It has been a month since NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover touched down on Mars and a year since COVID-19 struck. Humanity has been battling the pandemic over the last year and we are winning the battle. The price we are paying, however, is very high – not only in the loss of life but even more so in the loss of livelihoods. But, as with most things in life, if we focus on the solution rather than the problem, we find that we can actually discover new and better ways of doing things. Covid-19 has helped us to embrace the power of technology and how to handle a pandemic – all of which will become much more prevalent in an ever-growing world population.
But, while most of us are focused just on staying healthy, some people are living in the entirely different world of space exploration. Some 247 million kilometres from planet Earth, there is another planet, called Mars, on the surface of which NASA has once again landed a spacecraft. For most people this is irrelevant, because we are just trying to survive and be as happy as we can be in the here and now.
But, space may just figure largely in the future of humanity. We only need to look back at our history to understand that if the Chinese, Vikings, Portuguese, Spanish, English and Dutch had not ventured out to discover new worlds, we would all still be on our separate continents, believing that was all there was.
As an investor in the future you have to take notice and get in on the race for space. Mars is still way off but the Moon is back in play. There are many companies and organizations working on advanced plans for colonizing the Moon. They are already building the robots that will mine the surface for helium-3, a very rare gas on Earth but 100 million times more abundant on the Moon. At $1400 per gram, a hundred kilograms would be worth about $140 million and could power a 1000 megawatt electric plant for a year. They are also developing the materials and infrastructure to set up research stations within 15 years from now. The Moon will also provide the storage hub to launch missions to Mars.
So currently we have Space X and Virgin Galactic, with one taking people to the International Space Station and the other taking people on recreational space flights hopefully soon. Blue Origin will also soon join the party. So if you become too depressed about your life on planet Earth due to all the small things that go wrong on a daily basis, just look up at the Moon and even Mars every now and then and start investing in those companies that will take your children or grandchildren there.
