The conventional narrative of American space exploration traces government efforts during the Cold War, with today's private efforts regarded as a recent phenomena riding on the coattails of NASA's achievements. But today's guest argues that private funding for space exploration goes back more than a century before Apollo. To get a better context for what's happening in space today, I've brought on Alex MacDonald.

Alex is the Chief Economist at NASA and author of "The Long Space Age: The Economic Origins of Space Exploration from Colonial America to the Cold War."