"Claiming the Cosmos:
Who Owns the Final Frontier"
(Brookings Press, 2026)
We're living through a second Space Race, but it's no longer America vs. USSR. Today it's the US vs. China, many nations vying for supremacy, and private companies led by the world’s richest men taking a much more decisive role. In CLAIMING THE COSMOS: Who Owns the Final Frontier?, Darrell M. West—senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of 25 books on technology and policy—tackles the decisive issues we face as space exploration and tourism develop and mining and settlement move closer to reality. Few of these endeavors are currently governed by detailed laws, policies, or regulatory bodies.
Among the questions West tackles:
• Who decides how space discoveries are funded?
• What would the discovery of life elsewhere mean for our globally connected society, geopolitics, and religion?
• Who keeps space from being militarized or monopolized?
• And how do we avoid transferring earth’s conflicts into space?
Instead of leaving the future of space up to the vagaries of men like Trump, Putin, Xi, Bezos, and Musk, Darrell West proposes a governance framework built on transparency, sustainability, human safety, and cooperation—including an international Space Bill of Rights and a U.S. Department of Space Commerce—giving us a clear path to a new century of prosperity and security.
This book is for concerned citizens who want to understand how disinformation.
