#83 To Infinity, Book Preview

Five, four, three, two, one, zero. All engine running. This is a special short episode in which I will read to you the introductory chapter of my Space Economy book. So I'll be talking more than usual and I hope you are ready to listen to my voice. Also, because I'm considering releasing an audiobook version. I shouldn't say considering. There will definitely be an audiobook version. I just don't know yet whether I'm going to read it myself or get somebody else to read it. And you will have your input on that in any event. So some of you may have actually already known this, but yes, I wrote an introductory book to the space economy about two and a half years ago. It was actually my COVID lockdown project. I felt I had to do something to not go insane now. The original edition was in German called Hohenaus, followed one year later by a Portuguese edition called Parasima. At the time, I started in languages other than English because I thought it was important to have books about space, also in other major languages to make our sector accessible to more people. Then of course, I lost count how many of you asked me to do an English edition. So here we are. The English edition is out. It's out for pre order right now. You actually receive the book if you order it today in about a week's time. And the English title is called To Infinity and it's available for now on Amazon. The Amazon link is in the show notes. In case you're wondering what all of these names mean, Hohenaus basically means something like, you know, to the high, high above in German. Parasima means again to the above in Portuguese and then of course to infinity. And actually one simple thing here, we always need an I in the title because of the COVID design, as you will see. But in any event, speaking of making the space sector accessible, that is the reason I wrote the book, it is the reason I do this podcast, as you may know, and it is the reason I give online and on campus courses on the space economy. I believe with a very high degree of conviction that what is key to grow the space sector right now is education. We need to educate the broad public about why space is important for Earth and how much opportunity it holds so people from that broad public can become supporters of space, including some of those people switching their careers to the space sector. Because we do need more people, both entrepreneurs and employees, if we want to grow to a multi trillion dollar sector. We also need to educate non space companies about why space can help their businesses so those companies can become customers of space companies and we need to educate generalist investors about the generational investment opportunity space space represents so those investors are willing to invest capital in the sector. Of course we need to educate political leaders so the sector continues to receive the broad government support it currently enjoys and has been enjoying. If the book helps to do just some of this, it'll have had an important effect. I'll be happy and it was worth writing is the book. I wished it had been around when I myself switched my career to space. So also in this regard, one request to you besides reading it yourself, which of course I hope you will. If you do like it, please consider giving it to a friend who you think may want to join the space sector. Use it to indoctrinate people to our sector. Together we are stronger and you can find the Amazon link in the show notes Now. Enjoy. My name is Raphael Rodkin and I'm an investor and advisor to space companies. Just as a reminder, this podcast is for informational purposes only and nothing should be taken as investment advice. This podcast is sponsored by Nanoavionics, a satellite manufacturer and mission integrator. Their technologies enable many space companies worldwide to offer services that improve life right here on Earth, such as providing global connectivity, conducting Earth observation, or contributing to scientific discoveries. Check them out. And also check out my episode with the CEO and co founder. Sadly, I am not a rocket scientist, but I am an alumnus of the International Space University. ISU offers a number of educational programs about space worldwide. Check them out at isunet.edu and just some final things before we start the episode about ourselves. If you enjoy the podcast, please leave us a five star rating on your favorite podcast platforms such as Apple or Spotify. Spotify. If you want us help expand our work, you can do so and Support us at www.patreon.com SpaceBusinessPodcast and we'll also put that link in the episode notes and lastly, you can follow us on Twitter odcastspace. Introduction California Opening Quote if a Western Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep in 1869 and awakened in 1896, he would not have recognized the lands that the railroads had touched. Bison had yielded to cattle. Mountains had been blasted and bored. Great swaths of land that had once whispered grass now screamed corn and wheat. Nation states had conquered Indian peoples, slaughtering some of them and confining and controlling most of them. Population had increased across much of this vast region, and there were growing cities along its edges. A land that had once run largely north south now ran mainly east West. Each change could have been traced back to the railroads. Richard White railroaded California, the promised land on the American West Coast. Endless beaches, Hollywood, Disneyland, Silicon Valley and some of the most famous and important companies in the world like Google, Apple, Meta or SpaceX. Yes, California is also one of the most important places in the world for space. One of NASA's, which is of course the American Space Agency. Important research centers, NASA Ames is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, near the headquarters of the Internet giants. There are countless newly established space companies around the Ames center. Rockets, often from SpaceX, launch regularly from Vandenberg Space Force Base just north of Los Angeles. Another military base in California, Edwards Air Force Base, had been used by the space shuttle as a landing strip. The first privately funded suborbital space flight took off in 2004, less than 40 kilometers or 25 miles from there in the Mojave Desert. Los Angeles area has has long had traditional aerospace companies such as Aerojet Rocketdyne, which built the space shuttle's main engines, among other things, Boeing and Lockheed. Today, newer space companies have joined them, mostly either in Long beach, such as Virgin orbit and SpinLaunch, or in the region of the international airport such as SpaceX. If you take Interstate 105 from the airport towards downtown LA, you may notice at some point along the the way, a cylindrical structure behind some