Space Investor: SpaceX Is Only 20% of the Opportunity

This stuff is happening now.

“If we are able to put AI onto steroids, what does that enable?”

And I don't think we're that long away from that. It feels that all of these technologies are converging at the same time. You've got quantum, you've got AI, you've got space. In particular, those three elements, as you bring them together, it's going to be the nucleus of the things that happen next.

[MUSIC] Mark, dude, appreciate you taking the time out. I'm incredibly excited for our conversation today for a lot of reasons. So thank you. Great to be on the show.

Thank you for inviting me. Yeah, all right. So as I explained in the green room, I was excited to have you on the show for a couple of different reasons, but one in particular. And for the audience as well, my goal for our conversation

and whether we prove this to people or not, is to make the case that space-related companies, space tech, the work that the engineering and that goes into creating the products that get us there. This is something that needs to be on people's radar.

And I get that the world is crazy and chaotic.

And there's a million things that can grab your attention.

And I'm not saying everyone should come out of this, trying to be an expert in space tech. But I really want to put this on people's radar.

“And I think we found a perfect person to do that.”

So I'm excited. I'm excited to share that with you. We're going to have a fun conversation that I can promise you. All right. So you're fun.

You've been involved in this area for a long time. You've helped different companies, IPO. So you've been throughout the spectrum of what happens in this space. I think at a broad level, just to kind of give us

an anchor point for our conversation. I would love for you to start with. What are some of the things that maybe people don't realize are realities today? And maybe what are a few or if there are any things

that people may think is happening today, but is really a technology that's down the road. Just so we can kind of level set people's brains on. What's real and what's not in the space technology space? Really, jump in right into the middle of it.

That's straight to the way. So yeah, now happy to sort of respond there. So where we are today is that for the last decade, SpaceX has really been an enableer for access to space

in a way that we've never seen before.

So last year there was a more than 20, 7 hours. Space is a low cost to access, and that's led to a whole range of companies establishing themselves to build satellites smaller lighter cheaper, large constellations have resulted. And they are here today.

The biggest that we, that everyone is aware of is the SpaceX communication network of Starlink. And you know, it's changing lives around the world. It's making journeys on planes and trains and boats more palatable.

“Everyone's life is already being impacted by that.”

And what can to come on and talk about all of the other different types of capability that's coming through this digital infrastructure that's being created around our planet? Which we like and sort of a new internet. And all of the data and communications that's coming off that

is as impactful as the internet was 20 years ago, and it's all happening right now. So that's what's happening now. What is sort of on the sort of near-term horizon is mega infrastructure in the space environment.

And what do I mean by that? Well, let's go straight to it. The stuff that Elon's talking about, data centers in space. So this is something that is really now on the pathway. And is a reality.

And we're building towards that. And we're going to get there in the next sort of five years also. Starting off with data centers that are effectively constellations of satellites that are linked together, but sort of further out a giant building that is a data center.

So that's the journey that we're on at the moment, but it is real. And then there are a whole range of other things that sort of go alongside that. So infrastructure in space, cell towers in space. You know, this is a reality today.

The cell towers are already there. They can communicate to any mobile phone without any hardware or software adjustment. You wouldn't even know that your call is being re-rooted through space. So that's happening already. The things that are sort of on the horizon as well are

manufacturing in the space environment. So effectively leveraging the zero gravity environment of space that makes every protein, every molecule behave differently,

What does that mean?

“Different outcomes and potential for a drug discovery”

and different outcomes of potential for new materials.

Thinking about finding ways of building synthetic materials that are entire world is dependent upon. You know, these are the things that are now actively being worked on that it's sort of here today, but are scaling and are going to become a reality. A little bit further out in the same theme of mega infrastructure

is energy from space, bringing energy back from space, back down to Earth so that we become less reliant on oil, which we all know that we need to do for the future of the planet. And this is being actively worked on at the moment. So this is a financing game and financing issue

rather than a sort of technology issue.

And this is something that is now sort of insight.

What sort of further out that is still not here today, this is anything to do with space travel, anything to do with the moon, anything to do with Mars, all of that is still sort of way out. We're not investing into any of that stuff because we're using other people's money who are expecting a return over a reasonable period of time.

So we're really focused ourselves as an organisation on where space is able to serve Earth, where it's addressing terrestrial problems and requirements where there are real budgets, where people are prepared to pay for whatever can be provided from space.

“So that's what's here today and there's a very clear pathway”

to the future of lots of exciting things that are going on beyond that. So for those who maybe kind of neophytes at this topic, is SpaceX like the big silverback gorilla in the space and everyone kind of operates around them or are they just the biggest branded name that we hear a lot of,

especially as Americans and there are other players kind of at their level. And kind of how does the competition of companies rank and stack? And I know there's a lot coming fast, but where does it all? Who's the prime time player? Yeah, well, a cool space axis, you know, it's a multi-trillion dollar company.

And they've defined the sector and they're continuing to do that. And you know, Elon and the Elon premium is highly justified. You know, growing Tesla and having a multi-year advantage in EV. SpaceX and how it's revolutionized the launch industry over the last decade and is now a monopoly player in that sector.

