Limitless: An AI Podcast - The Next Era of Space: Every Player You Need To Know

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

Let's explore the dynamic space industry, highlighting NASA's $20 billion Moon settlement investment, SpaceX's $1.75 trillion IPO, and Amazon's $11.6 billion Global Star acquisition. We discuss NASA's successful Artemis 2 mission, rising private players like Rocket Lab, and innovations in lunar infrastructure and satellite imagery.------🌌 LIMITLESS HQ ⬇️NEWSLETTER:    https://limitlessft.substack.com/FOLLOW ON X:   https://x.com/LimitlessFTSPOTIFY:             https://open.spotify.com/show/5oV29YUL8AzzwXkxEXlRMQAPPLE:                 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/limitless-podcast/id1813210890RSS FEED:           https://limitlessft.substack.com/------TIMESTAMPS0:00 Space Industry Breakthroughs1:52 Comparing NASA and SpaceX2:51 The Space Economy's Growth7:40 Amazon's Strategic Moves11:55 Lunar Infrastructure Opportunities14:50 Satellite Imagery16:05 Future of Space Investments19:38 Recap and Future Outlook------RESOURCESJosh: https://x.com/JoshKaleEjaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213------Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Three weeks ago, NASA committed $20 billion to putting a human settlement on the moon. Then two weeks ago, SpaceX saw for the largest IPO ever, valuing them at $1.75 trillion. And then just last week, we sent humans around the moon for the first time in 53 years, traveling 250,000 miles away from Earth, just massive. And then this morning, Amazon acquired Global Star for $11.6 billion, and on Friday, Blue Origin is sending their third orbital rocket into space. That's five events in three weeks, and the industry for space is coalescing and mobilizing at a rate that we've never seen before.

And for the first time ever, you can participate by investing in these companies. On this episode, we're going to explain the massive thesis around space and why it's the new investment opportunity that's coming right after AI at an opportune time. We're going to walk through all the different companies, all the different sectors, and exactly which companies are the most opportune for you to get involved in. Space has a huge opportunity right now. It feels like the first time in history in which, we have the technology now to actually make meaningful progress in space and generate actual value.

And what happened just recently is the Artemis II kind of kicked this off and it made it seem possible. Artemis II was a wild success, 10-day mission, 700,000 total miles. They took humans the furthest they've ever gone. They took them the fastest they've ever gone. They captured unbelievable photos along the way, like the one we're looking at on screen, which is a moon eclipsing the sun, which is something we don't get to see very often. And it was just this really unbelievable mission. They recovered them in a dingy in the middle of the ocean. And I guess maybe if we show this photo, that is a testament to the beginning and the end of this new phase of space. Because, I mean, NASA's been around forever.

The last time they put humans on the moon or the last time they went to the moon was over 50 years ago. None of us were born yet. And the way that they recovered these are these astronauts. It's just in a dinghy. It looks a little old. This is the end of the NASA era. This is the beginning of the private industry era, where now NASA is going to be funding future missions to the moon and beyond through these private entities. And for those curious why,

the numbers are a bit staggering. SLS, the space launch system that NASA has, costs about $4.1 billion for this launch. It's totally expendable. Every piece is thrown away. And it takes a very long time for them to build these things. Whereas SpaceX, on the other hand, a Falcon 9 launch costs $67 million, which is 30 to up to 60 times cheaper than what it costs NASA to do these things. And when you compare these two, we have to give a lot of credit to NASA for getting us here. for having this mission actually work successfully, for getting the astronauts home safe, for collecting all the data.

But it is now time to hand over the ramps to these private companies that are building unbelievable technology to do this at a far cheaper cost. I mean, Falcon 9 is $2,700 per kilogram. Starship is going to get that down to $10 to $70, so it's going to be a lot cheaper, a lot more efficient,

and this unlocks a ton of opportunities in the market that we're going to get into. Yeah, I mean, during the space shuttle era, to transport like a kilogram was well over $50,000, and SpaceX has reduced that by 500 times, which is just insane. When I look at the space economy for last year, it was valued at around $626 billion,

and it's projected to hit around $1.2 trillion by 2032. I actually think that's massively understated because we have one of the biggest IPOs ever, supposedly coming this year. SpaceX filed a confidential IPO filing with the SEC, I think two weeks ago and valued it at $1.75 trillion, which will be the largest IPO that we've ever seen. Now, looking at the market, it typically means that this IPO will happen sometime in June. For some reason, people on Polly Market don't believe that that's

