Speaker 1: John. How often do you wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: or I see in the middle of the night and
Speaker 1: think to yourself, oh, God, I was going in the
Speaker 1: public sector. There's something, and I know there is something
Speaker 1: that makes you wish the God that you tried out
Speaker 1: one of those civil service fast track schemes or even
Speaker 1: a slow track scheme, or literally anything at this point,
Speaker 1: because you would have got what would you have got?
Speaker 2: The defined benefit pension, the gold plated pension, not just.
Speaker 1: A defined benefit pension, a public sector defined benefit.
Speaker 2: This is yes, this is the dream. This is the
Speaker 2: financial Holy greal it exists.
Speaker 1: It does. Tell us about it. Tell us about the dream.
Speaker 1: What do you wake up at night thinking, Oh, indexing,
Speaker 1: indexing with no cap.
Speaker 2: Uncapped indexing, the permanent backing of whatever government is in power,
Speaker 2: regardless of the flavor of government in our was it
Speaker 2: can a no investment risk at all. I'd never have
Speaker 2: to bloody we'll think about whether UK stocks were cheap
Speaker 2: or not, or if they were ever going to not
Speaker 2: be cheap anymore. I say, you're right, I'm standing. I'm
Speaker 2: going to wake up thinking about this tonight that I've
Speaker 2: started thing about it.
Speaker 3: This is terrible joking.
Speaker 1: When I said, I thought, you did I do? I
Speaker 1: do wake up at two o'clock, you know, most nights,
Speaker 1: and this is just not an age thing. I wake
Speaker 1: up a two'clock most like thinking, oh God, I wish
Speaker 1: I had a d be just the idea that the
Speaker 1: money would come in every single month when there was inflation,
Speaker 1: it would come a little bigger, a little bigger, little bigger,
Speaker 1: little bigger. You never had to send takes that said
Speaker 1: to yourself, oh God, how do I make that diverse
Speaker 1: portfolio of global equities produce a little more yield to
Speaker 1: keep me up with inflation? Never have to think that
Speaker 1: right now, there is a possibility, is a possibility that
Speaker 1: come the next government, assuming it's a lab government. Although
Speaker 1: interesting me I went to a talk yesterday. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you about another time in which one of the one
Speaker 1: of the speakers suggested that it wasn't the slam dunk
Speaker 1: we all think of it. So that's interesting. But assuming
Speaker 1: that it is a slam dunk and that we are
Speaker 1: going to have a labor government, they are talking about
Speaker 1: reinstating the lifetime allowance on pensions, So most people, and
Speaker 1: that will definitely include you and me, will have a
Speaker 1: cap on the amount of money they can have insider
Speaker 1: pension wrapper tax free.
Speaker 4: But there is one group of people, one group of
Speaker 4: people for whom that will not on current suggestions, one
Speaker 4: group of people for whom that will not be true.
Speaker 1: Who are these lucky people?
Speaker 2: I can't imagine. But is it the public sector to
Speaker 2: find benefit pension receives.
Speaker 1: So a really big deal, this idea that you can
Speaker 1: divide people up and give one group of people very
Speaker 1: very preferential treatment over another when it comes to retirement income.
Speaker 1: It's a big deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's myself, and it would be completely out
Speaker 2: of order. The one reason that my immediate instinct was, Nah,
Speaker 2: there's no way. You can't just turn around and say
Speaker 2: we're going to reimpose the LTA for non public sector workers.
Speaker 2: We're going to carve out the public sector. But the
Speaker 2: problem is that so they're already is a group of
Speaker 2: public sector workers who aren't aren't basically because they were
Speaker 2: so well paid even when the LTA was first introduced.
Speaker 2: So the judges pension is not libel for the lifetime allowance.
Speaker 2: And because the way this works with the public sector
Speaker 2: is that obviously final salary, i'd find benefit pensions came
Speaker 2: is where you get a cetin amount of money each
Speaker 2: year based on your lifetime salary. And the way that
Speaker 2: the tax Office, very broadly speaking works out how much
Speaker 2: that is worth for LTA purposes is multiplying it by twenty.
Speaker 2: Now that already means that actually the public sector workers
Speaker 2: get to earn more before the you know, the company
Speaker 2: of the LTA because in practice twenty is actually very
Speaker 2: low multiple compared to work. They can have private sector
Speaker 2: version would be or the fine contribution version would be.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so the judges already had a carve out
Speaker 2: for this. And the main reason that the lt has
Speaker 2: become such a big issue in recent years is because
Speaker 2: obviously it's gone down, whereas can the doctors and surgeons
Speaker 2: salaries have gotten up over time, you know, with inflation
Speaker 2: or less inflation whatever, And so they came about this
Speaker 2: whole streamsh where you know, surgeons were kind of light working,
Speaker 2: but then they would get hit with can attacks charities
Speaker 2: based on basically because the the defined benefit pensions had
Speaker 2: become so generous that the ports were so high. And
Speaker 2: the point is that the government shouldn't be pre playing favorites.
Speaker 1: Like that, right job, given that given that what's your
Speaker 1: what's your personal finance tip for the weak? I don't
Speaker 1: know what mine is. It's a go back, go back
Speaker 1: saut he is and join the civil service. But you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you have a better one.
Speaker 2: In the absence of time travel.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Basically we talk about diversification by asset class, well you
Speaker 2: need diversify by financial vehicle as well. In the UK,
Speaker 2: it's pretty simple. You know, there's the state pension which
Speaker 2: you may or may not kind of get the full
Speaker 2: benefit of that depend what age you are now and
Speaker 2: what happens between now and when you retire. There's a
Speaker 2: private pension or I to find benefit pension. If you
Speaker 2: haven't have a private pension or a dB pension that's
Speaker 2: a corporate one, then again you need to consider diversifying
Speaker 2: away from that. And the other thing is the ISA.
Speaker 2: So basically, if you don't have enough money to fill
Speaker 2: up your annual pension allowance and your annualize it allowance,
Speaker 2: then what to do is make sure that you split
Speaker 2: it between the two of them, rather than necessarily favoring
Speaker 2: one over the other. Where I would favor the pension
Speaker 2: is if you haven't maxed out your auto enrollmance game.
Speaker 2: Make sure you do that because it's free money from
Speaker 2: your employer. And also if you're on one of those
Speaker 2: marginal horrible bits like fifty thousand before the child benefit
Speaker 2: high income tax kicks in, you want to do salary
Speaker 2: sacrifice there, and at one hundred thousands you want to
Speaker 2: do salary sacrifice. Otherwise, I would basically go fifty to
Speaker 2: fifty because at least the eyes that you can get
Speaker 2: your money out straight away, So even if they do
Speaker 2: fiddle with it, which it probably won't, then you can
Speaker 2: get the money out and move it elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Less likely to fill with ices, right, because we will
Speaker 1: understand ices. Everyone understands ane, simple and straightforward. We love them.
Speaker 1: You mess around with them, we notice.
Speaker 2: And the money's not trapped. I mean, that is the
Speaker 2: thing about your pension. The money is trapped. It's a
Speaker 2: good thing. You know, we should be able to saving
Speaker 2: it with confidence, but you know, you just need to look.