The communications network of Starlink, multi-year head start on any other players in the market. And now we're talking about data centers in space, leveraging low cost abundant energy for XAI. You know, is the next step and do that job belief that he's going to enjoy

a multi-year advantage in that as well, yes, I do. But what I sort of just described there is SpaceX's part of the market. And which is only in my view, only about 20% of the overall space market. So it's the other 80% that really doesn't get much airtime that we're going to talk about today.

And this huge opportunity, you know, we have made it our business not to do anything to compete against SpaceX. Why would you? There's so much opportunity in the rest of the market. The what we have set out to do in the in our last 12 year journey

as a specialist space investor is to find the other space exits. And there are many of them out there and we've invested into many of them that I'm sure we'll come on and talk about in the show today. Yeah, so okay, so outside of that space, that and I appreciate you level setting because

I definitely think for someone who doesn't follow this, it's kind of like the only name you hear is SpaceX. Maybe occasionally you hear about Jeff Bezos blowing something up. But like, you know, for the most part, it's just re-catching rockets and satellites from SpaceX. And to the point that you made, you know, where I'm incredibly interested in,

especially, you know, hearing the states because I know just my own,

“I get pound over that with SpaceX and nothing else, right?”

And I would love to kind of say like, what's the next hottest piece? What's the next thing that either needs to be built or something is someone's building

right now or that you're invested in that's kind of filling that other 80 percent?

What are you most excited about? Yeah, well, then before I answer that, let me just give you another sort of level setting sort of view. So you've got SpaceX, the world knows what they do and they're excited about it.

And most folks who are lucky enough to have an exposure to SpaceX, particularly those that invest as well as private, you know, consider that they've actually got their exposure to space. But that's not true for the reasons that I've already explained. So if you think about AI and now I'm going to come and talk throughout our conversation today about the how space is very similar to AI because it's a horizontal technology.

Yeah, it's AI is not a sector, space is not a sector.

“What is an enabling technology that enables a range of themes and a range of underlying industries?”

And the reasons are theme or an industry, the both AI and space don't impact. So you can't say that you've got an exposure to SpaceX, so to space market, by only having a holding in SpaceX, you can't say that you've got your full exposure to AI just by holding an Nvidia in your portfolio and no investor would sort of say, I've got Nvidia, there you go, I've done AI, I'm done. They recognize that there's other ways

to play that market. We haven't yet got to the stage where investors are sort of saying, "Okay, I've got SpaceX, what next?" So this is why your question there is so pertinent, and it's really interesting then to start sort of digging into what are the other areas.

“So let's start off with Earth observation. Earth observation is a market where, from space,”

you're able to look down at Earth and use a different type of sensor or many different types of sensors to tell you different things about what's going on on the Earth. So there are just endless applications for how this can be used. Let me zero in on one of our portfolio companies, which provides a really good basis for this discussion. So this company is called ISI, it's a finished company, and what they have done is they've developed a

miniaturized satellite with a miniaturized radar. What they do with those satellites is the label to from space, look down at Earth and see something that's the size of a pizza, from space day or night and they can do that from through any kind of weather and any kind of cloud cover. And they've got around 70 satellites that are operational right now and they're able to see every square metre of Earth every hour. And what they're then do is they then do change detection

using AI algorithms to determine how that square metre of Earth is changed and in that last hour. And they're then able to build up a picture of change in the world at a level of resolution that's

never been seen before. So what happened on that spot, an hour ago, two hours ago, 10 hours ago,

a day ago, a week ago, a month ago, a year ago. And then effectively to be able to leverage that digital information to provide insights of what has happened or what might happen, going forwards. So right now, the big use case for that is defense, but every industry will use that as a as a as a just a baseline data in the same way that every single industry and every single company uses GPS in a merry other different ways. Okay. So this is the kind of stuff that I was excited

to talk about because I'm sure half the audience is scared out of their mind because they feel like people are going to be watching them drink their beer and their backyard at night is there's

winding down and the other half is like, oh my god, think of all the amazing things we can do with this.

And I'll tell you from a non military standpoint. So my home industry is the property casually

“space, uh, insurance space. And I think about when I hear something like that and I hate that”

I'm this nerdy and I'm sorry guys that I'm this nerdy, but that's who I am is like, I'm going, wow, from like a claims perspective, think about what you could do if you could like literally rewind the tape and watch the fire happen, watch the tree fall, watch, you know, something like this happen as it evolves. I mean, I know now it's once every hour. I'm assuming over time it'll be once every half hour, once every 10 minutes and then they'll just be watching all the time and like

to be able to to be able to handle these things in a fraction of a second where, you know,

you see the tree fall, you see the damage, the satellites are able to easily assess, run a replacement cost algorithm and the person, you know, the ensured has the money for for paying out the claim in their bank account like 15 minutes after the the tree hits, you know,

guys, that's the non, like I know how my audience thinks and and they tend, I love conspiracy theories,

so we do, we do tend to go down that rabbit hole every once in a while, so I will say I get where their thoughts are, but like as much as maybe pure military tends to and this is, I just want to say this, I find it interesting and I want you to push back, I mean, if you have different thoughts, I know a lot of this stuff tends to be brought to market via military need and but that's history, guys, that's like literally almost me every major technology that we used today was

initially implemented for military use as you describe here, but then brought down as it becomes

