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The Voyages Of The Starship Indicator

Neha Dharkar/NPR

For years NASA has been shifting away from a centralized model — where it does everything — to a decentralized model, where the functions of the space program are increasingly shared by the public and private sectors.

As space exploration becomes the domain of intergalactic entrepreneurs, a new space economy is emerging. One with commercial shuttle flights, space tourism (mainly for rich people at the moment), asteroid mining, and someday soon, possibly even commercially run space stations and even space hotels. But this final economic frontier brings with it some important economic questions. Who does space belong to? Who has the right to profit off it? And who's responsible for it?

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Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.
Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.