Speaker 2: I mean they're talking about the lifetime allowance. It didn't
Speaker 2: exist until two thousand and six, and when it was
Speaker 2: introduced it was one point five million, and at one
Speaker 2: point there was one point eight million, and then they
Speaker 2: then they reduced it rather than reason it so that
Speaker 2: it's you just can't trust in stability of regulation.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Maron Talks Money the podcast and with people
Speaker 1: don't know the markets, Explain the Markets. I'm Marenzumzetweb. This
Speaker 1: week the conversation with author Tim Marshall. You might have
Speaker 1: heard me mention his name and previous podcasts referencing one
Speaker 1: of his books. He's written eight fantastic titles, but I
Speaker 1: am a particular fan of Prisoners of Geography and most
Speaker 1: recently The Future of Geography. We focus most of our
Speaker 1: conversation on this one, The Future of Geography, because it
Speaker 1: looks at how power and politics in space will change
Speaker 1: our world, in fact, are already changing our world. Tim,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us today. Hugely appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you. It's an honor, good good, Right.
Speaker 1: What I want to talk about is space. My producer says,
Speaker 1: I'm mildly obsessed with space and people who talk about space,
Speaker 1: and the truth is that I am. And you've written
Speaker 1: a phenomenal book on this that opens up the world
Speaker 1: of space to everybody, and if you haven't read it, listeners,
Speaker 1: I strongly strongly suggest that you do do so this week,
Speaker 1: because you really need to know about this. So let's start, Tim,
Speaker 1: if you could just set the scene for us and
Speaker 1: tell me. I want to get onto the future of
Speaker 1: space and everything that is going to happen interpace. But
Speaker 1: what's happening right now, what's the relationship between Earth and
Speaker 1: all that place sixty miles above us?
Speaker 3: It's space race two point zero because there is now
Speaker 3: a rationale to go back. I'll try and be brief,
Speaker 3: but Apollo eleven brought some rocks back, and sty twelve
Speaker 3: and fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and seventeen, and then
Speaker 3: the Americans said enough rocks, and they pulled the plug
Speaker 3: fifty years ago. And now we're going back, not just
Speaker 3: to the Moon but near the Moon and geosynchronous orbit
Speaker 3: and low Earth orbit because it is now well worth it.
Speaker 3: We've gone back and are going back in greater numbers
Speaker 3: because financially, low Earth orbit is hugely profitable for the
Speaker 3: satellite companies. You know, we've seen this sort of expotential growth.
Speaker 3: There's eight thousand satellites and now there's going to be
Speaker 3: more than well over thirty thousand with just in five
Speaker 3: or six years. Geosynchronous orbit becomes ever more important, and
Speaker 3: we're going back to the Moon, because we've a found water.
Speaker 3: When I say we, I mean humans. We've found water,
Speaker 3: which means it's potential to put a base there. And
Speaker 3: we found lugonite and lithium and all sorts of those
Speaker 3: lovely metals that everybody needs for twenty first century technology.
Speaker 3: So there is now a Klondike gold rush going on,
Speaker 3: and just as in Klondike, most people won't make any
Speaker 3: money out of it.
Speaker 1: How we go back too. I really want to come
Speaker 1: on this gold rush, and I really want to come
Speaker 1: on for lithium and helium and all these wonderful things.
Speaker 1: But first I want to nail down the what's going
Speaker 1: on with satellites, and could you also please quickly explain
Speaker 1: I think everyone understand is instinctively just in case geosynthesis orbit.
Speaker 3: Lower th orbit is where most of the satellites are,
Speaker 3: around about eight thousand, three hundred or so defunct ones,
Speaker 3: and they're the ones that spin around the world very
Speaker 3: very fast. So if you've got one, let's say you
Speaker 3: a spy, for example, it'll only be over the bit
Speaker 3: of territory you want to look at for a couple
Speaker 3: of hours. So you can put a constellation of these
Speaker 3: things up which connect to each other, and you can
Speaker 3: try and have a greater amount of the Earth that
Speaker 3: you can communicate with or look at. But geosynchronous orbit
Speaker 3: much higher up. That orbit turns at the same speed
Speaker 3: that the Earth turns, so if you put a satellite there,
Speaker 3: it's always over the same piece of territory. So whether
Speaker 3: it's communications satellite, they can always have direct line of
Speaker 3: sight if you like, or a spy satellite or your
Speaker 3: nuclear early warning codes to make sure that they're so
Speaker 3: far away nobody can hit them. Because we can hit
Speaker 3: satellites in low earth orbit from the Earth. That's a
Speaker 3: very very valuable piece of real estate. And I call
Speaker 3: it that because it is geography, not in the classic sense,
Speaker 3: but it's geography, and that is an area, and it's
Speaker 3: a finite area. And when you put a satellite up there,
Speaker 3: it needs to have a very wide beam coming down
Speaker 3: to Earth because it's so high up, and so consequently
Speaker 3: you can only have so many there, so it's first come,
Speaker 3: first served. That's geosynchronous orbit.
Speaker 1: So we've got around eight thousand satellites up there at
Speaker 1: the moment in that zone. We're another twenty something thousand
Speaker 1: coming and what are they all doing At the moment.
Speaker 1: They pretty much control every aspect of our lives, right
Speaker 1: these satellites. We don't think about that, but if the
Speaker 1: satellites disappeared tomorrow, so would what we consider to be
Speaker 1: normal life.
Speaker 3: Is that that I think it's a strong cast to
Speaker 3: be made for it, and a strong cast to be
Speaker 3: made that the satellite should be considered untreated as part
Speaker 3: of our critical security infrastructure. You know, the way that
Speaker 3: gas and water electric supplies are because there is a
Speaker 3: backup plan that we do have deep water undersea cables
Speaker 3: which could still send Internet signals and you could get
Speaker 3: your fax machines out of the office dump if the
Speaker 3: satellites went down, but it would be an almighty blow
Speaker 3: to the world economy or to the economy of a
Speaker 3: country whose system went down, massive, massive financial loss. We
Speaker 3: just think of the GPS. I mean, how is the
Speaker 3: delivery driver going to get to the supermarket with the food,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So I think they should be so a
Speaker 3: lot of them are doing that. A lot of them
Speaker 3: are just doing straightforward comms, whether it's telephone communications or TV.
Speaker 3: So they just are part of the modern world. It's
Speaker 3: the reason, that's the reason it's such a growth industry.
Speaker 3: I mean allegedly it'll be in a trillion dollar a
Speaker 3: year industry. Now not to Blomberg, that's kind of like
Speaker 3: loose change, but you know, trillion dollars a year, that's
Speaker 3: quite a big industry and set to grow.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting, isn't it, because that is that's private money.
Speaker 1: You know, we used to think of space as being
Speaker 1: a public place. In the old space race was between governments.
Speaker 1: This was in particular between near the US government and
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, and they were battling it out to
Speaker 1: try and prove that, you know, capitalisms better than communism
Speaker 1: or that was basically wasn't it, Look we can do
Speaker 1: this vastrup, we can do this quicker because we're a
Speaker 1: better society.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So it was a very public space in the first round,
Speaker 1: and now it's a very private space. Most of these satellites,
Speaker 1: these are not military satellites, they're or government satellites. They're
Speaker 1: owned by private companies. They're launched by private companies from
Speaker 1: private space station. So it's a very different world up there.
Speaker 1: So when you talk about it being a geography, it's
Speaker 1: less a public geography than private geography. And we don't
Speaker 1: know who belongs.
Speaker 3: To Ah, good word belongs to.
Speaker 1: You because the infrastructure belongs to who does the infrastructure
Speaker 1: belong to us?
