of you that find inspiration in the stars, this book is for you. The authors want readers to “make a difference in space—whether as a founder, a leader, a policy maker, an advocate (or critic), or an early adopter of relevant technologies.” This book is suitable for that purpose.
© 2025 Casey Suire