“commercialized and being able to use in everyday life to improve how we operate and that's why”

this stuff is so incredibly exciting. Yeah, you're absolutely right, and you've really put your finger on

it there because, you know, insurance, in the case of ice-sized, that sort of second largest customer base,

and one of the things that insurance are really sort of challenged with at the moment, or the sort of events that are sort of climate driven, the fires, the floods, the tornadoes, etc, so I mean, just taking the example of a flood, what they're able to do as an insurance company now in real time is to understand the perimeter of the flood as it happens, they can then identify all of the assets the subject to that flood, cars, houses, industrial buildings, so when it comes to a claim,

they have a source of truth, so it eliminates fraud, they know immediately whether that property was subject to a meter of water for a week, and they can automatically pay out before the claims

if made, and you really made the right statement there that the event happens and the money's

“already in the bank account, as the sort of consumer of that insurance, that's what you need when”

your house is just underwater and your world is upside down, the money's in the bank, you know, you're buying a new house, you're paying for all the things that you need to pay, and you know, you're not chasing, you're insurance company, and providing evidence that naturally and currently just runs months behind the event, and we've just talked about insurance, but play that into any industry, this is a foundational data set that is going to change everything, yeah, I mean,

you think about it from forestry, my animal migrations, you think about planning, farmland, managing different machines, you know, you already have kind of GPS driven machines on farms, but you know, even from some of the people that I know that that used that on a small base, those aren't perfect, and you need more of the visual elements as well to manage smaller turns, I mean, it's just so much use case for this kind of stuff. Let me just pick up on something you

“just set that about GPS, right, because this is kind of fun, I think you're like this. So GPS,”

yeah, so GPS, defense, driven capability, let's now really be an embrace commercially in every industry around the world, and we all use it as a utility every single day. But, you know, in reality, GPS sucks, it doesn't really work very well, and it's not accurate, sort of 1 to 10 meters, is the best you're going to get, and then, you know, it's completely unsecure, so it's easy to spoof, and you can't actually rely on the data, because you just don't

know whether someone has been playing with that satellite to manipulate you, and that is, you know, a really challenge for autonomous future. You know, you don't want to be driving or not driving an autonomous vehicle, but, you know, it's meters out in its accuracy, you know, that's you, you driving down the wrong way of the freeway. So, so this next generation GPS that's happening right now, company called Zona, which is a Californian business, they've developed a low earth

orbit GPS network, it's centimeter accurate, and it's built from bottom up to be melt-through-grade secure. So this is what our autonomous future requires, autonomous cars, autonomous drones, all of the robots that we're going to be relying on, increasingly humanoid, all of them need that accurate GPS capability. And if you think about, sort of, you know, your waymo is with all these sensors around the, around the car, you can't take those sensors and put them onto a drone, you can't take

those sensors and put them onto a robot, it just doesn't work. We need the GPS to be more reliable, more accurate, and guess what, that's coming right now. So, you know, this is another sort of driver from the constellation play that we're talking about, that's going to start changing our world very quickly. Yeah, GPS kind of pissed me off the other day, because it misclubbed me on my golf app that I have that gives me my yardages on GPS and had me about 10, 10 yards too long, and I underclubbed

it's the small things, right? All right, so I don't want to take us off of talking about the other

“things for a second, but there's one kind of idea that I just want to clean up. So, you mentioned”

a low earth orbit, maybe just just for purposes of understanding for an audience that may not get like, how does it, how do these satellites work in orbit? Like, low earth, or low earth orbit versus higher, what's the difference? Like, why would one be, how does all that kind of work? There's three orbits, low earth orbit, um, is, um, where most of the new satellites are being built in. So, this is where, um, digital space station is, um, located, and this is where all of the

eyesight satellites are all of the, uh, satellites that, uh, starlink uses. Um, so they are the nearest

to earth, so they're able to, uh, you know, communicate better and provide, uh, better visibility,

um, it's cheaper to get the, uh, satellites into that, the nearest bottom of the earth. They're all traveling around our planet around 17,500 miles per hour, so, uh, you need a lot of them to provide

“a coverage, and this is the reason why you've got, um, you know, starlink there with, uh, with more”

than 10,000 satellites, but each satellite provides a sort of global coverage. So, you can actually get sort of hourly revisit, dinner hourly, daily revisit, with, uh, with the satellite constellation for about 18 satellites, because all of those satellites are constantly, um, uh, traveling around the world, and this is why it's such an exciting, uh, area to invest into, because you're immediately getting a global product, uh, as soon as you build your initial, uh, constellation. So,

satellite will work a little bit. You've then got middle of a orbit, me, uh, uh, a meow as they call it, which is where most of the, uh, GPS satellites are our base. It's higher up. It means you don't have to have as many satellites to provide that same level of service. Um, but, um, you pay the price for that. That's the reason why, um, the GPS is not so accurate, because it's so much further away

