Newt posted this essay to Fox News, in which he extolls the ideal of the hero capitalist pushing back the final frontier. He portrays the leaders of NewSpace as having a kind of Tony Stark (Ironman) personna —— Superheros without the capes. He puts on his self-styled historian hat to pull some mostly irrelevant examples out of the dustbin of industrial and economic history.

The problem with Newt's model is that all the space enterprises —— NewSpace, OldSpace, MiddleSpace, whateverSpace —— require large teams of highly skilled and expertly knowledgable people to do the necessary research, not to mention the actual work, of creating the new space vehicles and launch capabilities. The article states that Jeff Bezos has enough money (investing $1B of his own funds each year) to simply hire the people to make it all happen. This assertion demonstrates the flaw in every great man theory of history: producing a successful space program requires a large effort that approaches a national scale. it needs tens of thousands of smart and capable people to make personal commitments to seeing the project through to completion and success. Of course, with all the programs NASA cancels (think the recent demise of the Lunar Prospector Rover for no stated reason), perhaps NASA could learn from these examples.

I interviewed a couple of times with Blue Origin a decade ago or more when they were just getting started. The interviewer asked very difficult technical questions. It was unlike any job interview I ever had. I did not get the job. They were clearly looking for the very best people they couuld find, although best at what? was never clear to me. Anyway, here's Newt:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/05/31/newt-gingrich-space-entrepreneurs-will-change-our-lives-with-advances-that-are-out-this-world.html