Speaker 3: Us? How well, allegedly it's the commons. It's the out
Speaker 3: of space Commons, just like we have the global Commons
Speaker 3: where the ocean waves are for all of us. But
Speaker 3: I'm glad you've brought this thing up about commercial because
Speaker 3: that's one of the biggest differences between the previous space
Speaker 3: race and now in how front and center private enterprise
Speaker 3: is within it, both in partnership with governments and out
Speaker 3: there on their own. And that is also another reason
Speaker 3: why this concept of the global commons is really frayed.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's enshrined in the Outer Space Treaty of
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty seven, which basically says no one country didn't
Speaker 3: bother putting a company in because in nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 3: nobody thought there would be companies out there. No one
Speaker 3: country can have sovereignty over any part of space, whether
Speaker 3: it's the moon, the planets, or just the area has
Speaker 3: been between them. But that's really fraying now, and it's
Speaker 3: first come, first served in its you know, wear out,
Speaker 3: they're back off, and there's even something in the Artemis Accords,
Speaker 3: which is the American led effort to get back to
Speaker 3: the Moon and then establish a base where you can
Speaker 3: establish a security zone on the Moon, which sounds to
Speaker 3: me like sovereignty just you know, the same letter at
Speaker 3: the beginning, just a different spelling.
Speaker 1: And how big can your security zone be?
Speaker 3: Well, again, it's the languages.
Speaker 1: Big enough to make you feel secure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the language is loose enough for it. And also
Speaker 3: for how long can you establish the security zone? Also
Speaker 3: very very loose language. Yeah, they are driving it and
Speaker 3: they have allowed well, the governments have allowed, especially the Americans,
Speaker 3: private enterprise in many ways to lead the way. And
Speaker 3: it's private enterprise and its capacity for risk elon Musk
Speaker 3: SpaceX being the greatest example where they have risked all
Speaker 3: that money, for example in the SpaceX rockets and being
Speaker 3: able to bring them back and land them. That is
Speaker 3: revolutionary technology which came out of SpaceX. It didn't come
Speaker 3: out of NASA. So this is a very new and
Speaker 3: different time. I mean there's the new different military aspect
Speaker 3: in which commerce is playing a role as well. So
Speaker 3: it really is very different to the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 3: And I would argue more complex and more dangerous. And
Speaker 3: what existing guidelines because they're not really laws, because international
Speaker 3: laws are not always laws. We just call them that
Speaker 3: they're guidelines. And those guidelines are when they were written,
Speaker 3: were okay. They're not okay anymore in the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: Are you worried about the influent that very wealthy individuals
Speaker 1: and companies will have over the way our interaction with
Speaker 1: space develops. Is that going to be a.
Speaker 3: Problem, possibly up to a point, I don't know. Worried
Speaker 3: about what governments do as well. You know, it's always
Speaker 3: good to keep a bd on both sets. But I mean,
Speaker 3: it was very fashionable twenty years ago and has been
Speaker 3: ever since to write off the nation state and have
Speaker 3: always argued against this. If someone's burgling your house, you're
Speaker 3: not gonna call meta or TikTok that matter, or if
Speaker 3: the Russians invade and if I mean, if individual X
Speaker 3: space X wants to launch a rocket, they have to
Speaker 3: have a license. You know, it's like a plane. You
Speaker 3: can't just take off a land wherever you want. You
Speaker 3: have to have a license, and that comes from the state.
Speaker 3: So the state ultimately would retain a degree of control.
Speaker 3: But yes, in so far as you know, it is
Speaker 3: not good if one particular person owns too much media.
Speaker 3: It's not if there's a cartel that's got to get
Speaker 3: you know, these things do need monitoring. But I do
Speaker 3: think that the governments will contain most of the licensing control,
Speaker 3: and therefore there's a degree of open actual control. By
Speaker 3: the way, Mosque in the Starlink Internet Terms and Conditions
Speaker 3: that you sign now in twenty twenty four, it says,
Speaker 3: in the event in the future that you are using
Speaker 3: our kit on Mars and you have any legal issues,
Speaker 3: you will not refer to any earthbound government or legal entity.
Speaker 3: You will only take your dispute up with the legal
Speaker 3: entity on Mars, which I read to be elon Musk.
Speaker 1: So we have a situation where we've got a total
Speaker 1: creeper awl up there with private and public with satellites,
Speaker 1: with no one being entirely sure which part of this
Speaker 1: geography above us belongs to them or could belong to them,
Speaker 1: and everyone grappling for space because there's got to be
Speaker 1: a limited amount of space in space and certainly in orbit,
Speaker 1: particularly now there's lots of defunct satellites in debris and
Speaker 1: or this kind of thing. So there's a limit to
Speaker 1: how much can be done in this close orbit area, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, because I mean, obviously it is an enormous amount
Speaker 3: of space. I think the distance between low Earth orbit,
Speaker 3: which is one hundred miles up, and then geosynchronist allbit,
Speaker 3: which is several hundred miles further higher up. But of
Speaker 3: course that's in a three hundred and sixty degree circle,
Speaker 3: and it's something forgive me if I've got the figures wrong,
Speaker 3: but it's three thousand times bigger than the surface of
Speaker 3: the Earth. You know, there's a lot of space in space,
Speaker 3: but the actual orbits themselves, you know, we've already got
Speaker 3: as I said, eight thousand, it's going to be thirty thousands.
Speaker 3: Some people put say fifty sixty thousand. I mean the
Speaker 3: Chinese are going to launch, the Musk is going to
Speaker 3: launch ten thousand in the next few years. And so
Speaker 3: although you of physically could fit even more than that
Speaker 3: in that big circle, the fact is the closer they
Speaker 3: are together, not only is the more danger of them
Speaker 3: crashing into each other. And then if one crashes into
Speaker 3: another one, then another one, then another one, you get
Speaker 3: something called the Kessler syndrome where they all crash so
Speaker 3: it adds to that danger. But it's also the military
Speaker 3: aspect to it, where countries get pretty nervous if other
Speaker 3: satellites are getting very close to theirs, you know you're
Speaker 3: going to try and crash into it. Satellites some of
Speaker 3: them now can have grappling arms them, You're going to
Speaker 3: grapple into my satellite. So this is go back to
Speaker 3: this thing about law. There needs to be a new
Speaker 3: global agreement and one aspect of many many that needs
Speaker 3: to be now written in the new age is how
Speaker 3: close can your satellite go to mine? And or how
Speaker 3: many inspections can we agree that you can inspect my
Speaker 3: satellite and I can inspect your satellite to make sure
Speaker 3: you haven't got something areus on it? We just don't
Speaker 3: have these laws, and so that's why there's this finite
Speaker 3: amount of space. And then if you go higher up
Speaker 3: to geosynchronous, as I said, there's so much boundwidth needed
Speaker 3: in the sort of pyramid coming down as you're broadcasting
Speaker 3: downwards that you can only have so many and therefore
Speaker 3: it's first come, first served, and so if you're not
Speaker 3: there now or in the near future, you're never going
Speaker 3: to be there.
Speaker 1: Okay, stupid question. When a satellite just defunct, do we
Speaker 1: remove them with these grappling arms, or when we finished
Speaker 1: using new satellite, we just let us say up, they're
Speaker 1: forever going round and around the circles and potentially bumping
Speaker 1: into other people.
Speaker 3: Not a stupid question at all. And in fact, when
Speaker 3: I was doing the research and interviewing the experts, I
Speaker 3: thought the thing that they would be most concerned about
Speaker 3: was war in space, and it's not. It's debris in space,
Speaker 3: and that includes defunct satellites of which there are hundreds. Now,
Speaker 3: some of them are on a trajectory where each time
Speaker 3: they go around the Earth they get slightly lower slight.
