Nick Hodge,
Publisher
July 14, 2021
It’s a busy month in the emerging industry of space tourism for the ultra-wealthy.
Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos has been planning his July 20 flight for months... only for Virgin Galactic CEO Richard Branson to upstage him by going to space a week earlier.
 |
At first glance, it’s easy to understand why these men are doing this. Spaceflight is cool, and they’re rich enough to make it happen for themselves.
But it’s also worth asking, why are men who have so much to lose, fixated on such a dangerous activity?
After all, a not-insubstantial number of the people we’ve sent up past the ionosphere haven’t come back down in one piece. It’s widely speculated that Bezos stepped down from the CEO job at Amazon this month for insurance reasons — in case he meets his maker on the 20th.
However, there’s a powerful incentive drawing these billionaires to space, and it’s not just the beauty of the cosmos.
Goldman Sachs recently predicted that the first trillionaire would make most of their fortune mining moons and asteroids.
|
Star Gas: The Most Valuable Commodity Of The Distant Future
Engineers, economists and environmentalists increasingly agree on a bleak conclusion:
|
Unless we develop a viable form of nuclear fusion power, we’re unlikely to generate enough electricity to meet our needs without releasing environmentally-catastrophic amounts of carbon emissions.
|
But the reason why we don’t have fusion power plants yet isn’t because we can’t achieve fusion.
The U.S. thermonuclear arsenal is proof that we can, with great effect.
The problem is that we can’t control it. We can set off an uncontrolled fusion reaction that generates a big, city-destroying explosion of plasma, but we can’t keep that plasma cool enough and contained enough to simply spin a steam turbine without damaging anything.
Two technological innovations are being developed to solve this problem. The first is called magnetic confinement, and it uses powerful, helium-cooled, superconducting magnets to keep fusile plasma contained within the reactor.
The second involves replacing the deuterium-tritium fuel used in current experimental reactors — which generates harmful radiation and thus a loss of usable energy — with helium fuel.
|
Source: Popular Mechanics
|
You may have noticed that both of the innovations mentioned use helium — and that’s a bit of a problem.
Helium supplies are rapidly dwindling here on Earth. And the common terrestrial isotope of helium, helium-4, is suboptimal for fusion.
By contrast, the Moon and many asteroids contain hundreds of billions of pounds of helium-3 — a lightweight isotope that readily fuses into heavier elements with little energy loss. It’s why helium is also called “star gas”.
|
|
The value of the Moon’s helium-3 deposits alone is estimated to be on the order of $25 quadrillion (that’s a 25 with 15 zeros behind it).
Billionaires like Bezos and Branson may not be flying to space this month just to prove that they can. They may be taking the first steps toward the most valuable mining operations in human history.
An Easier Way to Get The Helium We Need
That doesn’t mean that space mining is the only solution to the helium crisis. or even that it’s the most practical.
In fact, down here on Earth, a handful of small companies have been stepping up with innovative methods to meet surging demand as helium reserves dwindle.
And they’re making their shareholders very wealthy in the process.
One in particular has just made a large discovery of this gas right here in North America.
The stock just IPO'd. And it’s drilling its first well right now.
I think 3,000% gains are likely the minimum for those who are able to get in before it brings the first well online later this summer.
I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow in a new video.
|
Call it like you see it,
Nick Hodge
Editor, Daily Profit Cycle
Nick Hodge is the co-owner and publisher of Daily Profit Cycle and Resource Stock Digest. He's also the founder of Hodge Family Office, the umbrella organization for his three premium services: Foundational Profits, Family Office Advantage, and Hodge Family Office . He specializes in private placements and speculations in early stage ventures, and has raised tens of millions of dollars of investment capital for resource, energy, cannabis, and medical technology companies. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world.
*Follow Nick on Twitter.