going to happen too soon. I think technically it is. Elon's made some very strategic moves recently to make this happen. SpaceX has merged with X and XAI, XAI, XAI is merged within X. So there's a lot moves that make this a necessity at this point. He needs the capital. He's raising around $75 billion during this IPO to be able to fund a bunch of these launches going forward. He mentioned at one point recently that in an ideal world within the next five to 10 years, there's a space launch every 10 minutes, which is an almost impossible fee to achieve given the context of infrastructure and investment that we need to have right now. Yeah. And at that launch cadence, it's important to understand that this is a huge change from what we have. Because currently, in the first half of 2020,

it was a launch every 28 hours, which is a lot. Don't give me wrong, that's a lot, but it is a far cry from the launch per every hour or two. But this is happening. And this is the year in which a lot of the attention is going to shift into space. And this is a year where in which there's a ton of opportunities, both publicly and privately through this IPO, through the success of Starship, through the success of the Artemis Mission. So we're going to unpack that opportunity right here using this really cool artifact that we generated through perplexity. which we'll actually link in the description below. You can click through and engage with it yourself. But it's this really nice interactive portfolio that we're going to use to walk through the opportunity in space based on every category that there is. So we have launch providers, we have the satellite providers, we have lunar infrastructure, and it's very fitting because just today there was a huge acquisition in this space already. So the market is hot. And let's get into the first segment, which is launch providers, because I think this is probably the most noteworthy one, starting with Rocket Lab. If you haven't heard of Rocket Lab, you should hear about Rocket Lab,

They're a pretty interesting company, you guys. You want to walk us through? Yeah. So if you've heard of SpaceX, which, unless you've been living on the Rock, you definitely have, you might think that $1.75 trillion is a little over the price tag that you're willing to pay. There are other options for launch providers, and Rocket Lab is the major number two, basically. It's valued around $40 billion in market cap, and it is the second most active launch provider globally. They've launched around 85 missions, and they've signed contracts worth, I think, there's a backlog of around 2.2.2. billion dollars, or maybe it's like 1.8, it's something in the billions of dollars, and they use, or are developing their reusable rocket. Now, it's important to mention now that their latest reusable rocket, I believe it's called Neutron, has been delayed for over a year at this point,

but that's pretty common amongst a lot of these space launch companies, and Rocket Lab is currently at the frontier. And if you look at their stock price here, it's currently sitting at around $73. It IPOed in 2020 at, I believe, $10. So we've already got a 7x here. And a lot of eyes are now focused on Rocket Lab because they think that SpaceX valuation might be a little overblown and they're trying to do a lot more things. Rocket Lab in context is focused or hyper-focused on building out reusable rockets and being part of the highway into space. Right now, SpaceX has the monopoly of this, but companies like Rocket Lab is a viable alternative. Yeah, companies that build these rockets that deliver payload to orbit are the foundational infrastructure layer of the economy.

Without this launch structure, nothing else works. And currently, SpaceX dominates 90% of this, but the market is expanding and the real competitors are actually scaling up. So we have Rocket Lab. We have another company that you may not have heard of called Firefly Aerospace. And the third, which is the most interesting and unfortunately the private one currently is Blue Origin. Now, for those that aren't familiar, this is Jeff Bezos's company. He left Amazon, started working on this as a passion project and they work fairly closely with Amazon. Now, Amazon is in the news today because it acquired one of the companies we're about to talk about, but I think Blue Origin is one to watch because they have access to not only the infrastructure

through Amazon, but also money bags Bezos. And they are actually the second farthest along when it comes to these kind of larger spacecraft that can deliver more payload to orbit with their new Glenn rocket. So Blue Origin, very excited about them. I'm starting to think that the private market is just almost worse than the public market. Like, you have a better investment opportunity investing in some of these public market stocks. Like, look at Blue Origin. Like, its market cap is estimated to be between $50 to $100 billion. That's already like multiples more than Rocket Lab, who has live testing rockets and launching. Now, granted, Blue Origin has done the same thing,

but, you know, track rocket has to account for something here. But I want to get into the acquisition that you just mentioned. So this morning, Amazon announced that they are acquiring a company called Global Star, which is basically going to be launching or helping to launch satellites into lower Earth orbit. Now, if that sounds familiar, it's because Elon Musk and SpaceX specifically Starlink is doing exactly that. They're building direct to Earth, satellite broadband. which will allow you to run the internet on any device wherever you are.