Speaker 3: I mean, it can take years, but eventually, if they're
Speaker 3: on that trajectory, they come into the atmosphere and they
Speaker 3: burn up, flame up, and disintegrate. So there's no more
Speaker 3: of that in space, but others don't and they're still
Speaker 3: evolving around there. Then there are literally hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: of pieces of metal, you know, some of the size
Speaker 3: of a tennis ball, some of the size of a grape,
Speaker 3: some you know, tiny, but there's hundreds of thousands of them,
Speaker 3: and they're being removed at an extraordinarily slow rate. You
Speaker 3: can get hold of a satellite and throw it down
Speaker 3: into the atmosphere or throw it up into deep space.
Speaker 3: But the fact is that the more and more stuff
Speaker 3: are putting there, the more and more debris there's going
Speaker 3: to be in, the more and more danger there is.
Speaker 3: So the Japanese and i'd say the Europeans are probably
Speaker 3: the two world leaders in pioneering new technologies to try
Speaker 3: to do something about this. I mean, I know it
Speaker 3: sounds sci fi, but so much of the stuff that
Speaker 3: I came across I thought was sci fib that is
Speaker 3: happening now. As well as grappling armsatellites can have actually
Speaker 3: like massive fishing nets, and they just throw these fishing
Speaker 3: nets out and catch hundreds and hundreds of pieces of debris,
Speaker 3: bring them all down and either throw them into the
Speaker 3: atmosphere or they can even bring them back. But that's
Speaker 3: how all this stuff is happening. But it's not happening
Speaker 3: fast enough.
Speaker 1: Let me take you back to the second biggest worry. Then.
Speaker 1: If the first biggest is debris, the second biggest is war.
Speaker 1: Space war. That's just us lasering each other's satellites. It's
Speaker 1: shooting each other satellites down from the Earth, which you
Speaker 1: desaid was possible and fascinating, or we're talking about something bigger.
Speaker 1: We're talking about colonizing the Moon and then having a
Speaker 1: little ram me up there.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's that's coming, and that could I'll try
Speaker 3: and come back to the artemis. Of course, if I
Speaker 3: remember right now, four countries have already done this. They
Speaker 3: have launched a ballistic missile from the surface of the
Speaker 3: Earth and they've hit one of their own satellites in
Speaker 3: space and blown it up to test if they can
Speaker 3: do in case they need to do it against somebody
Speaker 3: else's satellite, and that is Russia, China, USA and India.
Speaker 3: So that technology exists, and of course it would be
Speaker 3: an act of war to blow someone else's satellite up.
Speaker 3: So that's the first thing that has already happened, and
Speaker 3: I'm sure other people are working on it. Secondly, Elon
Speaker 3: Musk's SpaceX as a side company Staralink and Starlink, provides
Speaker 3: Internet services via satellite and two years ago, when parts
Speaker 3: of the Ukrainian Internet went down because of the ground
Speaker 3: stations were bombed, the comp stations Musk flew by the Russians.
Speaker 3: Russian Musk flew in thousands and thousands of dishes which
Speaker 3: could connect to Stalin, and he got the parts of
Speaker 3: the Internet back up and running. Great for civilian purposes,
Speaker 3: but of course the Ukrainian military jumped on it and
Speaker 3: used it to target Russian soldiers, at which point the
Speaker 3: Kremlin ordered the Russian anti satellite units to open fire.
Speaker 3: Is a loose term, but you can dazzle a satellite
Speaker 3: from the Earth. I don't think you can yet destroy
Speaker 3: it with a laser bee because we have clouds atmosphere
Speaker 3: rain it diffuses the signal.
Speaker 1: Hang on, what does that mean to dazzle a satellite?
Speaker 3: Sorry, well, you send a beam of light up basically
Speaker 3: at its lens and dazzle it so it can't see you. Now,
Speaker 3: you don't destroy the lens because many satellites lenses can blink.
Speaker 3: You know, they close if there's too much light coming
Speaker 3: in and or you send you spoof them. Spoofing is
Speaker 3: sending up packets of information to the satellite, which confuses
Speaker 3: it and so it doesn't know where to send its signal.
Speaker 3: And so Musk and Putin have been playing this cat
Speaker 3: and mouse game for the last couple of years, which
Speaker 3: is a brand new thing in warfare. Two sovereign countries
Speaker 3: at war with a third element in it, which is
Speaker 3: not a state but a private company, which is inadvertently
Speaker 3: assisting one side's military, causing the other sized military to
Speaker 3: take what is essentially military action against it. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is a new time and it's something we're going
Speaker 3: to have to get used to it.
Speaker 1: That's a second moment, and that when that private company
Speaker 1: is associated with a third sovereign nation that is not
Speaker 1: technically involved in.
Speaker 3: The war exactly, although is you know, clearly involved, but
Speaker 3: not directly. And so if it's dazzled, is that an
Speaker 3: attack a day factor attack also in the United States
Speaker 3: attacking an American company, So you know, I mean obviously
Speaker 3: Americans just coughed politely and pretended not to notice too
Speaker 3: much because you know, they don't want to fight Russia.
Speaker 3: So third way, you may have seen a couple weeks
Speaker 3: ago the Brits of god a new laser weapon to
Speaker 3: take down drones. The Americans pioneered a couple of years ago.
Speaker 3: Now nobody's put one of those onto a satellite, because
Speaker 3: if you did, you could suit shoot down a satellite
Speaker 3: from a satellite very very easily. Because of course it
Speaker 3: would be so powerful up there because it wouldn't be
Speaker 3: diffused through the atmosphere. Now no one has because if
Speaker 3: you do, you're going to spark an arms race. But
Speaker 3: the temptation too has got to be great. And then
Speaker 3: the last bit will be, well, there's this whole spoofing
Speaker 3: dazzling thing. If there is ever a major war between
Speaker 3: major countries, will immediately come into play. I mean, I
Speaker 3: put a couple of scenarios in the book about China
Speaker 3: basically falls the United States by dazzling. It's ones that
Speaker 3: are over the South China Sea looks like they're going
Speaker 3: to attack Taiwan. They actually don't. They do something else.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter. But that's the sort of potential future. Sorry,
Speaker 3: last bit we mentioned the Artemist Accords, We mentioned these
Speaker 3: safety zones. Well, what if Country X, which is an
Speaker 3: ally of America or America has already got to the moon,
Speaker 3: found the best place to start drilling for the limited
Speaker 3: amount of lithium there is there, and another country comes
Speaker 3: along and says, not your moon, We're gonna dig here
Speaker 3: as well. And they're going to say, hang on, we
Speaker 3: spent billions investing in this go away you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: people say that this is kind of a bit outlandish,
Speaker 3: but all you've got to do is look at history.
