Originally published 16 March 2021.

Being a child in the 1960s was Utterly Brilliant. It was all so exciting – because we all knew we were going to space. The theme music from “Apollo” still resonates. Late at night peering at the Moon, and my father waking me up to watch the landing. My bedroom full of books about space, walls decorated with cut-aways of rockets. Like every child, I knew the “Thunderbirds” pilots were named after the first five American astronauts; Scott (Carpenter), Virgil (Grissom), John (Glen), Gordon (Cooper) and Alan (Shepard). My first action man had a spacesuit (Gemini edition.)

What I didn’t experience was my mother’s terror while I was in my pram and the Cuba crisis meant destruction was 15 minutes’ fight time over the eastern horizon. Or her fears when we decided astronaut training involved jumping out of second-floor windows, or her resignation when dad helped us build an escape tower zip line from the roof to the back garden – and the inevitable and familiar trip to the bone-fixer at the Western General Hospital followed. (Apparently we had season tickets for A&E – where you got a sweetie if you didn’t blub.) The TV assured us our future lay in the stars. We made “Star Trek” communicators from Lego, and we all wanted to be the interceptor pilots from “UFO”.

But hopeful futures in space evaporated in the misery of the 197os. “Star Trek” was replaced by the bleak and ultra-cheap production values of “Blake’s 7”. Apollo missions were cancelled and there was nothing particularly exciting about Skylab. It was difficult to be enthusiastic about space when power cuts meant the TV wouldn’t work. I put away childish things, sort of studied at school… wanted to be a doctor but became an accidental economist instead.

Dad had taught me my way round the stars, and as soon as I could afford one, I bought a decent telescope. But space had changed. It wasn’t about the future; it became a stage set for quasi-Westerns about oppression in “Star Wars”, the humour of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, and the rude comedy of “Red Dwarf”. “Star Trek” films were an embarrassment.  It was hard to get excited about robots trundling round Mars.

I pretty much forgot about space until the Challenger disaster, which struck me as a death-knell for any hopes of a space-based future. I got on with the mundane stuff of building a career, and bringing up kids. Far from scouring the asteroid belt for raw materials, I spent the next 30 years financing very down-to-earth stuff. My son Jack’s primary experience of space was Buzz Lightyear.

But now… things are changing.

Sci-fi is getting more interesting and presents a realistic view of exploiting our solar system for resources. The possibilities of earth orbit – to provide global internet, for survey, and a base for exploration – are limitless. I’d love to finance a space elevator or lithium mining on the moon… but I guess I’ll be retired by then.

Anyone who reads my “Morning Porridge” market commentary will know I’m not a fan of Elon Musk, but I am massively enthusiastic about the possibilities of the space industry – particularly Musk’s SpaceX.  Much like Tesla once was in electric vehicles, SpaceX is way ahead in the launch sector.

Recently the third prototype SpaceX Starship exploded – but only after successfully completing a high-altitude test flight and returning to the launch pad. If you watch the video, it looks like it exploded on launch – but it flew to 1okm, then descended horizontally before flipping upright to hover into a successful landing. From flames around the vessel as it landed, it looked like something was leaking, and eight minutes after it landed it went kaboom, throwing the ship into the air. They will get it right next time, or the time after that…

The SpaceX Starship is truly extraordinary. When fully tested – and I have no doubt it will be super-successful – it will sit atop a Super Heavy Booster, providing capability to launch 10 tonnes into low earth orbit (LEO). Both stages will return to Earth and be reusuable, a technology SpaceX has proved with its Falcon rockets, which have taken crews to the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s and other launch systems are on course to revolutionise the commercialisation of space. Unlike EVs, space really is new technology and it’s a fascinating market to examine in terms of disruptive tech, what does and what doesn’t work, and tech adoption. SpaceX is a much, much more important company than Tesla. The EV maker simply improved existing battery and powertrain technology, dressed it up as disruptive innovation, and went on the make itself, briefly, among the most valuable companies on the planet.

The history of the aerospace industry is instructive. The Wright brothers didn’t hang around long and within a few short years there were hundreds of aviation firms.

What’s curious about space has been its very slow commercialisation. If you compare space with aviation, it’s a very different timeline. In the first 50 years from Orville and Wilbur’s hop on Kitty Hawk beach, the technology advanced quickly to Mach 2 fighters and the initial designs for Concorde. But in the 60 years following the launch of Sputnik, space was about long-planned government programmes that ran out of funding when the TV audience thinned out; Apollo, Moon-shots and plans to go to Mars were killed by bureaucratic inertia and being last on the list of government budget priorities.

Yet space was always monetisable. People talked about communications and space mining. Look at the amounts a few very rich individuals are willing to pay for a seat, or the 600 folk who have paid up for Virgin Galactic tickets? Or what NASA will pay to transport payloads into orbit. Of course, space is also strategic – and the military aren’t enthused about the space they need for their spy satellites being filled with space junk or commercial satellites. 

Musk sees the commercial value in space very clearly. SpaceX is not just him joyriding and planning his eventual departure to Mars. Musk perceives massive value from SpaceX as the launch system for his Starlink system of more than 12,000 LEO satellites providing space-based internet to anywhere on the planet. You can get Starlink now – access the net from anywhere for a mere £500 per annum. The costs will come down.

What SpaceX shows is the commercial reality of space. It is monetisable. It will be worth billions.

Aside from the Starlink system, there are a host of other satellites for survey and navigation planned. The UK small-to-medium sized market will be over $5.5 bn over the next ten years. The UK government has increased the military budget to develop launch capabilities and invested in OneWeb to create our own satellite UK broadband service in the next few years. There is much talk about where the UK’s first spaceport will be based – I fancy Prestwick. 

Last month a new US satellite start-up, Astra, launched not a rocket but a SPAC merger that will value the company at $2.1bn. It hasn’t yet launched a commercial rocket but achieves its massive valuation from the market to launch satellites. There simply isn’t enough launch capacity. Astra plans to scale up its production facilities and be launching rockets by 2025. The valuation on Virgin Orbital – which has launched one rocket from an old converted B-747 – is in excess of $1bn.

I am currently funding a UK rocket company – Astraius. Their plans are far more developed and commercial than either Astra or Virgin. Astraius has rights to commercialise existing US military horizontal launch technology to set up a launch facility based in Scotland.

Rather than fixed ground launches, which restrict the potential orbit, the rocket is launched from the back of a C-17 military transport, meaning satellites can be inserted into any orbit from anywhere in the world. That’s important, as it costs additional fuel to move a satellite into another orbit if launched from the ground. Moreover, Astraius’ tech has been proven over 30 US military launches.

The deal has support from the Scottish government to develop Prestwick as the UK’s first spaceport to marry up satellites to the rockets and put them into the plane. It has the advantage of being close to Glasgow, the centre of Europe’s satellite manufacturing industry. At $45,000 per kilo, the Astraius proposition to put satellites into LEO is among the cheapest. The firm has already lined up commercial and military orders.

Who knows, despite being a Boomer, perhaps we may get commercial space travel in my lifetime, maybe not. But the fact is space is a massive commercial opportunity – and if you believe in disruptive tech, then you should be invested.

The future is out there…