By Futurist Thomas Frey
How a robot-first lunar economy could unfold — and why what happens 240,000 miles away will reshape life on Earth
The Moment Everything Changed
On April 1, 2026, NASA is scheduled to launch Artemis II — four astronauts on a ten-day journey around the Moon, the first humans to travel beyond Earth’s orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. They won’t land. They’ll fly the Orion spacecraft within 8,889 kilometers of the lunar surface, loop around it, and come home. But that modest circumnavigation is not the real story.
The real story is what’s already happening in boardrooms, government offices, and engineering labs around the world as people prepare for what comes after. Artemis IV, targeting 2028, will put humans on the lunar surface for the first time in half a century. Artemis V, also planned for 2028, is when NASA expects to begin building its Moon base. Annual lunar landings follow after that. And in the shadow of all that activity, an economic question that once belonged to science fiction is becoming a business plan: what, exactly, is the Moon worth — and to whom?
The answer is turning out to be extraordinary. And the path to getting there will look nothing like the Apollo era.
Continue reading… “The Moon Is Open for Business. Here’s What That Actually Means.”