Speaker 3: What all you got to do is look at let's say,
Speaker 3: the British Empire and the companies that went out ahead
Speaker 3: of them, East India Company being the best example, and
Speaker 3: then following on from that, it becomes so useful that
Speaker 3: the British military then follows in and becomes involved. I
Speaker 3: just think it's very hard to see how that sort
Speaker 3: of tension will not be there in the future. As
Speaker 3: I said, I'm not convinced that the economics of mining
Speaker 3: the Moon makes sense, but as I've brought that up,
Speaker 3: I will briefly say why I think it might happen
Speaker 3: any way. Okay, because I don't think a nation state
Speaker 3: or even a major energy company can really take the
Speaker 3: risk that this might be one of the most profitable
Speaker 3: things in the twenty first century, but we're not going
Speaker 3: to take that risk. I think that will even though
Speaker 3: the economics is not there, I think they'll be investment
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 1: I love it that the risk is not going to
Speaker 1: the moon, but not going to the moon. That's a
Speaker 1: fascinating datement about our new world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Chinese, said the chief scientist in their Moon mission,
Speaker 3: because they intend, like the Americans, to have a base
Speaker 3: by twenty thirty two, which you know will almost certainly slip.
Speaker 3: But that's the ambition, he said. If we don't go
Speaker 3: and it turns out this is where the riches are,
Speaker 3: our children and grandchildren will never forgive us. I mean
Speaker 3: that that's the mindset which I think will overcome the
Speaker 3: financial risk. And I'll give you an example. There are
Speaker 3: private companies that have signed up with NASA, and NASA
Speaker 3: will pay them one dollar for each x pounds of
Speaker 3: rocks they bring back one dollar. So what's in it
Speaker 3: for the companies? You get the low license from NASA
Speaker 3: to do it, to launch to land, You set the
Speaker 3: precedent that we're the ones operating here, and NASA set
Speaker 3: the legal precedent that you can get something from the Moon,
Speaker 3: bring it back, and sell it. Because that's an important
Speaker 3: point because if the Outer Space Treaty says you can't
Speaker 3: have sovereignty, well wouldn't that even apply to a rock.
Speaker 3: If you can't have sovereignty, how can you own that rock?
Speaker 3: And if you don't own it, how can you sell it?
Speaker 3: So that's why just for a dollar people are prepared
Speaker 3: to and that sort of thing is already happening.
Speaker 1: So the fact that you can sell it establishes the
Speaker 1: fact that it is possible legally to own it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, not according to the out of Space Treaty.
Speaker 3: But much as I love it and think it needs enforcing,
Speaker 3: who cares about that? It's the Klondact guld rush.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's move away from the possibility of war,
Speaker 1: because I think we talk about that in so many
Speaker 1: different contacts, and you never know that there might not
Speaker 1: be a war, right, it might at all? And amicable.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about it. Isn't they usually isn't? Excellent point?
Speaker 1: They usually isn't and when but sometimes there is. But
Speaker 1: let's assume that we're going to work all this out amicably,
Speaker 1: and there's plenty of everyone for everyone's satellites, and everyone
Speaker 1: can colonize the Moon without having too much of an
Speaker 1: argy bargie about it, and possibly even Mars. We can
Speaker 1: colonize all these things without fighting because there is plenty
Speaker 1: of space. Let's talk about all the good things that
Speaker 1: space might do for us, might improve our lives going forward.
Speaker 1: So we know at the moment, amazing for communications, amazing,
Speaker 1: for GPS, amazing, for infrastructure creation, amazing for agriculture, right,
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely fantastic. Has been huge productivity advances in
Speaker 1: the agricultural sector as a result being able to use
Speaker 1: satellites to see what's going on with your land. So
Speaker 1: these are all brilliant things going forward. How is our
Speaker 1: extension of the geography of our world into space going
Speaker 1: to improve our lives?
Speaker 3: Let me count the ways, and I'm glad you've counted
Speaker 3: some of them already, because yeah, you're right. Things like
Speaker 3: agriculture are hugely important, and the satellites have massively helped,
Speaker 3: especially small scale farmers you know where to plant and when.
Speaker 3: But another one that's already happening, and I will come
Speaker 3: onto the ones that of the future. And again this
Speaker 3: is for developing countries. If you've got two or three countries,
Speaker 3: let's say in Africa, that are trying to combine their
Speaker 3: economy or link their economies, and the geography the terrain
Speaker 3: of parts of Africa is very difficult. The satellites are
Speaker 3: able to tell you exactly where to put the rail
Speaker 3: or the road links at the cheapest cost, which which
Speaker 3: which is a boon. It's already helping us measure the
Speaker 3: temperature of the oceans, which helps us to understand climate change.
Speaker 3: I think that what proof of concept has proved last
Speaker 3: year Caltech, California Technology Institute, have their own little satellite,
Speaker 3: their own little solar panel, and of course up there
Speaker 3: the solar rays are much much stronger because they're not diffused,
Speaker 3: and they're seven because there's no day and night. There
Speaker 3: was no night. They managed to transfer this energy into
Speaker 3: a microwave signal and they sent it down to a dish,
Speaker 3: and then they turned it back into a package of
Speaker 3: energy and they lit a light bulb with it. Potentially
Speaker 3: revolutionary moment because if you could afford and if you
Speaker 3: could put up fields of these solar panels in space,
Speaker 3: you can now direct the energy down to where you
Speaker 3: want twenty four hours a day, unlike the solar panels
Speaker 3: at the moment, which of course I only work daylight
Speaker 3: and sun daylight, So twenty four to seven. You know
Speaker 3: it's coming down at night, and it's coming down to
Speaker 3: wherever you want to put it. You can beam it
Speaker 3: to wherever you want to put it. So this is
Speaker 3: proof of concept has been proved. Economic modeling of it
Speaker 3: then that's another thing. But it's the sort of thing
Speaker 3: that would get a help us get away from fossil fuels.
Speaker 3: So that's one thing. Another is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we've talked about that on this podcast before.
Speaker 1: I want so I want to stick with this energy
Speaker 1: thing for a moment because we've talked about this on
Speaker 1: this podcast before with somebody else who talked about this mirroring,
Speaker 1: mirroring of solar energy down to Earth and how she
Speaker 1: this is a doc Piper Malgram. She seemed to feel
Speaker 1: that it was reasonably close and conceivable that within she
Speaker 1: didn't put a time frame on that. I should have
Speaker 1: pushed her on that conceivable that in the not too
Speaker 1: distant future all of our energy problems could be solved
Speaker 1: simply with this sort of massive beam of energy from space.
Speaker 1: And I found that incredibly compelling as an idea, given
Speaker 1: that all we seemed to do at the moment is
Speaker 1: is bitch and argue and row about different forms of
Speaker 1: hopeless energy, when there might be one out there that
Speaker 1: can just solve reing just like that.
Speaker 3: They might, I mean, and perhaps when we have time,
Speaker 3: we can go on to helium three.
Speaker 1: But we're definitely going on to helium three. Can't finish
Speaker 1: those without helium three.
Speaker 3: Life the guess yeah. I mean, look she she knows
Speaker 3: far more about it than I do. I know that
Speaker 3: the scale you would need it at would involve a
Speaker 3: lot of mining down here first and building and then
Speaker 3: lifting the panels up. You know, we're talking about big,
Speaker 3: but I mean the Japanese you know how so good
Speaker 3: they are at ore agami. They are brilliant at folding
Speaker 3: fairly large solar panels up into very small folds, sticking
Speaker 3: them in the front of a rocket, taking it up there,
Speaker 3: and then unfolding them. I mean, they are brilliant at it.
Speaker 3: Galactical origami I call it. So you can do that,
Speaker 3: but to do it at scale, the scale we're talking
Speaker 3: about enormous, and the tech and the batteries you know,
Speaker 3: I mean you wouldn't at the batteries would be relevant
Speaker 3: to this, not as relevant as they are now. I mean,
Speaker 3: one of the problems we have now is not only
Speaker 3: that it's only daylight and sundaylight. It's that we can't
Speaker 3: store any excess energy because we don't have batteries big enough.
