Q+A: Why interest in space investing is soaring
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Why is interest in space investing increasing?
Welcome to Fear and Greed Q&A, where we ask and answer questions about business, investing, economics, politics, and more. I'm Sean Aylmer. Investors, it seems, are getting excited about space. The Artemis II mission, the planned IPO of SpaceX, even the Hollywood movie project Hail Mary have helped put space firmly on the radar. So what exactly does that look like and where are the opportunities? Remember, this is general information only.
What factors are driving the growth of the space economy?
You should always seek advice tailored to your circumstances before making investment decisions. Cameron Gleeson is a Senior Investment Strategist at BetaShares. Cameron, welcome to Fear and Greed Q&A.
Sean, thanks very much for having me here. I haven't seen Project Hail Mary yet. I'm looking forward to it, but you're right, that's probably one of the triggers, isn't it?
You know, I went and saw Project Hail Mary, Cameron, and was totally disappointed, and everyone's attacking me. They say it's one of the great movies, and I just, I missed it. Anyway, park that. What's behind the surge in interest in space at the moment?
I think you've highlighted some of the keys there. The momentum and the interest in SpaceX potentially IPOing on the NASDAQ has been a strong driver of interest. But more generally, we're starting to see an ecosystem of companies involved in the space industry, which are making very significant progress. Many of them are growing their revenue at extraordinary rates. Some are even reaching profitability, which is good to see because this is still quite an emerging industry. We're starting to see that trading volumes in a lot of these companies have really gone up. So a lot of these are global companies rather than Australian companies. But if you sort of look at the amount traded, that's a clear indication that
investors are seeing an investment case for investing in space. And I'm sure we can get into it, but there's been some, I think, real progress in terms of key technologies, which are enabling the commercialization of space.
Okay. So let's, I mean, I know Betashees is planning to launch a space ETF. So obviously you guys have done a lot of work on it. What are the sorts of assets that you're talking about?
What companies are leading the new space economy?
Yeah, that's right. So we're looking to launch BetaShares Space Industry ETF. The ticker code for that will be RCKT, rocket, would be the pronunciation of that. That's on the launch pad. We're doing our final checks. Nice. So we're looking to launch that. Countdown. The key technologies that we've sort of seen really evolve are twofold. One is firstly the real sort of, I guess, growth in what we call low Earth orbit satellites. So these are satellites that orbit around the Earth anywhere between 160 kilometers and 2,000 kilometers above the Earth. And they fly around the Earth in around about 90 minutes. Because they're quite close to Earth, they have low latency in terms of their signal reaching the Earth.
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.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Why is interest in space investing increasing?
0:06–0:31
2
What factors are driving the growth of the space economy?
0:31–2:13
3
What companies are leading the new space economy?
2:13–4:44
4
How are low Earth orbit satellites transforming connectivity?
4:44–9:59
5
What role does technology play in the commercialization of space?
9:59–12:17
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from FEAR & GREED | Business News
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