Deep Dive: The Future of Space
How do rockets work and why are we launching so many of them into space? What are the legacy and emerging business models being built around space? What will the future space economy look like?
Every few weeks, we see a new video of Elon Musk launching a Falcon 9 or Starship rocket into space and landing it back on Earth ready to be used again. But have you ever stopped and wondered how a rocket even works? Or what is driving us to launch so many of them into orbit?
This month’s deep dive aims to provide a common foundation on the new space economy. We have tried to break down every aspect of space, from the basic physics of how and why rockets enter orbit, to the legacy and emerging business models being built around space, to the evolving plans for lunar and deep space exploration.
You can read this today using the attached PDF, along with a companion podcast with introduces the deep dive, both of which are available to our paid subscribers at the end of this post.
Separately, in putting together this deep dive
, I came away optimistic for America and the future of technological progress. Like many, I watched documentaries of the moon landings and longed for us to return. So when I learned of NASA’s plans to return humans to the moon, I became excited about the prospect of a new lunar economy.
Landing on the moon again for the first time in 50 years will inspire a whole new generation of entrepreneurs and technologists to solve difficult and non-obvious technological problems.
In future months, I will publish deep dives into other sectors of the economy that I think are important for understanding the world today. These fall into five themes:
Deep Tech
Energy Transition
Healthcare & Life Sciences
Economic Analysis
Socio-Political Trends
If enough people care about this and continue to subscribe, not only can we invest to hire more researchers, we will also look to you, our subscribers, to influence what we research and read out to everyone in the future.
I hope you enjoy reading this and let us know how we can improve.
You can access our deep dive into the Future of Space here: