*âChapter 1â*Launch DayOn the eve of America''s return to the Moon, a man from Isfahan walked in from outside. He had been standing on the balcony of NASA''s Operations Support Building II at Kennedy Space Center, gazing out at the faint silhouette of a Falcon 9 rocket, just as vapor trails twisted their way up the launch tower. Inside, a crowd of NASA officials mingled between an open bar and an ever-dwindling chocolate-filled buffet. But mostly, they were just waiting. A countdown clock on the wall now showed launch was only an hour away. And Dr. Kam Ghaffarian, who had co-founded the very company responsible for that lunar lander tucked inside the rocket''s payload fairing, was about to offer up a few words.Like many children of the 1960s, he had grown up in a time of social and technological upheaval, where dreams of spaceflight mixed with political turbulence at home.
His path to become an American citizen and contractor to NASA had been an uncertain one. And yet now, hair white with age, Kam stood beside Intuitive Machines'' co-founder Steve Altemus, myself, and a small cohort of others in the cool of that Florida night, awaiting the first steps of a plan to open the Moon for business. At the time, only three national programs had ever landed there. But never this far south. Never had a private company done it. And never had a rival nation planned to build such a lasting presence. Prestige, material gain, and influence were all at stake. But there was something else, something far more influential to the future of Earth and those who governed it.
Space, it seemed, had quietly become a gatekeeper to humanity''s AI-driven future, offering solar energy, abundant resources, and natural cooling for the very systems upon which future generations would rely. China, which had already surged ahead in critical industries, such as batteries, solar cells, and rare earth elements, was busy with parallel strategies in robotics and quantum technologies. But many viewed space as the arena to put it all together, with Beijing targeting the same shadowed region of the Moon''s south pole as the Texas company now poised for launch at Kennedy Space Center.The stage had been set for a new kind of space race, where state-led ambitions in the East were colliding with commercial ventures in the West, albeit under the umbrella of governments in the United States and Europe. The Moon''s south pole, perilous and unforgiving, had become a strategic prize that fit into those ambitions, whereby future dominance would arrive through sustainable control of the kinds of resources and networks upon which others would soon depend. And so, as the Texas company''s lunar lander, Odysseus--affectionately known as Odie--geared up for launch, it did so under the weight of that broader backstory.Tim Crain, meanwhile, was back in Houston. As the company''s third co-founder and chief technology officer, he would remain in mission control to support liftoff, staging, and separation.
The effort was part of NASA''s broader shift from architect to client, funding space companies like Intuitive Machines, SpaceX, Firefly Aerospace, and Blue Origin to build the rockets, landers, and satellites it needed to compete. Still, at least one critical question remained unanswered: Could Moon landings really be made commercial?If they couldn''t, or if China could significantly outpace its rivals and use the Moon as it envisioned, the global power balance on Earth would surely be ripe for change.Given that, perhaps it is not surprising that all this had become quite personal for Kam. Generations earlier, he had watched his old country fall under the grip of another kind of authoritarian government, and he now wanted to "ensure the Chinese never surpass us in space technology.""Decisive action will demonstrate to our allies and China that the U.S. will not cede this leadership, or domain, and will rally other countries to join us," he wrote in a column for SpaceNews. For the moment, however, the United States still held the high ground.
And it was gambling on a new generation of private space companies to maintain and expand that legacy.But it wouldn''t be easy. Jagged peaks and pockmarked terrain littered the lunar south, with both constant light and eternal darkness. Temperature swings spanned hundreds of degrees. Navigating that would test the very limits of modern technology. Failure not only would be a setback, but would deal a strategic blow to America''s credibility and its new commercial tack, lending credence to those who questioned the strategic value of the Moon at all.Kam knew this.So did Steve.