buildings on the right side of the road that at first glance almost looks like a smokestack. However, it is the approximately 50 meter or 130 foot high first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket that SpaceX has erected in front of its headquarters in Hawthorne. We will hear about all the above space companies in California later in this book. First, however, let us take a trip back in time to California in the year 1850. California became the 31st state of the United States in September 1850, having been part of Mexico until the Mexican American War. According to the first census in 1850, California had a population of just over 90,000. At the time, Wild west settlers were often coming on horses and in covered wagons, many attracted by the gold rush some years before. The life that awaited them wasn't easy. They could not bring much with them and had to live on what the land provided. Yet this big, wide and largely unsettled land beckoned with new opportunities that settlers in cities on the east coast no longer enjoyed. Starting in 1858, a stagecoach regularly ran from St. Louis, Missouri, in the middle of the United States, to San Francisco on the west coast, over 2,000 miles away. The trip took 25 days and one of the risks of the long journey was the potential to be robbed. Then came the railroads. In 1869, the first connection between east and west was ready. The materials for the railway tracks came from the eastern United States, carried by ship around Cape Horn. Precisely because there was no railroad. Yet over the next decades, countless other connections followed and rail capacity grew rapidly. Of course, the railroad was faster and more convenient. It offered more comfort and transportation capacity. And it was much cheaper than stagecoaches. According to some estimates, transportation costs to the west dropped by 85%. The effects were dramatic. As the quote at the beginning of this chapter suggests. By 1900, California's population had grown to nearly one and a half million. During the same period, the US gross domestic product increased more than Eightfold. The success of the railroads was also clearly reflected on the stock exchange value of transportation. Stocks at times accounted for nearly two thirds of the value of the entire stock market. Railroad barons became fabulously wealthy. Leland Stanford, a co founder of the Central Pacific Railroad, first railroad company to build a connection to the East. And his wife founded a now famous elite university that bears his name in memory of their only son who died young. Non railroaders also became rich from the boom in the West. James Lake, for example, who came to San Francisco from his home in Pennsylvania by way of Buenos Aires, made a fortune in real estate. He donated an observatory to the University of California that still exists today. And which brings us back to space, the subject of this book. What does the development of California have to do with space? Well, the California of that time, or even the entire western United States, is an analogy for space today. Space, like any territory at a similar time of development, still seems very far away, virtually uninhabitable and accessible only with the greatest effort, expense and many risks. And yet we may assume that we are just now beginning to build the equivalent of a railroad to space with large new launch vehicles. We will multiply the transport capacity to space over the next few years so that it will be physically possible to carry enough material to build significant structures in space. The expected drop in cost of this transport capacity is enormously significant. If the railroad in the 19th century reduced costs by about 85% in comparison to stagecoaches. We will see in the following chapter that a similar cost decline has already begun for launch vehicles. And it could be even more radical than the historical comparison. In parallel. And we will also address this in the following chapters. Costs are also falling for other elements of space activities such as satellites and their components. This makes a wide variety of projects in space not only technologically feasible, but now also increasingly economically viable. No one previously thought it was possible to fly large numbers of space tourists into space, to observe the entire Earth constantly in real time, to manufacture industrial materials in space, or to mine raw materials on the moon. All of these, however, are projects that some companies are already working on. Perhaps most exciting, though, would be projects and resulting companies that we cannot even imagine today, but which the drop in costs of accessing and operating in space will make possible. Another comparison from the recent past may illustrate this. During the second half of the 1990s, the Internet began its triumphant advance. Many people were already familiar with some basic applications such as email and e commerce. Amazon had just started selling books online, but hardly anyone at that time could imagine business models like Facebook, Airbnb, Uber or Tinder. All of those companies, now worth billions, were made possible by the Internet and emerged over the years. All that was needed, apart from the Internet itself, were creative and risk taking entrepreneurs who who understood the potential of the Internet and exploited it for their business ideas. What could such creative entrepreneurs conceive with with the new railroad to space? In order to enable this, such entrepreneurs need to first understand the economic opportunities that space offers. That is why I wrote this book. I want to show the major trends and how they are already being exploited by entrepreneurs in the space sector. I want to inform and hopefully inspire as well. The book's structure is based on that premise. In the first part you will learn all about the key trends that are enabling the exciting future of the space the sharp drop in costs and the increasing entry of private capital. In the second part, I introduce you to the prominent subsectors of the space economy, including some of the current participants. The final part aims to inspire by showing what our future in space might look like and how each and every one of us can be part of it. All systems go. We're ready for takeoff. And that's a wrap for another nominal episode of the Space Business Podcast. Once more, if you enjoyed this, please leave us a five star rating on your favorite podcast platforms such as Apple or Spotify, you can follow us on Twitter @podcastspace. You can support us at www.patreon.com spacebusinesspodcast. Lastly, if you have any feedback including ideas for guests and that may include yourself. If you have an interesting space story to tell or interested in being a sponsor, drop us an email@sparebusinesspodcastmail.com See you for the next episode.