Outer space is now open for business.  On February 22, 2024, a private company space vehicle, Intuitive Machines landed on the Moon.

The first manned U.S. lunar landing occurred in 1969 and was completely government funded.  The 1960s U.S. space race was a government initiative fueled in the interest of national defense, more than profit.  In hindsight, the benefits have wildly outweighed the costs.  In the 1960s, no one could have foreseen the technological eruption that followed, benefiting the entire world.

This year’s lunar landing is both private company-based (microeconomic) that also expands the infrastructure of an emerging economic frontier (macroeconomic).  Today’s technology companies are larger on a monetary scale than the entire economy of many countries.  It calls into question the historical definitions of private and public enterprise.

Curiously, the traditional academic method of separating an economy into microeconomics and macroeconomics masks a growing interdependence that micro and macro impacts are both happening together.  Teaching undergraduate economics from the news, every story has a balance of both micro and macroeconomic factors.  Viewing business success or policy failure through only one lens at a time interferes with the more holistic view of events.

Tomorrow does not look like yesterday.  The overwhelmingly positive benefits from the space race fifty years ago cannot be easily quantified into business growth today.  Similarly, the cumulative costs of remediating the 1970’s environmental externalities with punitive environmental regulations were poorly quantified at that time.  It took 50 years, but evidence is growing that we are adding economic value as we reduce emissions (as illustrated with the evolution of RNG markets).  We are beginning to pay back the multigenerational external, unanticipated costs of managing our wastes poorly in the 1960s and 1970s.

It is not easy to accurately foresee the future. One difference between a micro-level return on a business investment and a macro-level, infrastructure capital investment, is scale. Infrastructure benefits and costs may require decades and many times more funding than investment in a firm’s capacity. But the rhythm is the same: unavoidable upfront costs must be paid before enjoying a greater future benefit. A 50-year return on an infrastructure investment also requires a long memory.

Many economic perspectives today are far too binary in nature: yes/no, right/wrong, on/off, zero/one. New industries grow in cycles. The imbalance of electric vehicle supply and demand is a natural cycle. The turbulent and fragile success of anaerobic manure digesters by livestock operations simply took decades before moving beyond startup. Adoption of organic foods, mitigation of food waste, and probably innovations in plant-based meats, are destined for ups and downs. I grew up listening to my grandfather talk of returning from WWI in 1915 and purchasing a new Fordson tractor and equipment. A few years later, he traded it to his younger brother for a team of mules. My grandfather was always more successful in farming than his younger brother, but in the 1910’s tractors still had a few bugs to be worked out.

It is not difficult to thoroughly estimate future costs and benefits, and still be wrong. Likewise, in the case of the emerging space industry and transforming renewable energy from regulated wastes, it is also possible to budget future benefits and costs poorly and emerge much better off 50-years later than any model could have forecasted.

I am confident that the rising and falling emerging industries and technologies are simply part of cultivating a durable infrastructure. A slight pause in this month’s upward growth is likely not the end of the process and may indicate the duration of the payback period was simply underestimated.