April 7, 2021
A key mission of Elon Musk’s SpaceX company is to take humans to Mars. Musk’s girlfriend, the singer Grimes, says she wants to relocate to the Red Planet and is ready to die there. Grimes says she plans to head to Mars when she reaches 50 even if it involves “manual labor until death.” Musk envisions building a city on Mars, thereby allowing humans to become “a multi-planet civilization.”
Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic has unveiled a next-generation spacecraft called VSS Imagine. In 2019 the company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange as the first space tourism stock. It used a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, to go public. SPACs are corporate shells that raise money from investors and then look for a private business to merge with later. Virgin merged with a SPAC called Social Capital Hedosophia, which took a 49% stake in the company. Although SPACs come with risks, they are a hot trend on Wall Street. CNBC says that in the past six months, seven other space ventures have announced SPAC deals.
Major optimism regarding space travel is a manifestation of positively trending social mood, which fuels fascination with new and future technologies aimed at improving people’s lives.
To learn more read “High-Flying Technological Forecasts Are on a Collision Course With Reality.”
If you look closely, you can see patterns in social mood that help you predict social trends. Learn more with the Socionomics Premier Membership.
The Socionomist enables you to see trend-shaping waves of social mood, as reflected by the stock market — and capitalize on them. The June issue looks at phases of social mood and features a “Research Roundup,” which highlights five academic studies that shine a light on important aspects of socionomic theory. Mood Riffs topics include “quiet luxury,” loneliness, the Writers Guild strike and efforts by countries to trade in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. Read the June issue when you become a Socionomics Premier Member.
