On September 12, 1962, John F. Kennedy proclaimed the exploration of space to be the “New Frontier.” As it turned out, JFK did not care that much about space—he launched the Moon race in May 1961 because he wanted a high-profile exercise in which to beat the Soviet Union, and to distract from the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion a few weeks earlier. The “New Frontier” moniker only emerged later. As it turns out, JFK got it exactly right. But then he was assassinated, and his successors (of both parties) lost the plot, and we’ve been paying the price for over sixty years. After a few “flags and footprints” Moon missions, we retreated to low Earth orbit for over fifty years. We turned our back on the new frontier. Until last week.
Artemis gives us a chance at national redemption and a bold new chapter in American history.
President John F. Kennedy speaking at Rice University
What Makes a Frontier?
First… what is a frontier? Merriam-Webster tells us it is “a region that forms the margin of settled or developed territory.” And for the first century after the War for Independence, America was largely defined by its relationship to the western frontier. In 1840, de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” emphasized the role of the western frontier in shaping American society, character, and attitudes of equality. The frontier represented Americans’ fixation on material progress and self-improvement. Immigrants and native-born alike went west, turning wild lands, swamps, and forests into productive fields and factories.
(Of course, these “empty” lands were often already occupied by native Americans, who had sprawling civilizations of their own, but these were ignored in the 19th century ethos. Ditto for damage to pristine and sometimes-delicate ecosystems. More on this below.)
From a human perspective, the opportunities on the frontier rewarded risk-taking, ambition, and resilience in the face of setbacks. It also encouraged decades of migration from the old countries: “The emigrant from Europe therefore always lands in a half-full country… his son goes to seek a fortune in an empty country, and he becomes a rich property owner,” wrote de Tocqueville. Upward mobility for native-born and immigrants alike became a hallmark of the American character. At the close of the War Between the States, Horace Greeley exhorted “Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country!”
In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner followed de Tocqueville’s reasoning with his magisterial essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” He argued that the spirit and success of the United States was associated directly with the country’s westward expansion, which had no direct cognate in post-Roman Europe. American exceptionalism developed an archetype of a self-made man, whose success was based on entrepreneurship and hard work, not the accidents of birth or station.
Turner wrote at the end of the 19th century, when the U.S. Census Bureau declared that the frontier, as a boundary between settled and unsettled territory, had effectively closed, and that the country was entering into a new period of consolidation of formerly undeveloped lands. Railroads had begun criss-crossing the continent, and new towns and cities emerged in former wildernesses. Remnant populations of native Americans were herded into reservations, and a nascent environment movement began confronting the fact that resources were vast but finite, and there were no longer untouched lands and clean waters over the next mountain range.
The 20th century shifted America’s attentions from its western frontier to its place on the global stage. From emerging as a Great Power after the Spanish-American War, to a worldwide victor of World War II, to its brief status as global hegemon after the fall of the Soviet Union, America focused much of the entrepreneurial energy, risk-taking, and determination of the American people to influencing the rest of the world economically, culturally, and militarily.
Arguably, that era is ending now, with a reversion to a multi-polar world. There will be regional hegemons, with the USA arguably the strongest of them all, but we cannot act with impunity while ignoring the influences of China and Russia… as well as lesser regional powers like Japan, Turkey, Poland, and Brazil.
So if America spent 125 years dominating its western frontier, and 125 years expanding its influence globally, what happens in the next 125 years?
Look up.
The New Frontier
JFK declared space to be the “New Frontier.” It echoes many of the characteristics of the American West: physically dangerous and economically risky. But before the railroads were built, the historical frontier could be crossed by anyone with the grit and determination to do so, whether on a flatboat, or horseback, or even on foot. Crossing that threshold acted as a filter for individuals with high agency, high ambition, and high tolerance for risk.
Space, on the other hand, has traditionally been inaccessible. Since the days of the Mercury program, it’s been too expensive and too difficult for average citizens to go to space, so it was left to the domain of astronauts working for a “national space program.” In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of civilian astronauts, paying their own way at a cost of tens of millions of dollars per seat to go to orbit. Inspiring, but irrelevant to the lives of the vast majority of Americans. But planned developments by SpaceX and others will probably bring the cost of a ticket to orbit down from tens of millions to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
(As a comparison, a fully-outfitted tractor-trailer combo can easily cost $250,000… not a trivial sum, but thousands of independent truckers have figured out ways to make the finances work. There’s no reason the same mechanisms can’t be applied to an orbital workforce.)
Which brings us, at last, to Artemis.
Enter Artemis
There are actually three overlapping efforts sharing the name “Artemis.” The Artemis II mission that returned to Earth last week is part of an initial exploratory effort:
Artemis I: Uncrewed demonstration of the Orion capsule and the Space Launch System rocket. Successful in 2022.
Artemis II: Crewed mission using the SLS to launch Orion around the Moon. Successful in 2026.
