How to Cash In on the Final Frontier

Most space-themed investments are moonshots. Use our stock and fund picks to bet on space exploration.

- NELLIE S. HUANG

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A Trekkie to appreciate the growing investment opportunities in space. The space economy, measured by revenues generated by space-related endeavors, could triple in size to top $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

A big push is coming from innovative start-ups—private companies that have dramatically lowered the cost of making rockets and launching them into space. Recently, those efforts culminated in SpaceX’s recycled rocket—the first ever— which took four astronauts to the International Space Station in April. Leaps like that have space geeks predicting that we’ll have a colony on the moon by 2040. “When you think about bases on the moon or Mars, that will happen, but it will take time. It’s incremental,” says Ronald Epstein, BofA Global Research senior aerospace analyst. “But we’ve seen an acceleration in incremental change because the cost has come down a lot.”

Combine that with technological advances in remote sensors and miniaturization—satellites, once school-bus sized, are now the size of a shoebox or a dorm fridge—and voilà. “Lower costs, smaller satellites, smaller rockets and more ways to get things into orbit—that’s driving all of this,” Epstein says about the excitement surrounding space ventures.

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