Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!
Certainly the nerds out there are familiar with the famous tagline from Star Trek.
I was always more of a Leonard Nemoy/Spock guy, but there is no arguing that William Shatner as Captain Kirk is one of the most iconic characters ever to grace the small screen. His mixture of winking self-awareness and his complete dedication to the character made him an international superstar.
Star Trek always had the perfect amount of kitsch and philosophy to make it worth a watch. It was a mix between “Lost in Space” and “The Twilight Zone.” The latter is perfect when you consider what’s been going on in the space world recently.
Fiction has met reality in a surreal way, and Captain Kirk will again be heading to space. But it won’t be on the Starship Enterprise. He has been invited by Jeff Bezos to join the next Blue Origin trip into the great unknown…
Shatner, now 90 years old, would be the oldest person ever to fly into space. He tweeted his excitement:
He will be joined on his mission by Chris Boshuizen, co-founder of Earth observation company Planet Labs, and Glen de Vries, Vice Chair for Life Sciences and Healthcare at French software company Dassault Systèmes. I sincerely doubt that when Shatner was pretending to fall in love with various aliens in the 1960s he ever anticipated actually going where no man has gone before.
Now, billionaires going into space has been one of the biggest news stories of the year. Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) was the first, piloting a rocket into the atmosphere with a crew of four on July 11.
Jeff Bezos followed soon after with his Blue Origin trip later that month, with the New Shepard rocket reaching 66.5 miles above Texas, and carrying the oldest space passenger of all time in groundbreaking female aviator Wally Funk. Shatner would break that record.
But the billionaires haven’t stopped at that. It’s become a brand-new space race.
Tesla’s Elon Musk isn’t far behind, as he just debuted his fully reusable Starship, which is supposed to send humans to Mars one day. Starship is now getting geared up for its first orbital flight. The Starship’s design would ideally make it possible to send up to 150 people into space at one time. It uses a mix of liquid oxygen and methane as the fuel. If it works, that means that the “astronauts” could refuel the rocket using resources found on Mars.
If they are successful, it has huge implications for space exploration. The crew could venture even further into space if they have the ability to refuel in strategic areas.
Boldly going where no one has gone before, indeed.
“Saturday Night Live” got in on the fun this weekend, and released a sketch called “Star Trek: Ego Quest.” The tagline? “A Midlife Crisis of Epic Proportions.”
“Space is only big enough for one weird, white, billionaire. So you could say that beating you is my prime objective,” say a glowering Elon Musk character in the skit.
The whole billionaire space race is exciting and absurd. But unless you buy Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) stock, you can’t invest in the other two billionaire’s space fetishes. And that has been a wildly volatile stock, with a 52-week range of $14.27–$62.80. It sits at around $22 now.
While all of the media is caught up in this three-man space race, the actual space industry is quietly becoming one of the most exciting investments of the future…
Just like the picks and shovels of the gold mining industry produced better and more predictable returns, a brand-new technology is coming to the fore that will be crucial for any space-related missions. This is down-to-earth science, not pie-in-the-sky dreams of colonizing Mars.
It also has nothing to do with space tourism. While Jeff Bezos claims to have $100 million worth of future tickets sold, only the ultra-wealthy can afford to dump six or even seven figures to spend a few hours in orbit.
That isn’t where the money will be made…
While the billionaires are focused on winning for their egos, there is a company that is exclusively focused on using space technology to improve our day-to-day life here on earth.
I’m talking about a revolution in the satellite industry that’s unparalleled to anything in the past 60 years of the aerospace industry. The next generation (sorry for all the Star Trek puns) of satellites is now possible.
They’re called nanosats and are no bigger than a loaf of bread.
Nanosats are much cheaper as well, costing only $1 million or less. That’s a 99% price reduction in comparison to old space technology. And they can be built in as little as a day instead of months…
With satellites this affordable, even startups will soon be able to operate their own fleets of these tiny spacecraft. And this swarm of satellites circling the planet is going to have a huge positive impact on life on Earth.
And one company is at the center of it all.
My colleague Jason Simpkins is predicting this little-known startup that’s about to explode onto the scene will beat SpaceX and Blue Origin at their own game.
Learn all about the future of safe space investing right here.
