What’s Next for SpaceX?

On April 16, 2021 big news was issued from NASA regarding their future plans for the Artemis Program. Previously, they had announced that by 2024 astronauts are scheduled to land on the lunar surface once again, including the first woman and first person of color.

how does the future of SpaceX tie into any of this? Well, NASA plans to use portions of their budget for Artemis to hire independent contractors that will provide additional equipment and technology. And, this past April, NASA granted SpaceX a whopping $2.9 billion in exchange for the development and use of a lunar lander to be used by the Artemis astronauts.

It’s true that since then Jeff Bezos and his aerospace company Blue Origin have filed a protest and thus NASA’s contract with SpaceX is suspended. Even so, it is likely that the contract will go through eventually and in their modern space race with Blue Origin it could undoubtedly be a big leap forward, and one that could potentially propel SpaceX to domination of the private space industry.

Future Projects Already In Motion

While the lunar lander for Artemis missions could certainly be a large project for SpaceX in the future, by no means is it their most complex or time consuming endeavor. In fact, the lunar lander is only one variant of one of their biggest projects, Starship. Below are some of SpaceX’s largest and potentially most groundbreaking developments, that are either already partially in use or in the testing phase.

Starship

Possibly one of the most well-known future projects for SpaceX is the making of Starship. With development beginning back in 2012, Starship will be an absurdly complicated spacecraft with different variants. SpaceX plans to have the first Starship ready to launch by 2023, and a fleet of them manufactured in the years after. They will all be fairly similar, but some Starships will be designed for Earth to Earth transportation, some for transporting large payloads, a few for landing on the Moon during Artemis missions, and some will serve other purposes.

With many malfunctions during test flights of prototype Starship rockets, the future was not looking bright for the spacecraft. However, on May 5, 2021 Starship prototype SN15 completed the first successful high-altitude flight test, with all systems functioning nominally and a smooth landing. It’s hard to get a good idea of the scale of it from most pictures, but Starship truly is a massive rocket, and one capable of carrying 100 astronauts into orbit, as well as potentially to Mars one day.

Starlink

Starlink is an incredibly ambitious project aimed to provide high-speed and low-latency internet to locations across the globe for a fraction of the price that many older and more established telecommunication companies are offering.

The difference between normal satellite internet and what Starlink hopes to accomplish isn’t too complex at its core.

For the satellite internet we have today, there is one very large satellite circling the globe, about 22,000 miles above the surface of the Earth. However, the internet being provided is limited to coming from just one satellite, and because that satellite is required to be so far from Earth the internet speeds are often slow.
Starlink, on the other hand, will be a connection of much smaller satellites. They will orbit the Earth significantly closer, at about 300-400 miles above the surface. As of June 2021, around 1,500 Starlink satellites are estimated to be in space and operational. SpaceX plans to launch a total of 12,000 satellites by the end of 2025, and then an additional 30,000 in the years afterwards if they are permitted to.

Depiction of a Starlink satellite orbiting the Earth — Image Credit: SpaceX

The process to connect to and use Starlink’s internet is quite simple. You just need to have a small satellite dish, similar to those used for other internet providers only not quite as large.

According to SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell, if Starlink could acquire 25 million users then they would be profiting about $30 billion per year, much more than launching satellites earns them as of now. That money could help to fund the manufacturing of Starship and other future projects such as infrastructure on Mars.

While Starlink sounds great, especially considering its low price, there are some pretty big issues caused by the network of satellites. For starters, they can be pretty bright. Even without a telescope you can see some passing through the night sky if you live in the right area.

Unfortunately, Starlink satellites are most bright around dawn and dusk, which is the time when astronomers are performing critical observations to determine if there are any objects that could potentially collide with Earth. To address this, SpaceX has used a dark paint to coat the brightest part of the satellites, but even then they’re still fairly bright. And, with more satellites being added to the network every month the light pollution can only get worse.

Another problem caused by Starlink is space debris. Even though SpaceX has stated that Starlink satellites have the ability to maneuver to avoid other objects in space, there have already been some that are unable to do so. Highly unlikely as it is, if 42,000 Starlink satellites were orbiting the Earth and some of them experienced malfunctions resulting in immovability, the problem could rapidly get out of control.

If a few satellites were to collide that would only create more space debris that could collide with other satellites, and in a worst case scenario there could end up being so much debris circling the Earth that outer space would be deemed unsafe because of the chances of debris hitting rockets as they exit the atmosphere.