Artemis III: Crewed mission using the SLS to demonstrate docking Orion to new Moon landers in low Earth orbit. Planned for 2027.
Artemis IV: Crewed lunar landing mission. Planned for 2028.
Artemis V: Crewed lunar landing and the starts of a permanent Moon base. Planned for late 2028.
Artemis I was a highly successful mission and, as far as I can judge so far, Artemis II seems to have done just as well. The most substantial engineering challenge on the nine-day trip around the Moon was a recalcitrant toilet—embarrassing, perhaps, but not a threat to mission success. On all the critical milestones—from launch to trans-lunar injection to the precisely calculated free-return trajectory and the excruciatingly accurate re-entry angle—Artemis II hit its marks.
Of course, it hit them a lot later than expected. The Artemis program was based on the Constellation program, initiated in 2005 with a goal of landing humans on the Moon by 2020. Decades of uncertainty, program changes, and political tinkering have pushed the project years over schedule and billions of dollars over budget. In some ways, these heritage launch and capsule systems were already obsolete before the missions began. A new phase will be necessary soon. So, how will Artemis II and its successors enable the return to the new frontier?
The Artemis Economy
Artemis II has demonstrated that some engineering problems can be defeated by throwing sufficient money at them—but, sooner or later, you are bound to run out of money. After Artemis V, the new leadership of NASA under Jared Isaacman has decreed a shift in focus and in operational tempo. Instead of using the NASA-operated SLS, post-2029 missions will rely on commercial partners to transport astronauts to and from the Moon, and to build permanent bases there. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are the current leading contenders, but there will be others, including international partners.
The “Artemis Economy” phase will rely on landers, rovers, habitats, power modules, and other products of the private sector to support astronauts for stays of multiple months on the lunar surface. Once overlapping crews are established, we will be able to declare permanent American habitation of the Moon—just like we’ve had permanent American crews in orbit on the International Space Station since November 2000. Those astronauts will likely be a mix of NASA staff, civilian contractors, and partners from countries such as Japan and the UAE.
Artist’s rendering of a possible lunar mining facility. Image produced for NASA by Pat Rawlings (SAIC).
Details remain fuzzy, and that’s okay. If the U.S. can maintain the focus on NASA partnering with private enterprise to develop permanent habitation of the Moon, the details will work themselves out over time.
The Artemis Accords: Rules for a New Gold Rush
What will all these people do there? That brings us to the third intertwined Artemis activity: the Artemis Accords. Drawn up in 2020 and initially signed bn the United States and seven partner countries, the Accords are a non-binding set of principles for the safe, peaceful, sustainable, and transparent civil exploration and use of outer space, consistent with the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. To date, there are 61 signatories, including all the major spacefaring nations except Russia and China.
Signatories to the Artemis Accords as of April 2026
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 (with over 120 signatories, including Russia and China) was written in a different world, with an emphasis on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to outer space. In that regard, the treaty has been remarkably successful. But it was written in an era where no one except science fiction authors contemplated mining the Moon, or where private companies tackled substantial space missions independent of national space agencies. There are grey areas. But reopening the OST in today’s fractious multipolar world would not be productive.
So NASA and the U.S. State Department established the Artemis Accords to focus on areas where the OST was ambiguous or silent. These include a reiteration that all space activities must be conducted for peaceful purposes and in accordance with international law, consistent with the Outer Space Treaty. Furthermore, signatories commit to transparency, interoperability, emergency assistance, and other operational concerns to maximize safety and minimize the risk of accidents or misunderstandings.
Specifically, the Artemis Accords encourage the extraction and use of space resources (e.g., water ice or other lunar materials) provided it is done in a transparent, sustainable manner that does not claim national sovereignty or cause harmful interference with other activities. To avoid harmful interference, signatories may establish temporary “safety zones” around their operations. Other parties should respect these zones through notification and coordination, while maintaining free access to celestial bodies. These provisions are an important refinement of the OST, which is forbids claims of national sovereignty, but is silent on the topic of resource extraction. That has led to decades of different interpretations, with the U.S. leading the faction claiming that “what is not forbidden is permissible,” while some other countries have claimed that “what is not permitted is forbidden.”
If the Accords evolve to become an acknowledged international blueprint for activities on the Moon and beyond, they establish a path to property rights in space. Astronauts will not be able to homestead a 160 acre section and claim title to the land like they could in the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. But, just as a deep-sea fisherman can unequivocally catch and own a fish without establishing title to the surrounding ocean, future settlers will be able to unequivocally own the water ice and metals, that they extract from the lunar surface. With clear title, they can sell those minerals or borrow against them to expand their business. And they can establish exclusive “safety zones” to discourage claim jumpers who might want to steal the resources they’ve extracted.
