Key Takeaways

• SpaceX completed a successful launch of the most powerful rocket in the world, the Falcon Heavy.
• It’s just the latest successful launch for the rocket, which is expected to help land NASA astronauts on the Moon and potentially even send humans to Mars.
• SpaceX recently completed a further venture capital raise, valuing the company at $127 billion.
• Regular investors aren’t likely to be able to get in with SpaceX, but there are other ways to gain exposure to the private space sector and other cutting edge tech investments.

In all the hoopla surrounding Elon Musk’s privatization of Twitter, the sacked executives and the blue check mark commotion, it can be easy to forget that he also has a number of other side projects on the go.

If you can call aiming to colonize Mars a side project.

Elon Musk is surely the most prolific Founder and CEO of this generation and potentially, of all time. He’s currently the Founder and/or CEO of Tesla, Twitter, Neuralink, The Boring Company, OpenAI and SpaceX.

It’s kind of incredible that launching rockets into space blends in with the rest of his accomplishments, but here we are. SpaceX has now been around for a surprisingly long time. It first started back in 2002 and the aim even back then was to eventually develop technology that would enable the colonization of Mars.

Musk has spoken at length about the importance of the human race becoming a ‘multi-planetary’ species. This issue has come to the forefront in recent years with climate change causing concern for what Earth may look like in the future.

As you’d expect, progress in the space exploration sector is slow, but SpaceX has essentially created the private space industry, which is now seeing multiple new entrants including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

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The latest SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch was a success

This week SpaceX launched their Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket in the world, for the first time in three years. Through a combination of technical problems and lack of demand for their ‘courier services’ during the pandemic years, it’s been a long time between drinks.

SpaceX operates the rockets on behalf of many other organizations looking to access space. Their clients are wide ranging and include NASA, as well as the space programs from other nations and even wealthy private individuals.

This latest flight carried satellites on behalf of the US military and as you might expect with a client like that, further details are somewhat hard to come by.

The Falcon Heavy is still relatively new, with this being only the fourth launch since its first one back in 2018. That turned out to be quite the event, with Elon Musk launching his personal Tesla Roadster into space as a test payload. It’s still out there, taking a long trip around the Sun and towards Mars.

There were two further launches in 2019, with one of these missions another satellite delivery for the US Department of Defense and the other the launch of a large TV and phone satellite for Saudi Arabian headquartered Arabsat.

That doesn’t mean that the SpaceX engineers have been sitting around drinking coffee since then. The Falcon Heavy is only required for larger payloads due to its enormous level of power. Because of that, the smaller Falcon 9 rocket is used much more frequently, having conducted almost 50 launches so far in 2022.

One of the defining features of the SpaceX rockets is their ability to land back on Earth. Previously, rockets were ditched into the ocean rendering them useless for future missions. By creating the technology to have them land back safely on the ground, SpaceX are able to re-use vital components which aims to bring the overall cost down.

It’s considered a vital piece of the puzzle for making future space travel viable and their competitors are following suit.

SpaceX’s upcoming missions

After the long break from using the Falcon Heavy, there are a number of exciting missions in the near future.

In 2023 the company is expecting to launch the world’s first private lunar mission, called dearMoon. The project is being funded by Japanese billionaire Yusaka Maezawa and will involve a fly-by of the moon with Maezawa and six to eight other civilians on board.

The purpose of the flight has been stated as an art project, with Maezawa hoping that the experience of space will inspire creativity, with the subsequent art works to be exhibited back on Earth to promote world peace.

These billionaires don’t think small do they.

The Falcon Heavy is also part of the grander plan for landing humans and cargo on the Moon and, eventually, on Mars. SpaceX have been developing their own spacecraft, Starship, to work in conjunction with the Falcon Heavy rockets, which will help NASA complete their first manned mission to the Moon since 1972.

For SpaceX, the Starship project is also the craft that they believe will be able to eventually be used to go to Mars.

Can you invest in SpaceX?

SpaceX is a fully private company, just as Twitter now is. That means that for regular investors, getting a piece of the SpaceX pie is likely to be impossible unless you’re on first name terms with Elon himself.

But it’s not surprising that many investors want in. SpaceX is now the largest venture capital backed private company in the world, with the latest round of funding putting it at a valuation in the region of $127 billion.

To put that into context, that makes it more valuable than companies such as Goldman Sachs, Intel, Unilever, American Express, Starbucks and BP.

That’s not to say you can’t invest into the private space sector at all. There are a number of players in the space (pun intended) that are listed on public markets, which means investors can buy into the industry.

However, it’s a high risk game. As you’d expect, space exploration requires enormous levels of startup capital and the potential for things to go horribly wrong are very, very high.

Some examples are private space company Momentus (MNTS) which has seen its stock plummet almost 90% over the past 12 months, Astra Space (ASTR) which is down 93.95% in the last year and even Richard Branson’s spinoff Virgin Galactic (SPCE) is down over 75% over the same period.

All of these went public via SPACs and it hasn’t been a good ride for investors since.

There are other ways to gain access to the space sector without betting on high risk startups. Many of the world’s major aircraft manufacturers are heavily involved in the sector. Boeing (BOE) helped send the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon and they’re still working on rockets for NASA today.

Boeing is currently building the Space Launch System for NASA, which will work alongside SpaceX technology to send humans back to the moon. They also built the Starliner capsule which transports people to and from the International Space Station.

As well as their own projects, Boeing has a joint project with another publicly traded company, Lockheed Martin (LMT) to provide launch vehicles to Blue Origin, NASA and others.

Invest in cutting edge technology

Private space exploration is an emerging sector that is likely to continue to grow in coming years, but it remains high risk. With high risk comes the potential for high returns, but it’s more important than ever to ensure investors have enough diversification to weather the almost certain volatility.

When it comes to the use of technology, we employ it heavily in creating our Investment Kits, using the power of AI and machine learning to predict returns across a huge range of different assets.

For tech focused investors, we’ve packaged this into our Emerging Tech Kit, which invests across four main verticals within the tech sector. These are large cap tech companies, new and growing tech companies, tech etfs and even cryptocurrencies via public trusts.

Every week our AI analyzes massive swathes of data and predicts how each of these verticals are going to perform each week, as well as which holdings within each vertical are expected to perform the best on a risk adjusted basis.

It then automatically rebalances the portfolio based on the best expected risk-adjusted returns and repeats this process every week.

Not only that, but we also offer Portfolio Protection with the Emerging Tech Kit. This utilizes our AI by assessing your portfolio’s sensitivity to risks such as interest rate risk, oil risk and overall market risk and then automatically implementing hedging strategies to counteract them.

It’s like having a personal hedge fund manager in your pocket.

Download Q.ai today for access to AI-powered investment strategies. When you deposit $100, we’ll add an additional $100 to your account.

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