Projects to be Started in the Coming Years

Ambitious as Starship and Starlink are, SpaceX has even greater future plans. In an ideal world, they would use revenue from Starlink to fund their large future plans detailed below.

Space Tourism To the Moon

In addition to likely designing a lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis missions, SpaceX also plans to supply a Starship for the dearMoon project. Funded by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, the dearMoon project aims to bring Maezawa, eight civilians, and likely one or two crew members on a trip to orbit the Moon and then return to Earth.

Applications for astronauts are open to anyone, although Maezawa stated he wanted mainly artists to travel with him. If the project stays on schedule then they will launch in 2023, but recently there have been doubts expressed as to whether or not Starship will be fully ready to carry passengers by then. If the dearMoon mission goes well it would be very likely that other billionaires may be interested in doing some sort of space tourism.

Colonization of Mars

After the development of many Starship rockets, Musk and SpaceX hope to send humans to Mars by 2026, and to have a colony of one million people living there by 2050. By crunching the numbers and thinking practically you can begin to realize that it’s unlikely such a large number of people will have a home on a planet 34 million miles away at its closest in less than thirty years.

However, it is still very much possible that SpaceX is able to transport a decent amount of people to Mars, and more importantly provide the infrastructure and life support systems needed to maintain a colony on the red planet. Musk himself has said that SpaceX aims to launch three Starships per day to bring people and supplies to Mars.

Rendering of what a Martian settlement could look like in the future — Image Credit: SpaceX

If SpaceX were to launch three Starships every day that would be a true feat of both engineering and manufacturing prowess. After all, they may be reusable but if they’re traveling all the way to Mars there would need to be thousands to sustain that flow of necessary supplies.

In addition, SpaceX would have to actually build a habitat for Martian colonists, whether that’s underground to protect from radiation or a series of cylindrical and dome-like structures to ensure the inside pressure stays at a good level.

Once the colony gets more established it will hopefully grow to be more and more self-sufficient, but until then there’s still lots of work to be done

Is this the End of Stock and Crypto Market? Why did Terra-Luna Fall?

Stock Markets have been Crushed. And Cryptos are falling even harder. Before you get swayed by all the negative sentiments, here is an important story that you need to read.

Like several asset classes, Crypto too is an asset class. To add to this, it is a new asset class, so the volatility is inherently higher. Which is absolutely normal if you compare it with initial period of stock market.

2] Recently, Terra-Luna, which is a Crypto asset, got crushed by 97%. And, people seem to be losing faith without understanding the context of the problem. So here is a super simplified version.

3] In the ecosystem of Cryptocurrencies & Blockchain, Terra-Luna is: – An Ecosystem. That comprises of a blockchain, native token. – And, it is pegged to the TerraUSD or UST (which is an algorithmic stable-coin)

4] Just a quick explainer on Stable-coins:

You see Cryptos are volatile. For example, if you use one of the most trusted Cryptos (Bitcoin), it can change in value quite rapidly.

Using Stable-Coins (Eg. USDT, USDC, UST), they can change their Bitcoin to a Stable-Coin.

This is similar to you changing your “US Dollar” to a Gold ETF (if you believe that gold is more stable than USD) But, not all Stable-Coins are the same: USDT, USDC function like gold. These are non-algo driven Stable-coins.

To issue 1 USDT, technically the firm issuing that USDT/USDC needs to put one pegged asset as a reserve. A pegged asset could be anything: gold, bitcoin, USD etc. USDT & USDC two biggest Stablecoins are US Dollar pegged.

Another category of stablecoins are called Algorithmic stablecoins. In simple words, they don’t depend on manual actions of buying an underlying peg. But, are rather driven by a smart contract (a computer code– to buy/sell the peg).

4] So back to Terra-Luna: – The Terra-Luna ecosystem is pegged to UST (which is an algorithmic stable coins). – A point to be noted that Algorithmic stable projects have not usually succeeded in the past (eg. Titan and Iron Finance).

Why is Terra – Luna Falling ?

