Establishing a Lunar Colony: The Next Phase of Space Exploration

Entering the new space-age era: The White House envisions more than a thousand rocket launches and re-entries per year across the United States by 2030 and has rolled out a policy initiative aimed at achieving that target.

“The fresh policy places greater importance on creating additional sites from which rockets can lift off and where spacecraft can touch down. It also outlines how to mesh space-traffic management with air-traffic control, and how to enable launches within 48 hours of high-priority civil and national-security missions,” notes The New York Times. The plan “calls for expanded private sector participation in efforts to reach the Moon and Mars” and envisions easier pathways for companies to “sell American capabilities to other nations.”

The administration intends to “evaluate the regulatory, programmatic, operational, and technological barriers for prompt, responsive, and resilient access to space,” according to the White House memo, and to “review, on a case-by-case basis, requests to launch foreign space vehicles or permit reentry of foreign space vehicles in the United States for commercial purposes.”

The Trump era also aims to return American astronauts to the Moon by 2028 and to pursue more commercial channels for ferrying people to Mars.

It’s a solid plan—almost a continuation, curiously, of footing laid down during the Obama and Clinton years. The quest for the final frontier has proven to be broadly bipartisan, it turns out. Yet the push to lay regulatory groundwork that lets private firms lead the way in this arena clearly reflects a Republican tilt.

Mass psychosis? “Hundreds of Lindsay Clancy supporters, many dressed in pink bearing banners with messages like ‘Believe,’ ‘She Needed Help,’ and ‘Peace For Lindsay,’ gathered outside the courthouse where she faces trial for the deaths of her three young children,” reports The Guardian. “Several of the roughly 300 women, plus a handful of men, said Clancy’s case resonated with them and that they hoped to spotlight how the mental-health system treats women. Clancy’s attorney does not dispute that she killed the children but argues she should not bear criminal liability due to mental illness.” The attorney also contends she suffered from bipolar disorder and that antidepressants she took after the birth of her third child worsened her condition.

It remains striking that so many women are publicly supporting Clancy:

I’ve wanted to steer clear of this debate because it’s so dark I can hardly believe it’s real.

When your children are that young, you are their entire world. You are the person they run to when they’re scared, hurt, or confused. They trust you completely because they don’t… https://t.co/lfaUCDWte8

— Brittany Hugoboom (@BritHugoboom) August 20, 2026

Scenes from New York: “The captain accused in a deadly boat crash in New York Harbor earlier this month was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after investigators determined he was in the United States illegally, federal officials said on Wednesday,” reports The New York Times. The captain, Manuel Hernandez, 46, was taken into custody on Aug. 9—the day after the vessel capsized near the Statue of Liberty, killing a mother and her 5-month-old daughter. A Coast Guard probe found the boat was over capacity and lacked infant life jackets onboard, according to a criminal complaint.”

QUICK HITS

• “Iran said on Friday that its response to any new U.S. threats would be ‘devastating’ after Washington pledged to impose the toughest financial penalties in history with the aim of toppling the Iranian leadership,” reports Reuters. “U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he would provide details on Monday of the planned sanctions, following a warning from President Donald Trump about economic consequences for any country that extended ‘any lifeline to Iran.'”
• “Today, flexible work remains an abstract possibility for knowledge workers, while white-collar institutions still insist on 9-to-5 schedules,” writes Allison McFadden for Fairer Disputations. “The lack of viable alternatives to this model creates a lose-lose situation for mothers and society alike. We can meaningfully employ mothers who are primary caregivers if we acknowledge that they are a different kind of worker.”
• Calling in the money doctor:

Venezuela’s National Assembly named professor @steve_hanke Special Adviser on Economic, Monetary, and Energy Affairs, tasking him with curing hyperinflation now running at a 400% annual clip — the worst in the world.https://t.co/uxF8gavXNc

— FORTUNE (@FortuneMagazine) August 20, 2026

• Sunrise Mall in Citrus Heights, a Sacramento-area suburb, epitomizes the ‘dead mall’ phenomenon: opened in 1972, it seems to have last received a facelift in the late 1990s or early 2000s. Parking lots are largely empty, litter and fallen leaves litter the spaces. Inside, the tropical plants look parched. Of the original five anchor tenants, only JCPenney remains; the rest host low-margin shops—a clothing boutique, a cellphone-repair outlet, and a Bitcoin ATM. Why do dead malls endure, and why would you even go inside? As Nolan Gray explains, the reality is that dead malls embody a profound breakdown in private governance.
• Checking in on the Mooch:

Incomparable. https://t.co/CF33cSNwk3 pic.twitter.com/0zr4zfMBL1

— Leah Libresco Sargeant (@LeahLibresco) August 21, 2026