Part #4: The innovation feast and you - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

Part #4: The innovation feast and you - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

Part #4: The innovation feast and you

In this issue: A middle-class jobs boom The most beautiful thing about physical innovation What I hope my kids do with their lives Introducing the space gun

Dear Rational Optimist,   Thanks for all the emails. I’ve never received 450+ responses to a single question before. We asked if you wanted us to write about practical ways to use AI in your life, and you gave a resounding, “Yes.” We’re writing The Rational Optimist’s Guide to AI as we speak.   Thanks also for your responses to a preferred ROS first meetup location. It looks like Boston is in the lead, with Washington, DC a close second. More soon.   We’ve kicked off the new year by analyzing the sudden burst of rapid physical innovation happening all around us. Today, we’ll conclude our series by getting practical.   What should we, the humans living through this rapid transformation, do? How should we plan for our families, our careers, our retirements? What should you encourage your kids to pursue?   If you missed prior issues, see below:   Part 1: WTF happened in 2024?   Part 2: The Five Frontiers   Part 3: The Final Frontiers   In 2011, early Facebook employee Jeff Hammerbacher bemoaned: “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads… that sucks.”   But 2024 marked the great pivot. There’s been a huge shift in what ambitious young entrepreneurs are building.   They're creating nuclear reactors that fit in shipping containers. Robots that dance through warehouses. Cancer-hunting pills. Planes that will streak across the Atlantic at twice the speed of sound. Self-landing rockets—taller than the Statue of Liberty. Microgravity drug factories that orbit Earth.   These aren’t little conveniences like being able to watch The Sopranos reruns on your iPhone. They’re life-changing transformations.   This is just a preview of the next 20 years. Change is happening like an avalanche, fast.   The last innovation feast in the mid-20th century gave us nuclear power, supersonic jets, and the Space Race. It also delivered the greatest middle-class boom ever. Could this burst in innovation shrink the wealth gap again? It already is.   FactSet data shows the net worth for the bottom half of Americans has grown 65% since 2020—more than double any other cohort. Never happened before.   New Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows low-wage workers have experienced the largest pay increase of any income group over the past five years (inflation adjusted).   It’s interesting that the two fastest-growing occupations in America today…   #1: Wind turbine service technician   #2: Solar photovoltaic installer   … don’t require a college degree.   The innovation avalanche is already creating lots of good jobs for people who work with their hands. Manufacturing employment is at its highest since 2008. Direct employment in data centers is growing 8X faster than overall employment.   The physical world is hiring.   The most beautiful thing about physical innovation is we all get to live in the better world we build. The interstate highways built in the 1950s made everyone's life better. The jet engine sped up travel for everyone. As we continue to crack the code of disease, we can all live longer.   Here’s how Rational Optimists should prepare for what comes next.   #1: Investors. In 1980, businesses that made and sold physical stuff ruled. But today, the digital world dominates, as this table shows:

The pendulum is swinging back. Tomorrow's titans will build robots, rockets, reactors, and realities we can touch.   Kodak and Xerox won’t be resurrected. New innovators that make physical “stuff” will rise up to control the top 10 list. This shift has already begun, with Tesla and chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor in spots #8 and #9.   Here are real-world innovators that could crack the “top 10” list by 2030:   Anduril (drones)   ASML (chipmaking machines)   Boston Dynamics, KUKA (robotics)   BYD (world's top EV maker)   Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. (world's largest battery maker)   Eli Lily, Novo Nordisk (semaglutide)   Moderna (mRNA)   OpenAI, Anthropic (AI)   SpaceX (spaceships)   Waymo (robotaxis)   Even more exciting are the hundreds of under-the-radar startups working to achieve the impossible. The more I learn about and talk to these innovators, the more bullish I get about the future.   A sneak peek at one of The Rational Optimist Society’s big projects for 2025: building a database of all the innovative startups across America and the world, pushing boundaries. As a Rational Optimist Society member, you’ll know about the coolest companies doing the coolest stuff.   #2: Entrepreneurs. While working at SpaceX, Chris Hansen realized the only way to power humanity on Mars was with portable nuclear reactors. Now his startup, Radiant, is building microreactors to provide power on Mars, as well as Earth.   Charlie Munger said ideas worth billions hide in cheap books. Every Rational Optimist should study the Five Frontiers of innovation. There are countless billion-dollar business ideas in there. Someone will act on them and build a self-made fortune. Why not you? Why not your kids?   Joining the right startup early can change your life. Since going public in 1986, Microsoft created at least eight billionaires and 12,000 millionaires. Most of these folks were simply early employees who benefitted from Microsoft’s stock option program.   #3: Parents and grandparents. In the 1980s, parents rushed their kids to Japanese language lessons, certain it was the future of business. Wrong.   Until recently, the #1 piece of advice to a young person starting out might have been, “Learn to code.” But AI chatbots now pump out clean code at the click of a button. Coding classes might be tomorrow's dusty Japanese dictionaries.   Help your kids understand that the opportunities of tomorrow won't look like those of the last few decades. Don't assume good jobs require coding skills or burying yourself in college debt. I’ll be telling my kids to seek opportunities in fast-growing industries like energy, manufacturing, robotics, construction, and AI.   Example: Aerospace and nuclear engineering have been dead-end career choices for 40 years. All of a sudden, they’re now some of the most sought-after skill sets in the world. Look at this Wall Street Journal headline:

Source: The Wall Street Journal   Another headline said: “America is trying to electrify. There aren’t enough electricians.”   The kids (and grandkids) of ROS members are in good hands. You know about the big changes underway, and you know the only good option is to lean in. More on this in The Rational Optimist’s Guide to AI.   #4. Lastly, spread rational optimism. As a member of The Rational Optimist Society, you’re “in the know” about the cutting-edge innovations reshaping our world.   But your neighbors probably aren’t. Change that!   Tell someone about robots performing microscopic surgery… nuclear reactors that fit in shipping containers… scientists making breakthrough medicines in orbital factories.   Share a story that makes their eyes light up with possibility. Do it tonight. And tomorrow night, too.   This matters. Everyone who understands this transformation is another person ready to seize its opportunities. Another voice ready to support bold innovation. Another builder of tomorrow.   Fifty years from now, children will see charts showing what happened in 2024. They might ask what role you played in America's great awakening. Will you be able to tell them you helped push it forward?   The future isn't something that happens to us. It's something we build. And America is building again. The innovation avalanche is just beginning. Pull up a chair and invite your friends.   Here’s the link to join The Rational Optimist Society.   Introducing the space gun   Last week, SpaceX caught Starship—the biggest rocket ever—for a second time. I’ll never get tired of this:

Source: Thomas Godden on X   Next up: Later this year, SpaceX and NASA will send an unmanned Starship to test landing on the moon.   Then, in 2027, we’ll send men back to the moon for the first time since 1972. How’s that for a revival of the innovation spirit? As Mike Solana at Pirate Wires says, “Moon should be a state.”   If we're serious about building moon bases and cities on Mars, we're going to need a lot of “stuff” in space. That’s a challenge because getting stuff to space is extremely expensive.   SpaceX has slashed launch costs by 98% since 2000. Now, a startup in Oakland, CA is trying to push it further. Longshot Space is building a gun so massive, your body could slide down its barrel like a playground tunnel.   Rockets are expensive because they need to protect fragile humans and delicate equipment. But concrete, steel, and water don't need a gentle ride to space. They can handle a rougher journey at higher speeds.   Longshot’s hypersonic “space gun” is like a sophisticated potato cannon that can fire concrete, water, steel, and other “stuff” into orbit. Here’s “V1,” a 60-foot barrel that can launch small projectiles at 3,000 mph:

Source: Longshot Space   Longshot’s goal is to build a 15-km barrel capable of launching shipping containers into orbit for just $10 per kg. That’s 99% less than what it costs to hitch a ride on a SpaceX rocket today.   Sounds farfetched… until you know the US military had a working prototype 60 years ago.   In Project HARP (high altitude research project), America built a 120-foot-long cannon pointing straight up into the sky in Barbados. HARP's gun shot a projectile 112 miles into the air traveling at up to 7,000 feet per second—fast enough to cross Manhattan in half a second. This set a world record that still stands today. Time to go back to the future.   Longshot just won a $2 million Air Force contract to build a 500-meter-long gun in the Nevada desert. This beast will launch 100-kg payloads at hypersonic speeds. The acceleration would turn a human body into paste. But it’s no problem for sturdy cargo.   The space race of the 1960s was a contest between global superpowers. Today, it's between hoodie-wearing entrepreneurs working in California warehouses.   From space guns launching cargo to reusable rockets, we're watching the birth of a new space economy. The next decade will likely see more breakthroughs than the past 50 years combined.   Longshot’s success could help open up the cosmos for construction.