Cameron Gleeson

So if you're looking to have connectivity with a satellite, it's really good to be close to the Earth's surface.

The problem being is that when you're close to the Earth's surface, your field of vision or the amount of the Earth's surface that you can cover is quite small.

And so what we saw was that Starlink, which is one of Elon Musk's ventures within SpaceX, really revolutionized this by creating what we call a constellation of satellites.

And this has allowed other companies to sort of follow down that path.

And the provision of services like broadband internet from space have become a reality.

And so use cases, whether they be in rural areas or in disasters, or indeed, there's been some really interesting stories where Starlink was basically switched on over Ukraine after the Russians were able to do a cyber attack and take out Ukraine's communication network.

it's really sort of provided a vital backup for areas where we don't necessarily have good coverage for the internet.

And 30% of the world's population don't actually have access to internet.

So services like Starlink that provide broadband internet coverage are going to be critical moving forward.

Yeah, so these applications where you're able to earn revenue from outside the space industry are critical.

Another company which is really fascinating is AST Space Global, which is forming strategic relationships with large telecommunication networks to provide cellular coverage in areas where we don't necessarily have good coverage.

And that's a slightly different technology.

to the one that Starlink's progressed down, but that's a really interesting development for that company.

Beyond that geospatial mapping, so if we look at a company called PlanetLab, they are essentially mapping the world in near real time, overlaying AI and providing insights, whether that be to governments, to insurance companies after a disaster, to agriculture, and that company's reached profitability.

So these are real applications.

But what's really enabled this and what's enabled these industries to grow has been the reduction in the cost of rockets and shipping satellites, for example, into space.

And that's really the game changer here.

We can think of rockets really as just the freight industry or the trucking industry.

Well, you've got to draw a historical parallel somewhere, don't you?

You do.