Space Drug Dealers and Britain's Mysterious Richest Person

World’s first space drug dealer

What happened?

A company called Varda Space happened but let’s rewind for a second. For the last 10 years, SpaceX has been building highways to space; rapidly reusable rockets that can act more like commercial planes than enormous one-use rockets. It is a frequent occurrence for SpaceX to launch and land their Falcon 9 rocket back in Florida.

The interesting part is not the engineering (it is still awesome) but the economics of space. Rapidly reusable rockets drive down the cost of sending something to space. This breathes life into an entire space economy, everything from tourism to manufacturing.

With the space highways open, the question became, well what should we do up there? And for Varda Space, the answer to that question is manufacturing.

Why does this matter?

Quick pause. I am about to write about miniature space drug factories - that is unthinkably cool. Humans are amazing. Space is a microgravity environment which means humans can float but more importantly other weird and wonderful things happen at a microscopic level.

It is one of the primary reasons the ISS (International Space Station) exists: to test and run experiments in a microgravity environment. One discovery that the ISS made was that molecules crystalize in different ways in microgravity.

How important can crystallization be? Crystallography (the science of arranging atoms as crystalline structures) is how we discovered the double helix structure of DNA and is one of the most useful fields for the study of protein design and manufacturing (aka brewing drugs).

Atoms arrange themselves in fundamentally different ways in microgravity.

So it became clear to the founders of Varda that you can make drugs in space you can’t make on Earth. It is also a great industry to start with because pharma has a high relative risk appetite - they are very used to spending money on projects that don’t work out.

And so with this, the first space drug dealers were born.

What does this mean for the future?

This provides a completely new vertical for pharmaceutical innovation. Drugs with novel crystalline structures will behave completely differently.

You also don’t have to produce very much of a drug to capture the majority of the value. As one of the founders of Varda said “Two milk gallon jugs of mRNA would be sufficient for all of the Pfizer vaccine doses administered to date.”

This is all to say that we are now unlocking a new side quest in the game of manufacturing and production.

Varda’s satellite is currently orbiting the earth waiting for reentry permission, having reformulated an HIV drug that had serious stabilization issues. It’s niche. But Varda’s long-term mission is to expand the economic bounds of humankind. Imagine a future of space mines, refineries, drug factories, rocket assembly lines, and more.

This is the kind of generational company that restores faith in human ingenuity and is one to watch for 2024.

Britain’s Mysterious Richest Man

What has happened?

On Christmas Eve Manchester United announced that Sir Jim Ratcliffe had reached an agreement to buy 25% of the world's most famous football team. Now we’re not going to get into what this means for football or Manchester United - mainly because I have no idea - but what I think is more interesting is that Sir Jim is Britain's wealthiest person, yet compared to other wealthy figures, like Richard Branson or James Dyson, he is pretty unknown - so why is he buying a football team?

So who is this guy?

Sir Jim was born in Manchester and studied Chemical Engineering at Birmingham University and later studied at London Business School, working at a private equity firm after graduation. He founded INEOS, focusing on the industries of chemical and energy production, in 1998 and used it as a vehicle to start a string of acquisitions that would make even my girlfriend's shopping habits look tame.

INEOS now do a lot more than just extract oil and gas. They provide many of chemicals and polymers that are used in manufacturing around the world, like plastics and other synthetics. In fact, there is a good chance that something around you right now has raw materials that have either been made or processed in an INEOS plant.

He’s clearly good at buying chemical and oil-based companies but he also has now found the taste for buying sports teams. Here’s a list of his sports-related investments over the past 7 years:

• FC Laussane-Sport (yeah I’d never heard of it either) in 2017

• OGC Nice (again literally never heard of it) in 2019

• Team Sky cycling team (the one Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome won Tour De France with) and made it Team INEOS

• Funded INEOS Team UK for the America’s Cup in sailing

• Bought 1/3rd of Mercedes F1 Team in 2020

• Sponsored New Zealand Rugby for a minimum of 6 years

So why do Billionaires buy sports teams?

Of course, there is no one reason so here are a few:

1. Global prestige/influence -

Roman Abramovich, the former owner of Chelsea, used his ownership of a premier league club to gain fame and influence. This move expanded his reach beyond business and connected him to a globally recognized brand, elevating his status among the elite. Some think it was to protect him from Putin, but that's another story…..

2. Strategic investment

Owning a sports team can be an incredible investment. Just look at Mark Cuban (a Shark on the US version of Dragon’s Den) who just sold The Dallas Mavericks (basketball team) for $3.7 billion after buying them for $287 million in 2000.

3. Because why the f*ck not?

I mean if you’re a sports lover and can afford to buy a team - which everyone reading this should be with our referral scheme - why wouldn’t you? Elton John bought his favourite football team, Watford FC, just because he loved the team.

So in a few years from now instead of posting that photo on Instagram to improve your status, you could buy your favourite sports team instead - only a few 0s in the way!

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