“that, um, uh, this is the reason for the sort of accuracy, um, uh, uh, uh, issues. And then finally,”

you've got geostationary orbit. So, you've got a, uh, communication satellite in the sits above New York, and, um, as the world turns, it's in the perfect position. So that, as the world turns, it stays above New York the entire time. So that's really where all of your traditional satellite for communications have been. And this is really this sort of, was, historically, you know, the most valuable, um, assets within the space environment, because, uh, you know,

there's only so much real estate of these particular places above these particular cities and countries, and, uh, all of that's being carved up by, uh, regulation and, um, and, um, spectrum. So this is why, um, this sort of new market, which is really where all the groceries are really where we are, mostly focused as an investor, is in the lower Earth orbit. That's really where all the new space activities underway. I want to see one more table setting question before we get back to a new

tech, which is, how does the politics of all this work? Like, like, is there a satellite traffic control, like, how do, if I want to send, I'm a, I'm a startup company, and I come up with my 18 satellites that are going to give world coverage for whatever functionality I want to deliver, how do, how do I determine, like, I guess who even is the, is it NASA? Is there a, is there a global organization to say, like, this is where I'm going to set them. So they don't run into, you know,

someone else is satellite. How do they, are there, are there satellite traffic accidents? Like, how does, how's all this working up there? So, regulation is sort of challenging in space environment. Where it works really well is in the communications market around this NGO, communication and band around the Earth. This has taken a careful coordination and all of the

countries that participate in that recognize that if they don't wait to the same rules, ultimately

they'll, they'll negatively impact each other. So regulation around spectrum use and how that works within the communication market has worked for 50 years. And it's survived the ups and downs of geopolitics and it largely works beautifully and it's a great blueprint for the future. And everything else is a bit more like the wild west because what it really relates to is, you are, as a satellite operator, you are governed by the laws of the country that launch you.

So if you don't like the rules of that particular country, find one that you, where that you do like, and launch from that country and sidestep all of the rules that you, you would prefer not to

more sort of wild west at the moment. And it's going to take a number of years for the regulators

to sort of coordinate and work. And if you think about sort of closer to home, think about social media and how the regulators have been trying to regulate that, you know, where they're collecting huge information about our personal everything that we do. And you know, regulation has been really

“focused on that for 20 years and I think we could argue that there are still massive holes in that”

regulation and it's not quite yet fit to purpose. I think that this sort of space environment so I'm regulation, you know, is on a similar sort of time scale and trajectory. And you know,

I think so that's got sort of positive some minuses. But what's really happening in the reality

of the world is that all of the commercial players recognise that if they're not good corporate citizens, that they are actually going to ruin their own commercial market opportunity. So what you do see is the market largely behaving as good corporate citizens. And then there are whole range of new technology and that is a real enabler for how this market is working. So we've been investing in the foundational capabilities that really enable the sort of cooperative commercial use of space.

“So let me give you an example. So we've got this amazing company called Leo Labs,”

another Californian business. And what they have is a broad range of ground-based radars. And what these radars do is they look up into space and they can see something the size of a coin from a thousand kilometers away on Earth into space. And that coin is traveling around our planet at 17,500 miles per hour. And there's about 500,000 pieces of debris and satellites in space environment. And what they're doing is they're tracking them in real time so that they can provide a service

to the operators within space. So they can say to them, your satellite is on a collision course with this piece of debris or this other satellite. And you've got, you know, two days to move yourselves and out of where. Or alternatively, those user can actually autonomously ingest that data and autonomously move those satellites so that they are not in any danger. So the way to think about this is effectively these guys have the Google Maps of space. So you know where everything is

so that you can then chart your pathway through all of this space. So now that that data is available, the regulators need it. The satellite operators need it. The insurers need it so that they

can all operate and work in harmony. And guess what? It's created a multi-billion dollar market

opportunity that we're investing into and so many others are. And then from that data set, in the same way of a Google Maps, this giant businesses that you can build on that data set that provides services and capabilities for monitoring the space environment. Yeah, I can see why you're so excited about this. And again, this is why I was so excited to you. It's like you're, you can see all the cottage and I don't mean to be right with cottage. But cottage industries that form up around the general

energy communication, you know, these major functions that we want space tech to provide. And then all the cottage and the damage associated with them of actually managing them. Like, you know, I'm thinking to myself, like, is there eventually like blue collar space work? We're like, I'm up there, you know, oh, hey, I put on my space suit and honey, I'll be back tonight and boom, up I go. And I, you know, tinker with some satellites and I take some trash out and, you know, fix some things

and push a satellite. And I'm being a little, you know, I'm being a little suspicious. But, you know, I'm saying like, is there, is there eventually a time we're like, and I'm assuming when they come, it's more robots and stuff. But like essentially blue collar work that needs to be done up there every day. We're here today. We're already on that pathway. And, you know, just to, sort of, you know, give, give your listeners sort of more of a sort of an interesting view of what's

going on, sort of picking up on your wood cottage there. So, um, if you think about all of the thousands of employees of space ex, um, who I don't know what the average age is, but it's sort of

“in 30s. And I think it's sort of towards the bottom end of the 30s. Yeah, I think, and I think I”

think it's turning into a 338 is what I heard certainly in that range. And, you know, all of them,

um, all of these guys have been through the University of space, space ex. The University of, um,

“of doing things quickly and efficiently, and you're breaking things and trying to make them work.”