5] The way Terra-Luna ecosystem works is this:

a. In the Terra-Luna ecosystem the goal is to maintain a peg between Luna and UST (1:1 peg).

b. The smart contract essentially tracks supply and demand of UST and LUNA.

c. If price of UST > 1$, people can sell Luna to the Blockchain (Terra). This is then converted to UST. Since the supply rises, the prices falls.

d. If UST decreases in price, UST holders are offered to convert their UST into LUNA coins. And the prices go up.

e. But if a situation arises where no one wants to exchange Luna or UST, then it becomes a problem. f. This can happen for a wide range of reasons [eg. sudden price fall of UST or Luna; arbitrage opportunities etc].

On 9th May, UST fell to $0.68. This was triggered due to market sell off in Cryptos. At this stage, the investors neither wanted Luna or UST. The peg arbitrage further worsened the problem.

6] Now the folks managing Terra-Luna is trying to build back up the investor confidence by re-pegging it to alternate assets (Eg. Bitcoin), but seem to be losing the race.

7] The major problem now is that the winning advantage for Terra-Luna was that it was winning in the algo driven Stablecoin ecosystem. But, given the fact this model has somewhat failed (and given previous failures of algo stablecoins, the investors are going to be skeptical.

8] Does this mean that the entire Crypto ecosystem has failed? The answer is no. The likely outcome is that: Stablecoins now are likely to be more regulated. And, this is not bad.

9] In short if you are an investor, you should do your due-diligence before investing. The rules remain simple: a. Invest, if you truly see fundamental value on a project. b. And, be diversified within and across asset classes.

USD vs BITCOIN ? Which is Better?

Starting with history of why Bitcoin ( cryptocurrency) we’re created, Bitcoin was created with a view that FIAT currencies should be replaced by one currency which universally accepted.

When we compare this concept with actual FIAT currency ( USD), we can see that Bitcoin solves many problems we are having with USD.

Firstly SUPPLY

SO, supply is printing of notes which wholly in control of central bank of the country or the government. Government or central bank prints currency as per their convinience to stabilisation inflation or deflation. Hence, the supply of currency can be unlimited. However in BITCOIN supply is limited. This eliminates the power to increase or decrease supply hence your currency wont be depreciated.

Second is DEFI

DEFI is decentralised financing. This is basically related to blockchain technology. In layman’s term, whenever you transact through bank account there is a centralised ledger kept for records by banks known as BANK STATEMENT, in case of BITCOIN, the ledger or records are distributed so no one watch or record the transaction which has significant impact on INCOME TAX LAWS. ( this will be discussed later in next blog)

Third is Denominations,

USD is available in notes as well as coins which can be used. Lly, in case of BITCOIN it is divisible up to 8th decimal.

There are many other differences as well but they are insignificant while you are looking for an investment in crypto.

How Crypto is helping terrorism?

To understand how crypto is helping terrorism or illegal activities first you need to know what a blockchain is.

BLOCKCHAIN

So, Crypto functions on blockchain technology. In layman’s language Blockchain is chain of computers or servers (Blocks) which routes your transaction through it so that no one can find out the root of transaction.

Also, as in banks there are ledgers of every customer which is BANK STATEMENT, which shows details of all transaction. However in crypto currencies, due to blockchain, the ledger is distributed. No centralised system is there to record these transaction.

How it is helping terrorism?

Due to this, illegal transaction including money laundering, Hawala, foreign transfers, etc. are increasing day by day as no one can trace the root of transactions. This is benefitting terrorist activities as they are receiving money from the masterminds and these masterminds are untraceable.

Stay tuned for more facts related to Crypto..

Why Countries might BAN Crypto Currencies?

Everyone of us have heard about Crypto Currency or BITCOIN as an investment alternative or a digital currency.

But it has been seen as a threat to FIAT CURRENCY ( EXAMPLE OF FIAT CURRENCY IS US DOLLAR). As number of investors in Crypto Currencies are increasing day by day, Governments are getting more worried.

WHY GOVERNMENT THINKS CRYPTO IS A THREAT?

One of the power of CENTRAL BANK or Government is they can control supply of currency that is US DOLLAR. To control Inflation or to overcome deflation ( Inflation and Deflation is altogether a wider area for discussion) Government prints currency’s accordingly

However, if the world adopts BITCOIN as FIAT Currency, it will replace USD eventually. And government won’t be able to control the supply anymore. Which is a very big reason for Government to BAN crypto currencies.

As it might increase the GAP between Rich and Poor.

A detailed analysis of impact of Crypto on Inflation will be in next blog.