So in spotty areas where you're going on a hike or if you're in a country that doesn't get easy access to the internet, you now get seamless access. You could be on a plane. You could stream games, play games, whatever it might be. This is a similar competitor to that. Listen, I got to take a moment aside here to just congratulate and like shill Amazon for a second. They are so much more than an e-commerce company, which so many people kind of attribute them. They're involved in the AI race.

supplying the chips to train some of these top models, they're the main distributor of it, and now they're also a space company as well. It's important to note that this is separate to Jeff Bezos's blue origin. In a way, they're kind of complementary to each other, but Jeff Bezos isn't directly involved in this, at least from the best of my knowledge. Is that right, Josh?

Yeah, well, he's still involved with Amazon. I believe he's still on the board, but I mean, you have to assume this is kind of not as direct as a SpaceX Tesla comparison, but both companies are going to actively work together to solve these problems. And you can see on the chart, it's doing very well. Now, this was not the only news from Amazon today, which the second headline I found even more interesting than the acquisition offer, which was that they made a deal with Apple, which I found interesting. So Amazon has now signed

an agreement with Apple to become the primary satellite provider for iPhone and the Apple Watch, which is notable because it's not SpaceX. They didn't choose SpaceX. Apple customers are, they go on to say Apple customers are already connected out of cell range, and they'll do that with Amazon Leo satellites in the future. So the low Earth orbit satellites that I presume Blue Origin is going to be launching into orbit, they are going to be Global Star satellites and they're going to be powering iPhones and Apple Watches. Now, I understand that they have been working with Global Star currently, where if you are currently out of service, if you point your iPhone at the sky, you're connecting to a globalized satellite. But I also understand that this isn't exclusive and this

is kind of time-based, right? D-Jazz. It's not just Global Star that they're working with. Yeah, and the time base or the timeline is pretty important to note here. It's planned to launch in 2028, this partnership with Apple, which by that time, you're probably going to have millions of Starlink satellites out there, and it wouldn't surprise me if Apple signs a similar deal with Starlink just because the service is better and already there. One thing I was looking into with this Global Star acquisition, because like $11.6 billion is a pretty hefty price to pay. They currently have 24 satellites in orbit, Global Star-specific. Now, they're planning to launch 80 more satellites by the end of year. For context, Starlink has around 10,000 satellites live in orbit right now, and they're scaling, they just got approval to scale to a million satellites over the next year. So the point is, we're talking about

orders of magnitude different scale here, and we already have a provable method via SpaceX to get payloads out there for cheap, and we're going with the next Starship launch very soon. So Blue Origin, Amazon, Leo, we have a bunch of catching up to do here. It's a nice thesis to uphold right now, but the infrastructure expense that they need to overcome right now is pretty massive. For reference, a fully loaded Falcon 9 rocket deploys 24 satellites per launch. Per launch, which is a little interesting in the differences. But back to the companies, there's another one here under the satellite broadband and direct-to-device category, which is AST Space Mobile.

Yes. They're up 3,000% in the last two years, which has been a pretty impressive launch. So there's a lot going on there. I think the next category is among my favorites, which is lunar infrastructure. There's one company here, but it is important to note that NASA just committed

$20 billion to a permanent moon base. So someone's going to have to start collecting those payments. I know SpaceX and Blue Origin are on that list, but there's another company named Intuitive Machines, their ticker is Lunar. which is the first private company to actually land on the moon in February 2024. They did the damn thing, which is pretty cool. So they are clearly one of the frontrunners when it comes to lunar deployment. And I think lunar is going to be really important because, I mean, as Elon stated,

we're going to be building a mass driver. We're going to be putting people on the moon, robots on the moon. We're going to start actually harvesting it for whatever resources, science, information we can get out of it. And I don't know, the lunar industry, it's pretty exciting to me. It's not just fake either. Like if you're wondering whether this company is just kind of like propagandering itself, it's signed a $5 billion contract. And right now it's to build the space communications between Earth and the moon when a settlement is eventually built. But, you know, think about it. Like you're going to need to be able to figure this out. But also Elon has committed to also setting up a moon settlement, probably in cohesion with

NASA on the moon with by, is it by 20? Is that when he wants to build the mass driver? I can't remember some of the timelines inflect. But the point is there are around three concerted efforts or three major companies or initiatives to put humans on the moon. We just flew humans around the moon for the first time in 53 years, so we know that it's feasible.