And, um, and, um, and, and, you know, using, um, 3D printing and using components from other industries. And, you know, just pulling things together and moving quickly. So, what we're going to see as the next wave of innovation in space is all of these, um, current employees, ex employees. These are not the kind of people that are going to take their money and go and sit on the beach. That's just not what they're going to do. Yeah, they might take two weeks off. But what they're doing during

that two weeks while they're sort of on the beach is they're thinking about all of these things in space that we're, we've only really just started to touch on, you know, we can go a lot deeper. And, hopefully, we will in the call today. And they're lay there on the beach. They're thinking about the money they've got. They're thinking about what's next for me. And then they're thinking, right, well, I'm going to go and do this. And I'm going to finance myself to do it through the

seed round and a round. And then they're going to, uh, you know, prove their businesses to get to a certain stage before they've done start to bring an investor's like me or then finance

the scale up of those businesses. So that is going to now be happening on an incredible industrial

scale. And I've just given the example there of, you know, space x employees. But you can take employees of any industry that have really started to understand the implications of what's going on here. So to sort of go back to the analogy that I was making earlier about space is very similar to AI in that it's a facilitating horizontal capability that impacts every single theme, every single industry. So you've got people who are in the automotive industry, in the oil and gas industry,

in the maritime industry, in the logistics industry. They've got their head around what's going on in the space environment. And then thinking, right, I know exactly what I'm going to do. I'm

going to create a company that provides this capability that builds on that data set that's going

to provide a service that doesn't exist today. That has the potential to provide, you know,

“a billion dollar market time that simply doesn't exist. That's what's happening now in”

industrial scale. I love it. I mean, you know, it's funny. I get a lot of, a lot of the negative comments that I get associated with this podcast is that I'm an enormous AI, just in general, techno optimist. I operate from that viewpoint for two reasons. One, just my personality is that of abundance and optimism in general in just in life. But two, like, I don't, and I've shared this on previous shows, when I do the mental math, I don't see a, I don't see any value coming out

of pessimism or trying to go back to some lullaby version of our world, where we're like, what hunting for our food every day? Like, I think it's hilarious when people are so anti-tech and anti, and I'm like, yeah, but you're, you're, you're complaining about technology on your iPhone connected to your GPS, Wi-Fi, internet that's, you know, tapping into 17 different layers of AI to produce the signal quality that's delivering it to X to tell everyone that technology sucks.

And it's like, I, you know, it's like, I said that's being the mind space. I'm like, I just, you know, I don't know, I can't rationalize that thought. So that all being said, you know, this feels so incredibly positive to me, yet it also feels like so many people dismiss this market. Like the space X happens. It's fun. It's in the news. Maybe people try to buy a couple shares or whatever and either hatey line or you love you line or whatever your take is and okay, and then that kind of

passes and I feel like people just go back to, you know, what, what are we going to be, what are

“we going to mind and asteroids mark? Like, oh, what am I going to take a vacation on the moon?”

And like the answer to that is yes, right? I mean, that's, that's the part that I think is crazy. And, and, and you kind of level said it before, like, this stuff is happening now. Like, this isn't all sci-fi futuristic. Hey, some day we'll have flying cars thing. Like, these are literally things that are happening in this moment that we're sending rockets up right now with these satellites to produce this functionality. So let's, let's go. I want to go,

I feel like you gave us two examples of of new tech, new ideas, new functionality that feel very tangible and rational. What are some of the things that you see coming, even if they're early stage that are like, this is going to change the way we think about how we operate, what we do, you know, like, just maybe just our place in the world. Like, what are some of these? 'Cause I, I really think space on locks, a mindset that, and not to be too woo, woo, but like to your point,

every, every astronaut that goes to space from every country comes back with this more globalized,

“humanized feeling like this really feels like a group of technology that can bring the world”

together eventually. What do you see that's, that's out there that kind of people might not even realize is coming that could change that? Well, you know, the, the big one to go straight to is energy generation in the space environment that is, you know, brought back to Earth. So this is a financial problem, not a technology problem. And SpaceX comes back into the story here because of their new vehicle Starship. So Starship is, they've done 12 test flights. This thing's now

ready for sort of commercial capability. It's 10 times bigger than the Falcon 9 in terms of its capacity. Falcon 9 has been the workhorse for the last decade. This revolutionized the space

“industry already. You're now talking about a vehicle this 10 times bigger. The pricing's not yet”

being set, but the market tends to believe it's going to be about a tenth of the cost of the current market. So 10 times bigger at 10 times less. And SpaceX are saying this is, there's going to be something like 200 of these per year. So what that does is it completely removes the cost barrier of less, of lifting large amounts of equipment into the space environment. So previously, none of the business cases closed because of just the pure cost of lifting massive amounts of

infrastructure into the space environment. So that no longer holds. So it's little more expensive taking stuff into space that it is putting it on a plane or a train or a truck and moving it from

“a to b. So this is the period that we're now in. So there are, in fact, last time I counted,”

there was about 15 companies that are all focused on mother sizing energy from space back to earth. And the vast majority of them take the same approach of to how they return the energy back to earth. And that gave me a lot of confidence that, you know, these are a lot of smart people that are all sort of agreed on how they do that, which is using microwave to actually move that energy from space back down to earth. The University of California, about two years ago,

now put up a satellite. So they prove that they can do this transfer of energy from space back to earth. So the sort of technology, sort of capability proven. Now this is a sort of scale up at exercise. So Mark, I don't mean, I'm sorry, it erupts you, but just on the microwave piece, just to give. So essentially, there would be beaming a direct, what is it they are using heat or what, what I guess what, maybe just so people understand what that means like, it's not a laser beam

or something like that. It's moving it down in effectively, I don't have a pest to describe this. It's sort of microwave ray, which is a frequency, right? That's like, that's okay. And this is the sort of chosen solution rather than doing it with like a laser,

which would ultimately be a giant weapon from space. By using this approach, you can't weaponize it.

