{"id":96128,"date":"2016-09-29T10:26:58","date_gmt":"2016-09-29T14:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=96128"},"modified":"2016-09-29T07:27:50","modified_gmt":"2016-09-29T11:27:50","slug":"beyond-the-stars-elon-musk-aims-for-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2016\/09\/beyond-the-stars-elon-musk-aims-for-mars\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Stars, Elon Musk Aims for Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"
September 29, 2016<\/div>
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By WallStreetDaily.com<\/u><\/a> \"Beyond<\/p>\n

Elon Musk sees sustainable cities on Mars within the next 50 years. And he expects to travel even farther into the solar system.<\/strong><\/i><\/p>\n

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The fine folks at Zero Hedge cast their reliably cynical gaze toward the 67th annual International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, yesterday, with Elon Musk\u2019s presentation on the colonization of Mars squarely in the cross hairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusk has been successful is in the way he characterizes huge problems,\u201d writes nom de site Tyler Durden, \u201cand the ability to address them. Need an atmosphere? Yes, we can adjust that. Need it warmer? We can warm the planet, just like we have Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk, a man of rare ambition and considerable ego, is an easy target for even the idealistic among us, given the recent struggles of his Earth-bound enterprises.<\/p>

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His deal to combine electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA) with rooftop solar panel maker SolarCity Corp. \u2014 (SCTY) \u2013 two money-losing companies \u2014 has not been received well in the financial world.<\/p>\n

Tesla stock is down 12.2% since terms of the $2.6 billion deal were agreed on August 1, 2016, 2016, while SolarCity is off 24.6%.<\/p>\n

Tesla\u2019s production goals are highly questionable, and SolarCity\u2019s most recent maneuvers include layoffs and other cost-cutting steps.<\/p>\n

Musk, a man of rare ambition and considerable ego, is an easy target for even the idealistic among us, given the recent struggles of his Earth-bound enterprises.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And Musk\u2019s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) just saw its Falcon 9 two-stage rocket blow up on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral four weeks ago.<\/p>\n

So sneering seems not a cynical but a realistic view on this self-styled \u201csuper villain,\u201d particularly as he explains SpaceX\u2019s plan to colonize Mars, powered by his new \u201cBig Falcon Rocket.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a video<\/strong><\/a> depicting SpaceX\u2019s \u201cInterplanetary Transport System.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Zero Hedge points out \u2014 and as also stands to astrophysical reason \u2014 when the dying sun consumes Earth, it will also devour Mars.<\/p>\n

So colonizing the Red Planet is no panacea when it comes to extending humanity\u2019s existence beyond the life of the Blue Marble.<\/p>\n

But even after characterizing Musk\u2019s \u201cEarth-based inventions and investments\u201d as \u201csomewhat constricting\u201d and \u201ccash-burning,\u201d Zero Hedge does \u201csalute Musk\u2019s vision.\u201d<\/p>\n

And his ultimate goal is to \u201cmake Mars seem possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

As otherworldly as it must seem, building a \u201cself-sustaining city\u201d in a world 33.9 million miles away at its closest point is simply a jumping-off point: The Interplanetary Transport System \u201cis not just for Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n

And his ultimate goal is to \u201cmake Mars seem possible.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As an image tweeted by SpaceX reveals, Jupiter is on the itinerary too. Indeed, as Sean O\u2019Kane writes in The Verge: \u201cElon Musk wants to build a transit system that lets humans tour the entire Solar System.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX continues to make real, tangible progress. The company \u201cjust achieved first firing of the Raptor interplanetary transport engine\u201d three days ago, on Monday, September 26.<\/p>\n

The proper way to understand Elon Musk is not as a CEO, a financier or even an entrepreneur. As SpaceX founding team member Jim Cantrell explained for Forbes<\/em>, he\u2019s an engineer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one major important distinction that sets him apart,\u201d Cantrell noted, \u201cis his inability to consider failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

It may be time to consider picking up stock in Tesla and SolarCity as deep-value plays after their respective drubbings. SpaceX is not a publicly traded entity, so there\u2019s no way for us to own it.<\/p>\n

We can, however, get a piece of the New Space Race via Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc. (GY), a small cap whose Aerojet Rocketdyne subsidiary is the prime contractor for the RS-25 rocket.<\/p>\n

As much wonderful vision as Musk has provided, NASA continues to do some halfway-decent things as far as space exploration is concerned.<\/p>\n

Its deep-space rocket is actually ahead of Musk\u2019s.<\/p>\n

NASA fired its Space Launch System (SLS), which incorporates four RS-25 rockets in its core stage, for 500 seconds back on March 10, 2016. SLS too will take astronauts to deep-space destinations, including asteroids, Mars and other planetary systems.<\/p>\n

According to NASA: \u201cThe next time rocket engine No. 2059 fires for that length of time, it will be carrying humans on their first deep-space mission in more than 45 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aerojet Rocketdyne, formerly known as GenCorp Inc., is a $1.34 billion company with long-standing ties to NASA. It\u2019s been in the aerospace industry since 1945, when predecessor General Tire & Rubber Co. acquired Aerojet Engineering Corp.<\/p>\n

The company reported second-quarter net sales of $408.4 million and net income of $5.9 million, or $0.09 per share. It enjoys a funded backlog of $2.3 billion.<\/p>\n

Aerojet was in on the action when NASA launched Apollo 11 and landed men on the moon for the first time in 1969.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s going to be there when we take the interplanetary leap.<\/p>\n

Will we live on Mars by the 2060s? Who knows?<\/p>\n

But without visionaries, there\u2019s no innovation.<\/p>\n

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Money Quote<\/h2>\n

\u201cIf you want to build a ship, don\u2019t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antoine de Saint-Exup\u00e9ry<\/p>\n

Smart Investing,<\/p>\n

David Dittman
\nEditorial Director, Wall Street Daily<\/i><\/p>\n

The post Beyond the Stars, Elon Musk Aims for Mars<\/a> appeared first on Wall Street Daily<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By WallStreetDaily.com Elon Musk sees sustainable cities on Mars within the next 50 years. And he expects to travel even farther into the solar system. The fine folks at Zero Hedge cast their reliably cynical gaze toward the 67th annual International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, yesterday, with Elon Musk\u2019s presentation on the colonization of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96128"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96143,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96128\/revisions\/96143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}