And the next step will be figuring out whether the moon is habitable, where to put them, maybe it's on the dark side, how to create infrastructure around this to launch things like satellites or harvest moon resources. So all of this is becoming a reality. And the aim is to, I think the consensus is to do this within the next five to 10 years, which is, my opinion, much sooner than I expect,

and we're going to see that reflect in some of the prices of these companies, which are working on the key infrastructure, such as communications, such as intuitive labs, to be able to do this. And there's even more infrastructure on the observation and space data. So there's this funny thing in which you put satellites into space, then just point them back at us. And those high-resolution images actually carry a lot of value for governments, militaries, insurers, commercial clients. There's a whole industry built on satellite imagery. And there's a few frontrunners in the satellite imagery space, particularly planet labs, which is the largest Earth observation satellite fleet.

And they do daily images of the entire landmass of Earth, which serves defense, it serves agriculture, insurance, climate. There's a lot of science, a lot of money, a lot of security that's revolving around having these high quality images. These are the companies that are responsible for it. There's also satellite logic and black sky technology. Those are the big three when it comes to satellite imagery. And this is something that is real recurring revenue today.

They're actively selling products to clients, and they are actually making some money. So this is an interesting category for that reason. I am looking at some of these market caps, Josh, and I'm struggling to understand how random AI startups are worth like 10x more than these companies that are actually building. What I believe is going to be very useful and essential infrastructure to building out a space economy. I think primarily it might be because people don't believe the things. thing is here, that the thing is real. But one of the reasons why we're creating this episode and speaking to you about all of this right now is we believe not only is space a very viable

industry, two, it's going to be gargantuan times or multiples more valuable than the current AI space right now, simply because there are infinite resources and infinite tam to kind of like extrapolate a lot of this. And it enables AI itself. We're going to be launching data centers and satellites into space. Invidia and SpaceX are already working on radiation hardened satellites to be able to pull this off, chips to be able to pull this off. So we know that it's going to become a thing. And three, this is going to happen very soon. Like, we're going to start to see the fruits of the labor over the next probably year to two years. Last year, the space industry was worth around $6.26 billion. It's estimated to be multiples more that, especially after SpaceX IP. So I

want people to be able to keep an eye on some of these companies and track their performance. We should have like a limitless portfolio at this point. Yeah. And it's important to understand a lot of this revolves around the starship program working and getting those highways online. We have rocket lab that's working on it. We have Blue Origin that's working on it. The leader in this pack right now is SpaceX. And the moment they start to get the starships working and they get payload in those ships and they're able to launch them on a regular basis, that creates the highways that enable this infrastructure to get into orbit or beyond and then actually start making money. So that unlocks this entire space race. And I think a lot of the concern that people have is on the idea that we're not

actually going to be getting enough payload to orbit quick enough. And the reality is that might not be true. And the downturn effects of all this payload getting to orbit are remarkable. It unlocks this gigantic industry that people are predicting to grow faster than almost anything on Earth. And even the AI thesis, even the AI play. I mean, data centers and space, man, that's going to be a huge market for anyone who wants to put a satellite on one of these rockets and send it into lower Earth orbit, start training AI data centers. So there's a huge opportunity and there's a few other categories that you can click through and get into if you're interested. Things like what space infrastructure manufacturing are, a legacy aerospace, kind of like Lockheed Martin

and Northrop Grumman. It kind of covers all those categories in this artifact. It'll be linked in the description. But the final thing we should mention maybe is just the ETFs in general. If you don't want to pick a specific stock, perhaps you can choose the basket of them. And I believe that there's a few that are publicly available right now. Yeah. So one of my favorite ETS from this list is the arc space exploration by Kathy Woods, which, by the way, like her fund is just involved in everything from like Web3, Crypto, AI, and space as well. Now, typically when you're investing in space, we covered a lot of companies today. You're probably like, which ones do I allocate to? How much do I allocate to them? These ETFs kind of fix that for you. It's a basket

of all the top companies. Some of these baskets focus on a particular category, whether it's space infrastructure or launch infrastructure, and some just cover all categories in its entirety. It'll cover launch providers, lunar infrastructure, Earth observation, etc. Arc space exploration an ETF covers things like defense systems, rocket labs, communication, stuff like that. And it's one of the most subscribed to invest in ETFs that we have in this list. But there's some others here, right? Yeah, there's a few others. They're noteworthy.