So this is purely for the good of earth rather than the bad of earth and it's something that's known and understood. And the big thing that we need to ensure is that anything that's within that beam is not negatively impacted. And this is work to be done when you're doing this at scale and there'd be the regulation that's required around this. But ultimately, what it will end up with is rather than having solar farms as we have today, there'll look like solar farms, but there'll

actually be microwave farms that effectively are just receiving the microwave energy from space. And there'll be areas that are mapped out so that planes and others can be aware of these areas. And ultimately, to provide this safely and securely. This is an area that is now something that is a real potential capability. Governments around the world are recognizing the importance of space,

how space is becoming critical infrastructure. And this is just the sort of next step.

element of the of their own power generation under this control. So I think that this is a space race

“that is that we're at the very beginning of now. And that is ultimately going to be hugely”

beneficial for humanity. Right now, we're still having wars around oil, which is something black that you dig out of the ground. I mean, it sounds like it's medieval that we're still running our global economy on things that we're digging up out of the ground. You know, wow, so this is a solution to that. And I don't see many other alternative solutions. This is a permanent energy supply. What is the capacity of this type of energy generation to actually take over? Like is this something

where if we did this correctly over 25 years with focused effort, we could remove 90% of the

fossil fuel energy generation, like does it have that level of capacity or so I don't have the stats and anyone who does is making them up. But yeah, you know, this is the pathway that we're on. The great thing about spaces, there's lots of it. Yeah. So if you think about competing countries or companies that are setting up, you know, giant effectively solar farms in the space environment,

“you know, this plenty of space for it to go around. So, you know, ultimately, I believe that's”

the pathway that we're on. And, you know, it's one that I'm certainly on as an investor in this area. And, you know, I believe that we're in good shape to really demonstrate that this work suddenly scalable within a relatively short period of time. The price is so big that, you know, this is a race worth going for. Let me, let me carry on down the sort of energy theme, because I think this is fun. So, yeah, you know, nuclear is a great energy supply and

nuclear in space is not new. You know, used in the sort of Apollo missions, but really not developed thereafter. We've invested into a company called Zeno that has taken traditional energy usage of nuclear and they've brought it to the modern day. So, they've effectively created a nuclear power battery, something the size of a microwave that provides a 10-year uninterrupted power source. So, if you think about the impact that that could have or on earth,

it's huge. You know, think about how that would power planes trains cars and boats. Think about how it could power buildings in remote areas. It's a reliable modular power source. But just naturally over time, in the way that sort of technology develops, something that's the size of a microwave today. You know, what's the size of that going to be, you know, intending your time? You know, are we going to, you know, have tiny versions about, you know,

watches or in our mobile phones? You know, that is the pathway that this technology is on. And it's really interesting that we're coming across these opportunities as a space specialist investor. What we're doing is we're saying, right, where does space intersect with other

“frontier technologies? Where does space intersect with quantum? Where does it intersect with nuclear?”

Where does it intersect with blockchain? Where does it intersect with biotech? And then we're hunting the world to find the companies that are the category emerging leaders that are answering that question and then we're putting money into those businesses. And Zeno is one of them. And

it's amazing. You know, this, their first products are in market this year. And in this, within the

next 12 months, you know, this is not something that's futuristic. This is something that's here we're now. I'm so glad you brought that up to, you know, one of my biggest complaints with the entire climate industrial complex is the lack of adoption of nuclear. I mean, it just, this is between, between space space solar, which gets all these great, you know, so I live in New York state and there's a major political issue happening now because of, we have one of the largest

national parks in the entire country and our state in the Adirandex state park. And you have our

have been protected for a century. Now, just being ripped and replaced with these disgusting solar

“farms that then, you know, aren't kept up. And after about five years, they look like, you know,”

something out of a zombie movie and it's disgusting and gross. And, you know, then you have these wind turbines and they're still, you know, I mean, obviously China, but there's still a lot of countries burning coal and I'm like, man, if we could just, if we could just replace wind and coal, just those two, the ecological improvement that we would see around the world, not to mention the scalability of energy would be insane. And, you know, one of the thoughts that I had and I was going to ask you

was like, is there a place? So the argument is always nuclear is amazing except no one wants it in their

backyard, right? No one wants to see too big smoke stacks. I know Jennifer reactors are not nearly as big and as ugly and you can almost kind of hide them inside a building. But is there a place for these reactors in space where now maybe we're getting that energy generation, being able to extract it