But with Kam especially, who conveyed a persona both of shrewd businessman and wistful stargazer, not to mention witness to political change, I couldn''t help but wonder where his mind had drifted as Odie prepared to blast off. As a boy, he had seen Iran during its White Revolution, marked not only by a consolidation of political power but also by a series of modernization efforts that included sweeping land and literacy reforms, as well as women''s rights. Western music, film, and fashion swept Iranian society, just as investments in infrastructure and technology led to an increase in the demand for engineers. In those early years, he was learning a lot. And yet it was a moment in 1969 as an eleven-year-old boy that seemed to cement his otherworldly pursuits.In fact, that night for much of the world had suddenly seemed to bring human society a bit closer to the stars.His neighborhood--like those of many cities and towns across the globe--was abuzz with excitement. It was nearly midnight.
And at night, Isfahan takes on a distinctly different feel from the daytime cacophony of street vendors and motorbikes that meander past tiled mosques and covered bridges. Especially during those hot summer evenings, when much of the world retreats indoors, many residents would escape the stifle by hoisting themselves onto rooftops to bask in the cool of the evening air. Up there, stargazers could be made.In fact, the region has a special history with the night''s sky. Early Babylonian astronomers in Mesopotamia compiled the first star catalogs, while earlier Sumerians observed the movements of the planets and recorded the names of constellations. Ancient Egyptians used the stars for alignment of their temples and pyramids, and developed calendars based on lunar and solar cycles. The desert sky, with its low humidity and sparse cloud cover, tends to make celestial objects appear more visible. And by its location in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, Isfahan''s comparatively higher altitude allows starlight to pass through fewer filters before reaching the observer''s eye.
In the generations before modern light pollution washed out "the floor of heaven . inlaid with patines of bright gold," as William Shakespeare once described it, rooftops were thought to be a choice spot for amateur astronomers."I was mesmerized by the stars," Kam explained. And during our conversation he wondered aloud if humanity could actually "go there."That night, however, in the summer of 1969, Kam wasn''t sprawled out across his rooftop. Instead, he had edged his way down to just outside his neighbor''s house, where he peered through dusty windowpanes to witness a first for humankind. There, broadcasting on a small television, were images of Neil Armstrong''s initial steps on the Moon."My eyes were this big," he told me.
"That''s what I wanted to do."And yet shortly after he had begun college in the United States, his country would enter the tumult of revolution, eventually culminating in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty. In its aftermath, bearded revolutionary guards roamed the streets, enforcing a new constitution and religious government. Kam, who had left two years earlier on a student visa, would watch from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., as his country transformed. Gone for good, he became an American citizen and earned a computer systems job at Lockheed, or, as he saw it, a prime chance to work with NASA. Then, in 1994, he took a risk, borrowing $250,000 against the value of his home to start his own engineering services firm as an adviser to the agency.
"It was an all-in gamble," he explained. "If I was not successful with that business, I wouldn''t have a home."Ultimately, it seemed to work. And Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies would prove lucrative, offering IT, engineering, and mission operations to NASA--and thus transforming the boy from Isfahan into one of the world''s richest men. Three decades later, he had amassed not only a billionaire''s fortune but also a portfolio of moon shots devoted to lunar landers, commercial space stations, modular nuclear reactors, space suits, and even a research lab dedicated to the physics of interstellar travel. It was big-picture stuff. But unlike Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who had each built space behemoths of their own, most of Kam''s efforts tended to focus on what those humans and machines could do once in space. He also seemed to relish a far lower profile than that of those like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, even though his outlook seemed no less grand.
And on that February night in 2024, he sought to lay out the broader vision in a speech not made public until this very book.Clad in a blue blazer and coral shirt, Kam approached the lectern. "I want us to go forward in time within the next thirty, forty years," he began. "Imagine that you would have hourly launches to a space city, outside Earth. Imagine that we will have daily launches to the Moon where we have a habitat, and that it''s a platform for future human space exploration, not only within our solar system, but outside to interstellar space within our galaxy," he described.Today, the Moon was the goal. But with a few upgrades, there was little reason the lander inside that payload fairing could not be modified for the harsh realities of the Red Planet.Kam knew that.