Other industries will emerge to support the Moon miners. Again, private industry will lead the way. In settling the West, the U.S. government did not build the railroads; we did not have a “national railroad program.” But a combination of incentives, partnerships, land grants, and contracts (mail service, troop movements, etc.) reduced the risk for private investors, and railroad networks covered the continent in just a handful of years.
And that is the New Frontier that JFK promised us.
The Endless Frontier
The Moon’s surface is a “eighth continent”… larger than Africa, and nearly the size of Asia. We expect to find water ice in permanently shadowed regions near the poles. Water has many uses: for life support, as rocket fuel (using electrolysis to split hydrogen and oxygen), as radiation shielding, and for industrial processes. The presence of ice will allow human settlements to “live off the land,” enabling rapid growth without requiring thousands of tons of supplies to be hauled up from Earth. (Imagine if Lewis and Clark had needed to leave St. Louis carrying enough food and water for 40 people for two years!)
Beyond that, the Apollo missions and robotic spacecraft have established the presence of titanium, silicon, iron, platinum group metals, and rare earth elements on the Moon. Extracting these on an industrial basis will require enormous investment, but the result will again be thousands of tons of materials available without hauling them up from Earth. Semi-automated factories will be able to deliver building materials, solar cells, and space structures from lunar resources, ready to be used on the Moon or tossed into Earth orbit to be used in space stations and orbital data centers.
And unlike the western frontier, there are no indigenous people to exploit, infect, or kill. There are no fragile ecosystems to disturb. There are no herds of buffalo or flocks of passenger pigeons to slaughter. Just ten billion acres of resources to be exploited.
Artemis II marks the first time that ordinary people have thought about going to the Moon in decades. And people aren’t just posting about it online. They’re talking about it in coffee shops, at work, and even at baseball games. (The New York Mets paused their game briefly on Friday to play the Artemis II splashdown live on the jumbotron, and the crowd reacted with enthusiasm.)
Artemis II splashdown during the Mets game at Citi Field, 10 April 2026
In an era in which jaded ennui has become stylish, sending humans around the Moon recaptured the world’s imagination. The Artemis IV landing, which has been widely touted to place the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon, will be the most-watched live event in human history. Future missions will see an inevitable falloff in interest. But the shift to an Artemis economy will allow first thousands, then millions, of people to work in space.
These efforts will take generations. Fortunes will be made and lost, and lives will be lost, too. Just like the American frontier, there can be no reward without risk. The individuals, and the countries, that choose to take those risks will tap into sources of wealth many times those available on Earth. Elon Musk will soon be the world’s first trillionaire, based on his spacefaring business operations. He will not be the last.
The United States is doing much of the (literal) heavy lifting to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, but every nation in the Artemis Accords is welcome to participate to the limits of their technical abilities and financial commitment. Smaller nations may choose to specialize in particular industries, or multiple smaller nations may band together to establish substantial lunar settlements and factories. It’s quite plausible that a Singapore or an El Salvador could choose to make a major commitment to the Artemis economy and become a key player in unlocking the riches of the Moon and the Solar System.
The Artemis II astronauts are amazing human beings: test pilots, military officers, combat veterans, with multiple technical degrees, and hobbies like scuba diving and Antarctic exploration. Their televised competence, confidence, and camaraderie captured the world’s admiration and respect. They are, quite literally, the best of us. But they represent a gruelling NASA selection process with an acceptance rate of only 0.2 percent. (Compare that to Harvard at 4%!) If we are going to build a spacefaring civilization with millions of people living and working off-Earth, we cannot maintain these incredibly high barriers.
The archetype for a lunar worker will not be a PhD test-pilot triathlete. It will be an offshore oil-rig worker—highly competent, able to adapt to dangerous, fast-moving situations, and richly compensated for doing a risky job far away from home. Ambitious young men and women will find jobs on the Moon or work out financing arrangements to get themselves there in hopes of a job. Some will go broke and return home penniless. Some will die and be buried amid the harsh lunar landscape. But some will succeed, and thrive, and build first families and eventually cities and nations on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
And, unlike the American frontier, this one is truly endless. There are eight billion people on Earth today. The resources of the Solar System can support trillions of humans on Earth, on other worlds, and in free-flying habitats. And by the time we start feeling cramped, we’ll have solved the problem of interstellar flight. Whether slowly at sublight speeds as dictated by Einstein’s equations, or through faster-than-light warp drives enabled by physics we don’t yet understand, a spacefaring humanity will spread out among the stars.
JFK called it the New Frontier. With Artemis, we’re finally answering the call—not with a government monopoly, but with American ingenuity, private enterprise, and international cooperation. The risks are real, but the rewards will be immense. Endless resources, endless wealth, and endless opportunity on the endless and final frontier of space.
We’re celebrating our 250th birthday this summer. The next 125 years start now.
“Opening the Space Frontier — the Next Giant Step” by Robert McCall for NASA
A shorter version of this article was published by Quillette on 14 April 2026: The New Frontier
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