You can go through and click through or you could just take a screenshot of this and just kind of see which ones that you would be most interested in. The final part of this fun little artifact is the portfolio builder, where we can kind of build an emulated portfolio and choose a preset balance in order to kind of guess and estimate what the returns look like. So, for example, with every $10,000 say that you invest in this, you can kind of gauge how much you want to allocate to each industry. And then the projected returns based on the conservative amounts of returns, the kind of

of high targets and the average gains that you could predict based on each industry and the projected gains that investors have been guiding for. I think a lot of this will end up being conservative if it works. If Starship version 3 does get to orbit quickly, if a lot of these other companies like Blue Origin are being able to rapidly reuse these. these rockets. We should see this projected portfolio increase far higher. But again, it's risky. These highways don't exist right now. A lot of rockets are still exploding. There is no proof that this is going to work on the timeline that we hope for. But in the case that it does, this is a

tremendous opportunity. We are re-heading outward. We're building interstellar industry. And I think there is no real market cap on that because of how untapped the potential is. This takes a long time. We're moving atoms instead of bits. Adams are much more challenging, particularly when you're fighting against the atmosphere of Earth. But I think it's a really noteworthy opportunity that you should at least be familiar with and understand. So just to recap, space is having a bit of a moment. In the last three weeks, we've had five major events, including filing for a SpaceX IPO, sending humans around the moon, and all of this for a fraction of the cost that it used to cost 53 years ago. Space is now becoming an investable asset as well. There are a ton of companies that are

publicly invested in, if there are too many for you to kind of comprehend, there are ETFs that you can look at. We're going to link to this public artifact so you can get access to it and you can do your own research as well. But the point is, I don't think it's a coincidence that AI in space are galvanizing at the same time. They're coalescing, they're overlapping. There's a lot of overlap in the sense that AI data sensors in space will need space shuttles in the same way that satellite and broadband access will also rely on the same types of infrastructure. there are a few companies right now that are privately held that are very popular. You've got SpaceX, you've got Blue Origin, but a lot of public companies as well that are building out this essential infrastructure,

not just for launch shuttles, but also for communication and many other points. The point is, we think that this industry will be worth well north of $626 billion, which is what its total value was last year. And we look forward to seeing this expand. It is a limitless portfolio that doesn't exist yet, but I kind of want to spin up after this episode, Josh. we're going to just have to start our own portfolio, both for private and public industry, because I feel like we're on it. There's one called mesh optical that's really interesting, and all they're doing is just fiber optic cabling for these satellites, for these data centers. And when you really think about the downstream technology required to put these things

into space and make them function at the level that we expect them to, there is just a huge amount of peripheral companies that are going to need to contribute to this. And there's a lot of upside for those that can actually do so in a meaningful way. So space as an industry is really exciting. There's plenty of opportunities in the public markets. There are plenty private. And there's going to be a lot more coming down the line. Now, the question is mostly the timeline. How quick is this actually going to happen? How quick are all of these launch companies that sit at the base layer of this infrastructure going to be able to get mass to orbit rapidly, reusably, and for a very low cost per kilogram? We will see, but we will be monitoring it right here on Limitless every day, as we do

four times a week. So thank you all so much for listening. EJ's any final thoughts before we let the people go today? Yeah, I'm actually curious whether anyone listening to this has thought of a company or knows of a company that we haven't covered right here. One thing that I'm peripherally aware of is there are just so many of these space companies and they're too many to keep track of. So if you've noticed something, let us know. Or if there's an angle or industry that we might be missing out on, that might be complementary to AI or space. Let us know in the comments. We would love to hear from you. Yeah, well, as always, thank you guys so much for watching. And we will see in the next episode. See you guys.