Nonfiction · Scale Wars · Space volume

The High Ground: Claiming the Void

The Moon starts to matter when oxygen, tank farms, transport, and customers create a cheaper climb.

Cover of The High Ground by Slop Dealer
  • Frontier nonfiction
  • Scale Wars · Space volume
  • 594 pages
  • February 11, 2026
  • Kindle on Amazon

About this book

The High Ground is the space-side Scale Wars argument. It looks at the Moon and near-Moon industry through the parts that decide whether anything scales: costs, fuel, transport, power, infrastructure, financing, law, and who actually pays for the first paying cargo.

Instead of a colonization pitch, it works the cost gradients — what gets cheaper when lunar oxygen exists, what a tank farm in the right orbit changes, and which businesses have to exist before the exciting ones can.

The Scale Wars pair

  1. The High Ground — this book, the space frontier
  2. The Deep Harvest — the Earth frontier: deep heat, ocean minerals, lithium, hydrogen

The two volumes stand alone and can be read in either order.