Speaker 3: We haven't invented them. You wouldn't need them, but it
Speaker 3: would still help to storm.
Speaker 1: Well, are you died that you'd need a massive upgrade?
Speaker 3: So I don't know the time for either, but I
Speaker 3: do know the proof of concept, and it's that sort
Speaker 3: of forward thinking and revolutionary thinking I think will help us.
Speaker 1: Okay, helium three, that's going to change our world if
Speaker 1: space marrowing doesn't.
Speaker 3: All right a legend, No, there is lots on. We
Speaker 3: have helium and I hope I haven't got this wrong
Speaker 3: way around. We have helium four down here, lovely stuff
Speaker 3: from memory. It goes into balloons, you know, children's balloons.
Speaker 3: Where would we be without them? Very useful and car
Speaker 3: tires some of them certainly used to be lesson stuff
Speaker 3: like that. Hope, if you want to talk like Mickey
Speaker 3: Mouse or Donald Up, helium very useful. But helium three,
Speaker 3: a most noble gas, is in large quantities on the
Speaker 3: Moon because the songs raised there again because of lack
Speaker 3: of gravity and because of lack of atmosphere, it's very
Speaker 3: very strong. It's why there's so much radiation. Now. The
Speaker 3: thing about helium three is that in the event you
Speaker 3: crack nuclear fusion, and I hope missus Ai does, then
Speaker 3: you can use helium three, which is in tiny quantities here,
Speaker 3: but relatively large quantities on the Moon. And you can
Speaker 3: fuel the nuclear fusion reactor with cheap ish and clean
Speaker 3: radiation free fuel. That's the key, the radiation free bit.
Speaker 3: Again the Chinese reckon there is enough of the stuff
Speaker 3: on the Moon that if you crack fusion and if
Speaker 3: you can get it back, ten thousand years worth of energy.
Speaker 3: So again, these are the big thought that we need
Speaker 3: to be thinking. Some of them might happen. Oh sorry,
Speaker 3: you asked about the future and how useful it is.
Speaker 1: Yes, other stuff that is good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you might have seen. Don't look up the film
Speaker 3: with a big meter eye. Last year dart they threw
Speaker 3: a dart. That was the name of the mission. It
Speaker 3: was basically they launched a fridge freezer at a comet
Speaker 3: at an asteroid. There's two little asteroids revolving around each
Speaker 3: other about three million miles away. We fired a fridge
Speaker 3: freezer at it. That's shorthand for a piece of metal
Speaker 3: about the same size, and it hit the smaller of
Speaker 3: the two and it deflected it off its course. Proof
Speaker 3: of concept. And we also, you know, we need that
Speaker 3: as a backup plan in case we do look up
Speaker 3: and think, oh do you. So, you know, without all this,
Speaker 3: without all this leaving to along one side, nonstick frying pans,
Speaker 3: without the space race, much of the useful tech, and
Speaker 3: including twenty first century tech would not be with US now.
Speaker 3: And I think, on balance, despite the negative sides of it,
Speaker 3: I think it's a positive.
Speaker 1: Which countries are going to be the most powerful in
Speaker 1: space in twenty five years. I mean, we can assume
Speaker 1: the US, China, Russia.
Speaker 3: I mean, you've named the big three and they will
Speaker 3: remain the Big three. But I believe that the top
Speaker 3: two will be China and the USA because they will
Speaker 3: be doing both the military and the commercial aspects. I
Speaker 3: think the structural problems that Russia has means and it's
Speaker 3: already doing this, its budget will be focused on the
Speaker 3: military side of it, so they will slightly drop away
Speaker 3: on the commercial scientific side.
Speaker 1: Okay, But then among the little guys you've got, you know,
Speaker 1: here in the UK we were talking earlier, I'm terribly
Speaker 1: excited about the Shetland Space station right which hopefully will
Speaker 1: have launches relatively soon. And I think we've got another
Speaker 1: launch station coming in Cornwall, haven't we. And then there
Speaker 1: are various other countries that are setting up launching stations.
Speaker 1: Is it Nigeria? Is that my imagination?
Speaker 3: They certainly launched satellites, and the African Union has some plans.
Speaker 3: Let me come back to I mean you said little,
Speaker 3: and yeah, relative to the States, it's little, But I
Speaker 3: put it in different tiers. So there's the top three,
Speaker 3: even though it's sort of two plus one, and you
Speaker 3: come down to the leading second tier countries, of which
Speaker 3: the UK is one, and France and Italy and Israel, UAE,
Speaker 3: Japan who were I put them in a block. I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously some are bigger than others, and in that block
Speaker 3: is India. But India is the one in the second
Speaker 3: tier that looks like it will accelerate. I cannot see
Speaker 3: it catching USA China even in the timeframe that you gave,
Speaker 3: but it can go ahead of that second tier. By
Speaker 3: the way, also we're talking China in America. It's their
Speaker 3: companies as well. I mean, there is going to be
Speaker 3: a Chinese SpaceX. I just don't know which of the
Speaker 3: many startups in China it will be. So then you
Speaker 3: move down the third tier, and then you talk about
Speaker 3: countries like Nigeria which make their own mini satellites. Keep
Speaker 3: satellites and send them up into little constellations, and there's
Speaker 3: a raft of them. So there's eighty countries now have
Speaker 3: a presence in space. Only a handful of them are
Speaker 3: space faring, only a handful of players. And then the
Speaker 3: third tier you have a presence. And then you get
Speaker 3: the fourth tier, which is the majority of countries in
Speaker 3: the world who have no presence there at all. And
Speaker 3: given that it is finite the amount of usable space,
Speaker 3: they may never get there. So you know, I'll put
Speaker 3: into the.
Speaker 1: Four tiers, which you need to be there now if
Speaker 1: you're going to be there long term ideally. Okay, let
Speaker 1: us talk about the companies. Now, when we talk about space,
Speaker 1: we always end up talking about SpaceX. But if you
Speaker 1: were able to look twenty twenty twenty five years out,
Speaker 1: have you any sense of what the big names commercially
Speaker 1: might be out there? It might be interesting to see
Speaker 1: the big mining companies might suddenly turn up with a
Speaker 1: presence in space, right, the big energy companies might suddenly
Speaker 1: and we could suddenly turn around and find that Shell
Speaker 1: has got a colonizer moon right.
Speaker 3: Well, Toyota already, I mean it's only you know, it's
Speaker 3: only on a computer. But they've already built on the
Speaker 3: computer massive moon rovers, you know, the sort of size
Speaker 3: of an articulated truck, and they're in partnership with Jackson,
Speaker 3: the Japanese Space Agency. Now you know, this truck doesn't exist,
Speaker 3: it may never exist, but the fact is that Toyota
Speaker 3: are looking at it existing. Some of the energy companies also,
Speaker 3: some of the Japanese startups have already been up trying
Speaker 3: to get some rocks. The Indians landed at the lunar
Speaker 3: South Pole, which is where the water is and most
Speaker 3: of the metals, which is thought are so if you
Speaker 3: go twenty twenty five years, what we're looking at twenty
Speaker 3: forty five, let's say, no, that's not true. Twenty fifty nearly. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's a good date, twenty fifteen, because that's the date
Speaker 3: that Mosque said he'd have a million people on the Moon,
Speaker 3: which is absolute fantasy.
