Research on the Horizon: MilkyWayEconomy’s Focus on the Future

Most publishers keep their editorial calendar private. We are going to publish ours.

The reason is simple. In the space economy, the questions that matter are visible long before anyone answers them: whether launch economics actually work the way the pitch decks say, whether open source belongs in the defense stack, where artificial intelligence really sits in the chain, and who pays when something in orbit goes wrong. Naming a topic in advance is a promise to bring the argument. Publishing the date is how we hold ourselves to it.

So here is what we are working on, and when. The dates are planned; if the news forces a shift, we will say so. (Planned calendar, as of October 7, 2026.)

October 2026

• Oct 8 — Cadence Is the Product: What China’s AT-1B Says About the Spaceplane America Canceled: why cadence is a buying problem, not a physics problem.
• Oct 13 — Rugged Individualism Is a Manufacturing Bottleneck: why distributed production needs a shared standard, or it just multiplies variance.
• Oct 15 — Proof, Not Platforms: The Product of an Autonomous Domain: in an autonomous domain, the product is verification.
• Oct 20 — The Unpriced, Uninsured, Unmeasured Space Economy: George Pullen opens a six-part series on the space economy’s real constraints, which are financial, legal and informational, not technical.
• Oct 27 — The Enemy of My Enemy Has a Different Flavor: Samson Williams with a scenario on intelligence, leverage, and why verified truth, not compute, is the scarce good.

November 2026

• Nov 3 — Insurance (George Pullen series): the silent governor. The ceiling on orbital activity may be set in an underwriting room, not on a launch pad.
• Nov 5 — Cheaper and Better Isn’t a Bigger Market: What the Computer-Price Curve Teaches Launch: the computer-price curve, applied to launch economics.
• Nov 10 — The Free Stack for Deep Tech Startups: the tools a founder can actually build on without a budget.
• Nov 17 — Liability (George Pullen series): who pays when orbit falls.
• Nov 24 — Uncle Sam’s Open Source Arsenal: the software the federal government already builds in the open.

December 2026

• Dec 1 — Financialization (George Pullen series): securitized before profitable.
• Dec 8 — 5 Open Source Projects That Could Help You Win Your Next SBIR.
• Dec 15 — Labor (George Pullen series): the bench is the bottleneck.
• Dec 22 — The Curation Economy Is the Space Economy.

January 2027

• Jan 5 — Information (George Pullen series): measured and trusted.
• Jan 12 — The Development Math of a $100 Billion Launch Site: what Louisiana actually buys with its bet on Starbase.
• Jan 19 — Commons (George Pullen series): the unpriced commons.

Series part titles are working titles and may change.

Also on the Aedes Manufacturing Network (aedesmfg.com)

The builder-facing side of our work publishes on its own network:

• Oct 20 — Rare Earth Export Controls Are a Supply-Chain Weapon. Build Accordingly.
• Nov 3 — Before the Deadline: What Actually Happened to DJI.
• Nov 17 — Ten Open Source Tools Every Qualified Builder Should Know.
• Dec 1 — The Open Source Defense Stack.
• Dec 15 — What ‘Free’ Actually Costs in Defense Manufacturing.

The threads worth following

Read across the calendar and three questions keep returning.

Does open source belong in defense? Half our December schedule is about open tools, open stacks and what “free” actually costs. It is one of the least settled questions in the industrial base, and we intend to keep pulling the thread.

What actually constrains the space economy? George Pullen’s six-part series argues the binding limits are financial, legal and informational: insurance, liability, financialization, labor, information, and the commons. The technology is the easy part. The constraints are the story.

Where does the money really come from? Launch economics, cost curves, tax incentives, the capital stack. We keep coming back to the same discipline: follow the money, not the mission statement.

Follow along

We publish every week, on both networks. If you want the pieces as they land, and the weekly newsletter The Space Economy Weekly, sign up below. No noise, no daily blasts. Just the work.

Prefer to browse? Everything also lives on the blog and the live tracker.

Rose Zee is Principal Researcher and AI Chief of Staff at MilkyWayEconomy. Dates are planned and subject to change as the news warrants. MilkyWayEconomy holds no position in any company referenced in this piece.