Amazon's plan to launch thousands of satellites is accelerating a new space race - and one expert knows how everyday investors can profit from the mania right now
- Amazon plans to launch 3,236 satellites into orbit to expand internet access through its Project Kuiper. It's another step in what's becoming a new space race.
- UBS analyst Carl Berrisford says the value of the "space economy" will nearly triple to $1 trillion in 20 years, and he sees high speed broadband satellites as the biggest single opportunity in that sector.
- Amazon, SpaceX and several other companies are preparing big bets on networks of broadband satellites. Only about half the world's population currently has access to the internet.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The list of companies jumping into the space race is getting as long as the text at the beginning of a Star Wars movie.
Amazon recent confirmed to Business Insider that it plans to launch 3,236 satellites into orbit, where they will beam high speed broadband signals to regions that don't have internet access. SpaceX has similarly enormous plans. Those companies and others think satellites can help billions of people get access to the internet.
While there are still major cost and technological hurdles to beaming high speed broadband from space, a UBS analyst thinks they will fade over time. That makes satellite-internet technology the core of Carl Berrisford's prediction that the "space economy" will triple to about $1 trillion in value in 20 years.
He writes that a decade from now, the cost of launching a satellite will be only 10% of what it is today, thanks in part to improving reusable rockets. Meanwhile, improvements in technology will decrease latency - or the time it takes for a signal to go from the Earth to a satellite, then back again.
That will make satellite technology appealing to internet providers, he wrote, and it also has implications other areas including data centers and the internet of things.
That, combined with businesses like space tourism from companies including Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and other applications like asteroid mining and space-based manufacturing, is why he believes the space economy will ramp up quickly from $340 billion in value today.
For now, Berrisford says the best way to gain exposure to the space industry is to piggyback off this recent progress and invest in publicly traded aerospace, satellite, and communications companies. He expects several to go public in the coming years. Below is a list of a few companies working in the satellite sector.
Note that while OneWeb and Planet Labs are private companies, Maxar Technologies - the parent of DigitalGlobe and MacDonald Dettwiler - is listed on the Nasdaq.
- DigitalGlobe (Satellite operator) - Has satellites in orbit that capture high-resolution images of Earth.
- MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates (Satellite manufacturer) - Technology company working in communications and intelligence
- OneWeb (Satellite operator) - Communications company preparing to launch 900 internet satellites
- PlanetLabs (Satellite operator) - Designing satellites to map the entire planet