Speaker 1: Is it possible, I mean, it's not going to happen,
Speaker 1: But is it conceivable ever than a million people could
Speaker 1: live on the moon.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, but twenty fifty not a I just
Speaker 3: do the math, you know, just divide a million by
Speaker 3: twenty five years. Where are these forty thousand people every
Speaker 3: year or whatever it is. So twenty fifty, I'm confident
Speaker 3: we will have we'll be mining on the moon by
Speaker 3: that point. I'm confident we'll have a moon base. As
Speaker 3: I said, twenty thirty two is the ambition a man
Speaker 3: and a woman will walk on the Moon again in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, in two years time, the Americans out
Speaker 3: of miss submission. I mean again, these things tend to
Speaker 3: slip thy six months or a year, but they're saying
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six walking on the Moon, which would be
Speaker 3: great for Sting's songwriting royalties. One for the older listeners,
Speaker 3: there's sorry twenty fifty, probably massive solar panels, almost certainly
Speaker 3: mine in the moon. Definitely some form of moon base,
Speaker 3: whether it's scientific, military, commercial, or a combination of the three.
Speaker 3: We will not only have got to Mars. Well, we've
Speaker 3: already got to Mars. There's several rovers roving around it already,
Speaker 3: but will have come back because they haven't really brought
Speaker 3: things back from Mars yet. That will have happened.
Speaker 1: I reckon within twenty the passion has gone to Mars.
Speaker 3: And robotics are going. Robotics are going so quickly that
Speaker 3: by then we'll probably be able to send spacecraft with
Speaker 3: robots on which can begin the very beginnings of a
Speaker 3: base there. They can build it, they can three D
Speaker 3: print it. You know, they don't need oxygen, water, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So I think all those things are feasible.
Speaker 3: But the idea that we're going to have a million
Speaker 3: people or even thousands, even hundreds on Mars in twenty
Speaker 3: five years, but.
Speaker 1: No person on Mars in twenty yes, no person on
Speaker 1: Mars in twenty fiftet just a robot.
Speaker 3: We may have landed. I mean, it's a big ask.
Speaker 3: We may have landed. I mean, there's enough fantastic Netflix
Speaker 3: and other paying channels available series about things like that,
Speaker 3: which are great fun. We may have landed. But it's ambitious.
Speaker 3: It's ambitious. The thing about Artemis and the Chinese version
Speaker 3: of it is that they've gone back to the idea
Speaker 3: because there was a huge debate over the past decade.
Speaker 3: Do you try and go straight to Mars from here
Speaker 3: or do you go to the Moon first, make your mistakes,
Speaker 3: learn your lessons, and launch from there. The lily pad
Speaker 3: to hop and that at the moment the Moon has
Speaker 3: won out because it takes more fuel get from the
Speaker 3: surface of the Earth to the Moon, far far more
Speaker 3: fuel than it does to get from the surface of
Speaker 3: the Moon to Mars, even though Mars is you know,
Speaker 3: it's millions of miles away, much further because you know,
Speaker 3: because of escape velocity of getting out of the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: And let me ask you a final question. This is
Speaker 1: also about belief. If I were to say to you
Speaker 1: that you were going to the moon, I'm going for
Speaker 1: ten years. It's going to be great. I'm sending enough
Speaker 1: oxygen going play the moon for ten years, and then
Speaker 1: you can come back. But before you go, I'm going
Speaker 1: to let you invest in something. I'm going to give
Speaker 1: a choice of two things that you can have. One
Speaker 1: is bitcoin and one is gold. You have to choose
Speaker 1: one of these things. Your entire net worth is going
Speaker 1: into this thing, and you'll be back from the Moon
Speaker 1: in ten years. What do you think you'd take. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: probably plenty of gold on the moon, right.
Speaker 3: I'm not going for that long because I've got a
Speaker 3: season to get it leg united, which I need to renew.
Speaker 3: But if I'm forced to, and if you freeze that,
Speaker 3: I'm freezing in frozen gold. I'm not convinced by bitcoin.
Speaker 3: I know it's I mean, you talk about belief is
Speaker 3: just as you know, it's belief. You know, I believe
Speaker 3: that this piece of paper here is worth that much.
Speaker 3: I believe this piece of metal is worth it. It's
Speaker 3: just a belief system. And I just believe that gold
Speaker 3: has far more even in the next ten years now,
Speaker 3: if one of the asteroids crashes on Earth has got
Speaker 3: more gold in it than has ever been mined, I've
Speaker 3: made a bad bet. Failing that gold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that asteroid might also take out the Internet across
Speaker 1: the UK, across the world, which point bitcoin is worthless too.
Speaker 3: In which case gold is also far more. Yeah. No gold. Look,
Speaker 3: I know it's not doing very well at the moment though,
Speaker 3: is it. But it'll be back.
Speaker 1: Jim, thank you, Thank you so much. Absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 3: Thank you. That was fun.
Speaker 1: John, Well, what did you think about that conversation? I
Speaker 1: thought it was fascinating.
Speaker 2: It really was just so interesting and also understand a
Speaker 2: lot more stuff that I have to see previously had
Speaker 2: a somewhat foggy point.
Speaker 1: What about like the different kinds of all bit Yeah,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and how far up everything is,
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't know if you said on
Speaker 1: the podcast, but maybe I were in the book that
Speaker 1: we think of space as being so far away, but
Speaker 1: if you were to just drive upwards, it's only an
Speaker 1: hour's drive away less if you break the speed limits
Speaker 1: really very very close. I might have added a bit
Speaker 1: about the speed limit myself, but you get the general idea.
Speaker 2: I thought it was great, and I mean again, it's
Speaker 2: I can see more clearly why there's a bit of
Speaker 2: a gold rush now, because any time anyone talks about
Speaker 2: Lettium Maine and I'm kind of like, you know, can
Speaker 2: you send a rocket when you can just go to
Speaker 2: Australia and kind of like, you know, dig around a
Speaker 2: bit more kind of thoroughly. But I can see the
Speaker 2: arguments now, and also the fascinating thing about it's we
Speaker 2: kind of need a cold war to get us to
Speaker 2: explore these places, which is a bit depressing, but at
Speaker 2: least it's an upside.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we need to have a bit of a ramy,
Speaker 1: as we know, we need to have a bit of
Speaker 1: a ramy to get the technology going so we can
Speaker 1: see where we're at right.
Speaker 2: It's a bit of a it's a bit of a
Speaker 2: coin test that can virility coin test between nations. And
Speaker 2: also I can get to the moon faster than you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that was the interesting thing that the last
Speaker 1: time around, it was a virility thing. You know, communism
Speaker 1: is better than capitalism. You know, we're a better society.
Speaker 1: We can do better things because you know, when we're
Speaker 1: coherent as the society. Whatever is the Soviet Union versus
Speaker 1: versus American business. What's interesting now is the fact that
Speaker 1: it's not really like that. There's a bit in the background,
Speaker 1: who gets to colonize the moon first, who gets to
Speaker 1: put a personal in miles first, etc. But actually the
Speaker 1: majority of this work has been done by private companies,
Speaker 1: and so we have this vast amount of private money
Speaker 1: up there. It's a completely different dynamic. And suddenly, you know,
Speaker 1: Elon musk Is is making rules which won't hold, but
Speaker 1: nonetheless making funny rules about what happens on Mars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a totally different dynamic. And I've been really interested in that, thinking, well,
Speaker 1: you know, space really isn't a public place. It's a
Speaker 1: private place, and that's very different. But then Tim made
Speaker 1: this excellent point that even if there are no laws
Speaker 1: in space, there are still a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: of laws on Earth, and everyone who wants to go
Speaker 1: to space has to leave from Earth. So you've got
Speaker 1: to get someone's permission to send your rockets up, to
Speaker 1: send your satellites up, to send your spaceships up. So
Speaker 1: it's like all things. And he said at the end,
Speaker 1: which was so interesting, because I keep saying this to people,
Speaker 1: and you keep saying this to people. Never right off
Speaker 1: the nation's state. When it comes right down to it,
Speaker 1: this is where sovereignty lies. It lies within the nation state.