“without the idea of like, if a three mile island happened, which we know, you know, no one died and”

whatever, but like, it's happening, you know, 20, 20,000 miles up in space or wherever, you know, we don't have to, it's not as much of a concern like, is that, is that a technology that's coming as well? A big yes to that. So putting nuclear to one side, let's just talk about dirty industries of which there are many that are producing products that we all want and need. But, you know, with every pair of fan snickers that's produced, you know, well, there's a price to pay, you know,

for the, you know, for the, for the world in terms of sort of the climate impact. So we are in an era, and again, we've invested into companies that are already doing this Voyager space systems

at space, manufacturing platforms. What's the first things that are going to start being

lifted into space? Well, it's dirty industries that are polluting our planet so that we can continue to do that and provide the good to the services that we need from these dirty industries. But, they're in an environment that's not harming our precious planet. So there is going to be a sort of tipping point where the regulators will come in and sort of say, hang on, we're not going to build any more of those particular types of plants because we now know it's possible to do that

in a different environment that's not going to hurt our world. And over a period of time, there'll be regulation that will come in and just say, you know, no, you know, you can't build a factory that is, you know, going to provide this level of pollution, you know, move it to space. And we're on a pathway for that happening and it all goes back to what's the cost of getting the equipment up there. And, and, and, and, and, and, and there are an increasing range of alternatives

to rockets to, uh, to think about how we, uh, we start moving that. And that is even before we've moved to a scenario where we could actually start to use resources from the space environment. Right now, what we're talking about and all the things that I've been talking about today

because we're really grounded in the reality of where we are now. And, ultimately,

I'm grounded in the reality of, how do I make money out of this? And, but what, what, um, the near, the medium-term future is that ultimately, you know, you go and dig a patch up the moon and get the soil and put that into a 3D printer and, um, you know, the things that pop out of the other

“end of that are the, you know, the, the, the solar, um, uh, uh, uh, panels that you need to build out,”

you know, the, uh, the giant solar farm. So, we're going to be transitioning to no longer being rely on, on having to lift everything from good old planet Earth. When we get to the next stage of, um, being able to sort of use the resources that are available, um, uh, and, and, and more available than they are on Earth, you know, space is huge and infinite. And, um, at some point, we're going to start being able to sort of leverage, um, those numbers. So, it takes me back to

sort of, you know, the SpaceX thing again, um, you know, about the, the size of the, uh, time, the, uh, that they set for, you know, what's the size of the market? I think it was 266 trillion, I think, was the, uh, the figure that they used for the addressable market. And, and hopefully, uh, you know, from our chat today, you can see actually, you know, is that that crazy, you know, no, it's not because, um, you know, all of these things are, are really high value.

And, um, you know, as you start peeling the onion of the conversation that we're having right now

of money to be made, and they're gay. Yeah, I'm a, I'm a red-blooded venture capitalist,

“and that's what you know, my aim is. But ultimately, there's going to be a huge amount of”

good to humanity that's coming from all of this as well. I think some people, certainly not, the listeners of this show, but I think some people would hear the idea that, like, that kind of capitalism in your voice, and they may be like, oh, wow, I don't trust these people. I'm like, when we get rid of the energy issues, when we're not fighting each other over energy, or resources on the planet, because we can send a rocket up in mine and asteroid, or, you know, uh, or another

planet, or another object that's floating through space, and we don't actually have to fight

each other through our borders. I think capitalism is ultimately the driving force, and to get us

working closer together to get us a stop bombing and killing each other on this planet, and I think that when that turns, and again, I'm an optimist, that it will turn, the expansion here is 266 trillion is, could be a light. I mean, it could be light by a factor of, you know, 10 of a hundred, because when you start thinking about, you know, are there, are there mining operations being sent out to, you know, the moons of certain, you know, of Saturn, or of Jupiter, you know, I know they just

found, I read something, they found some element that's really rare here on some moon of Jupiter, right? Now they're now it's hey, can we put together a robotic operation to go and just get samples, and see what it would look like to, to mine that moon and bring that back. Okay, great. Well,

“you know, I think about that, and I'm like, the, the, and I know this gets a little”

wee wee again, but I just, where my brain goes is like, yes, this stuff is important, it's exciting, it's interesting, especially if you're a nerd, there's a lot of money to be made, but like, there's also all of these ramifications to to our individual societies, as well as our global, and, and then it's like that unlocks everything. Now we're not fighting with each other, and it's just pure, what can we build, how fast, and how far we can go? And to that end, I guess,

we wouldn't be doing, I think I'd be doing the audience a disservice if I didn't ask about like, okay, we've talked near-term reality, you know, you said, I'm most focused on things that let me make money today, which makes complete sense. We've talked a little bit about medium-term stuff, like, what are my kids going to see, right? I got 10 and 12 year old boys, you know, let's say there, I'm 45, you know, like, let's say they're my age, the 30 years from now, like,

I know you're just kind of shaken the crystal ball, but like, what do you see, or what are you hopeful of, is part of their everyday world, or at least something they're experiencing, that may sound crazy to someone sitting here today? Yeah, we know, that's a really hard one,

“so I'm so, but, you know, I think that the pace of technology development is just about to move up”

several years, which is enabled by AI, because we're using machine intelligence to help us to evaluate vast data sets that would be on human capability before, so I think that with the next 10 years we're in this period of very significant technology developments, if you think, back over the last 100 years, about, you know, what, what's been sort of developed, you know, you've got sort of a electricity, you've got the car, you've got sort of the telephone, the television,

and things like Concord, but, you know, apart from the iPhone, what's the big thing in the internet, what's the big thing that's happened and, you know, our recent lifetime, not a lot really, I would say, so I think that we're very much in line for, you know, something as big as the television electricity to come over this time frame, and I can't even begin to articulate to tell you what it is. I don't know, of course I know what they are and I've already invested into them, but, you know,

that is the scale of the, the change that I think is coming, because we're sort of overdue some, you know, world-changing technology development that is going to change the life of every single person on the planet, and because effectively I believe that this is going to be enabled by AI, facilitated by space, you know, I think that there is going to be a sort of snowball

of really incredible things. I think the one that is going to be upon us sooner rather than later

you know, disease, like age, ageing, and, you know, I think that, you know, that is just a sort of

a problem in a box that can be solved, and that will be solved quickly. So, you know, we're, we're probably going to be around with taking pills and watching our children in the next 30 years enjoying some of these new innovations that I'm going to change, I'm going to change all world. So,