Speaker 1: Every state makes its own rules. They have the power
Speaker 1: if you think they don't try breaking their laws.
Speaker 2: Oh, I was going to say that really interesting they
Speaker 2: brought that up because it's it's true. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: a big sci fi fan, and one I didn't.
Speaker 1: Even know that about you. Well, I didn't know that
Speaker 1: you kept it secret for decads.
Speaker 2: I'm just kind of coming out of the closet to
Speaker 2: this terrible it was too ashamed to admit it to you.
Speaker 3: But no.
Speaker 2: But one of the kind of like the key features
Speaker 2: of sci fi over the last kind of like forty
Speaker 2: odd years, it's kind of Tim sort of says, is
Speaker 2: that he's always about big corporations kind of light, you know,
Speaker 2: dominating and the dystopias are all run by someone probably
Speaker 2: a bit like Elo and Mascot or something like that,
Speaker 2: who's got, you know, maybe the best intentions, but they've
Speaker 2: destroyed the world who their ambition and governments are either
Speaker 2: enthralled to them or they don't exist, and that is
Speaker 2: clearly kind of nonsense, you know, when push comes to shove,
Speaker 2: as it very much has in the last ten years,
Speaker 2: you know, because I guess it sort of also came
Speaker 2: about from the nineties and the end of the First
Speaker 2: Cold War, because everyone kind of went, oh, that's set
Speaker 2: that we all agree and basically one big global country though,
Speaker 2: and obviously that's proved to be complete annoysince and we've
Speaker 2: seen that a ton of the nation state we have
Speaker 2: engines over the last kind of five to ten years.
Speaker 2: So I thought, yeah, that was a really good point.
Speaker 1: But then you get to the point and we talked
Speaker 1: about this a little bit with him. We talked about
Speaker 1: which country are going to be most powerful in space
Speaker 1: in thirty forty years, and then we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about well, who's going to which companies are going
Speaker 1: to be super powerful in space, and he mentioned which
Speaker 1: I thought was just so interesting. He mentioned Toyota. I
Speaker 1: haven't made them yet, but they've designed moon rovers. And
Speaker 1: so there are going to be so many companies out
Speaker 1: there who are already working on stuff that we never
Speaker 1: think about. And they may be household names already, we
Speaker 1: just don't think of them as space orientated companies. And
Speaker 1: I'm just fascinated to wait and find out who they
Speaker 1: are and how that's going to work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean it's also it's more because you know,
Speaker 2: there's the forum is stuff like, there's an investment in
Speaker 2: this sort of thing. Is it's the usual story we
Speaker 2: are okay, it's very exciting the idea, but which companies
Speaker 2: are actually going to survive in which companies are going
Speaker 2: to do a based and.
Speaker 1: How are you going to invest in that? How are
Speaker 1: you going to invest in that? And there are a couple,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are ways to invest in what's going
Speaker 1: on in space. At the moment I'm in. SpaceX, of
Speaker 1: course is a most well known company in this space,
Speaker 1: is not listed, but nonetheless there are there are a
Speaker 1: lot of funds that you can buy in the UK
Speaker 1: that will hold SpaceX may mainly a Bailey geffort, I think, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Think Scottish Mortgage has got four percent of its portfolio
Speaker 2: in SpaceX.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you've got about five investment trusts. Bailey Given
Speaker 1: Investment Trust alone that holds SpaceX and Edinburgh Worldwide is another.
Speaker 1: They've got nearly six percent of their portfolio in SpaceX
Speaker 1: is one of their top holdings. So if you want exposure,
Speaker 1: a little bit of exposure to what's going on in
Speaker 1: space in a particular to this well as an amazing company,
Speaker 1: that's where you go right going to It's not going
Speaker 1: to move the dial on your investments on yeah, the
Speaker 1: smallest percent, but nonetheless you'll know you've got a tiny
Speaker 1: bit of skin in the space game.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other way to do it, Yeah, And the other
Speaker 1: way to do it is Seraphim Space, which is a
Speaker 1: trust that holds only space companies. Now, before you start
Speaker 1: telling me about your success with freem And, I'm can
Speaker 1: tell you about my success in that. When they launched
Speaker 1: a few years back. I looked at it and I
Speaker 1: was as interested in space then as I am now
Speaker 1: in this trust, and I thought, well, it was absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1: But but but butter, in the middle of a growth bubble,
Speaker 1: this stuff is insanely able priced it's a bit silly,
Speaker 1: and I want to tell you, John, this is one
Speaker 1: of my rare successes to share prices off forty four
Speaker 1: percent since that launch, So I'm fairly pleased with that.
Speaker 1: But you wrote about Seraphim just a few months ago, right, Well, yeah.
Speaker 2: All about it as I can. Part of a grab
Speaker 2: bag at highly discounted investment Truice at the end of
Speaker 2: the Vember, and it was treating a discount of something
Speaker 2: mildly seventy percent, and there's pretty good reasons for that.
Speaker 2: Interestry has gone not privately lest so plavate assets. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's up about eighty percent since then. I mean,
Speaker 2: the one thing I would see is it's treading up
Speaker 2: a bit sextyps and then now is doing a bout
Speaker 2: ninety six pence and it's it's still a big descot,
Speaker 2: but it probably deserves a big descout.
Speaker 1: Because the stuff is super. Yeah, even if you do
Speaker 1: if you're not going to invest in this stuff, you
Speaker 1: don't want to buy this Drauss or whatever you and
Speaker 1: you don't want any exposure to it, it is worth
Speaker 1: going to their website. Go to the website just for
Speaker 1: the fun of it and spend some time reading about
Speaker 1: these amazing, exciting, innovative companies that are involved in all
Speaker 1: the amazing stuff that's going on in space. There's lots
Speaker 1: of AI on this website. There's lots of satellite stuff,
Speaker 1: I mean just just everything, lots of weather stuff. There's
Speaker 1: even one that I would love to know more about it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get it. Click on this insurance powered
Speaker 1: by Science. How does that make it into a space portfolio?
Speaker 1: But it does. It is absolutely fascinating. It's worth visiting
Speaker 1: this website and spending a couple of hours on it,
Speaker 1: and I can't see a better way to learn about space,
Speaker 1: apart from listening, of course, to Ted Marshall talking about space.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening for this week's Maren Talks Money. We'll
Speaker 1: be back next week in the meantime. If you like
Speaker 1: our show, rate review and subscribe wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your podcast, and also do tell your friends about us.
Speaker 1: This episode was hosted by me Maren's Sunset Web. It
Speaker 1: was produced by Summersidi. Additional editing by Blake Maple's Bettel.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Tim Marshall and to John Steppek and if
Speaker 1: you want to hear more, by the way, on John's
Speaker 1: thoughts on pensions. Sign up to his news letter Money Distilled,
Speaker 1: which you can see on the website.