“guess that I was a really answered your question, but I think that that's, that's where my mind”

is on this. Yeah, I guess, and I want to be respectful of your time, I'll finish with this, with this question, and take this as far or wherever you want to go, you had mentioned quantum before, and, you know, do you think that, and I know you're tangentially involved in different ways, like, how, just from, from what you've seen in, in your space and looking into the spaces and investor, like, how real is is, is quantum tack to being able to, to take AI, space travel,

energy generation, like it feels like this thing that you hear about, and we hear, you know,

this computer now went from one second of comp, thought to five seconds, and that changes,

it's ability, you know, like, is this, is this just, is it, is there any practical application, is this like a pure unlock when we start to figure out how this technology works, that takes all this to an level we can't even imagine, or like, how does that layer in, because it kind of feels like we had, you know, we had the internet and digital tech, and then we got blockchain, and I know AI's been around, but now it feels like AI's later on top of blockchain, and then,

like, quantum feels like that next level of almost unimaginable tech that, that is coming, but not sure how tangible it is yet. Yeah, you know, it's supporters, and, you know, there are a lot of companies out there now, I have value didn't tens and hundreds of billions of dollars that are sort of at the forefront of this area, governments around the world are put in very significant monies in to make sure that they're sort of early in being able to sort of

“leverage the powerful compute capability. So I think where we're going to start seeing it first is”

around sort of cyber security, you know, this is one of the things that's sort of unraveling our world, you know, the threats around cyber security, and, you know, just the huge negative impacts around that, you know, we've all moved our entire worlds digitally, our bank accounts, all of our passwords, you know, everything that we're doing on a sort of daily basis and how our lives are sort of structured, you know, is a threat because of cyber security. So I think this sort of

first practical thing that we're going to see as a real benefit of quantum is around addressing

this cyber security issue. That's really where I see most value, most immediate impact, and most of the sort of focus about, you know, where this can be used. And then, and then really the sort of next stage, really, is about just super powering AI. So that the sort of capability of it goes, you know, weight weight beyond, you know, an equivalent of, you know, human AI capability. And it's what the unlock is. And if we are able to put AI onto steroids,

you know, what, what does that enable? And, you know, I don't think we're that long away from that. And it feels that all of these technologies are converging at the same time. You've got quantum,

“you've got AI, you've got space. And, you know, I think in particular, those three elements as you”

bring them together, that's where there's going to be the new class of the, of the pick things to happen next. So incredibly exciting. I know there was a portion of my audience that was hoping you were going to say like quantum wormholes, so we could like jump to Alpha Centauri. But, but no, I appreciate that a lot. No, Mark, this has been phenomenal. I mean, this sector is so incredibly intriguing to me. I don't, not a scientist nor am I particularly well invested in the space

other than picking up a few shares of SpaceX, but my follow up pretty closely and just it's so exciting to think about what could come out of this. And, and why I was so happy to have you on the show and have this conversation is hopefully what it did was open people's eyes to the reality to the tangible like this is at your fingertips. This is things that aren't just, you know, 30 years ago or, you know, some sci-fi movie, hey, you know, maybe this will happen. Like this

on like gangbusters. And I appreciate it. I appreciate you taking this time. I know there's going to be

people who want to get deeper into your world or more about your fun. Where do they do that? And how

“do they follow along? Do you create content in places that could be good for them to follow along?”

We're available on syropham.vc and we produce a lot of thought leadership and publications talking about the investment side of the global space market. We run a range of funds from public funds and ETFs through to a private funds on venture and accelerators around the world. So, you know, we've invested into more space companies than any other investor in the world.

We launched the world's first space fund. So, yeah, we're a good source of

of what's going on in space. We've got newsletters that people are welcome to sign up to. And, you know, that should give everyone sort of, you know, another layer of information about

“what's going on. You know, one hour conversation here, you know, I think we've managed to peel”

one layer on the onion and there's another 20 layers to go. So, you know, this is what's great about space. It's why, you know, I love the market that, you know, I'm operating in. It's the reason why I join and what class like this to sort of spread the word I'm an evangelist. I want people to understand what's going on because it's huge and people should be aware of it and and it's all around us right now. The world has already changed and people just need to catch

up as to where we're at. Space X has been a brilliant first space company to capture the world's

imagination of what's going on. Elon is fantastic and keeps, you know, pushing it, you know, talking about Mars and, you know, millions of people and how how the world's changing. I'm sort of the more sober sort of opposite, which is I'm trying to say, yeah, space X is fantastic. But look at the other 80% get your head around. All of the other space Xs that are being created during the course of the stack aid and where are they going to take us next? And, yeah, this is

why it's such a such an interesting area to talk about. I appreciate you. I appreciate the year out there evangelizing because I'm with you. I'm a techno optimist. It's a big part of what

“we talk about in this show. And I think it's important that more people here positive messages”

about the technology that's coming in the people that are building it. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate you. This has been phenomenal.