Connecting Data to Wealth Creation
Connecting Data to Wealth Creation
SpaceX continues its relentless launch cadence, most recently deploying the Sentinel-6B satellite from Vandenberg Space Force Base. The mission, a collaboration between the EU, ESA, NASA, and others, aims to monitor sea-level rise, a key consequence of climate change. The satellite, equipped with a radar altimeter and a microwave radiometer, will measure sea surface heights with impressive accuracy. The question, though, is whether this launch, and the data it provides, will truly move the needle, or if it's just another data point in an overwhelming trend.
The press release emphasizes the nearly 4-inch (approximately 10 cm) rise in ocean levels over the past 25 years, according to Copernicus data. Sentinel-6B, like its predecessor, is touted as a "gold standard" for monitoring this rise. But let's break this down. Four inches over 25 years translates to roughly 0.16 inches per year. Now, consider the cost: the Sentinel-6 mission (both A and B) represents a $1 billion international collaboration, split evenly between the US and Europe.
Is the granularity of data worth the investment? Karen St. Germain, NASA’s director of Earth science, claims this information underpins navigation, search and rescue, commercial fishing, and flood predictions. While that's undoubtedly true, it's difficult to directly correlate the economic benefit of this incrementally improved data with the fiscal cost. I've looked at hundreds of NASA statements, and the lack of precise ROI calculations is, well, standard. What's the actual dollar value of knowing sea levels to within an inch versus, say, three inches? That figure is curiously absent.
SpaceX's role in this is primarily logistical. The Falcon 9, a reusable rocket, is becoming the workhorse for these missions. This particular booster (B1097) marked its third flight, landing back at Vandenberg after launching Sentinel-6B. Reusability, as Blue Origin is also discovering (with their recent successful landing of a New Glenn booster after a Mars mission launch), drastically reduces launch costs.
But even with reusable rockets, the cost per launch is still significant. Estimates vary, but a Falcon 9 launch likely costs tens of millions of dollars. So, we have a billion-dollar satellite launched on a multi-million dollar rocket to measure fractions of an inch of sea-level rise. The equation feels… asymmetrical, doesn't it?
The bigger picture here is the burgeoning space race, fueled by billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. While SpaceX focuses on Starlink constellations and lunar landers, Blue Origin is now nipping at its heels with their own broadband satellite project, Kuiper, and their recent successful booster landing.
This competition is driving down launch costs, which is undoubtedly a positive development. (Lower launch costs means more science missions, theoretically.) But it also raises questions about priorities. Are we investing enough in analyzing the data we're collecting, or are we simply focused on the impressive feat of getting satellites into orbit?
The Sentinel-6B mission, admirable as it is, highlights this tension. We have increasingly sophisticated tools to measure climate change, but are we effectively translating that data into meaningful action? The article notes that "In line with Trump Administration policies, mission officials have made no mention of climate change." This is a crucial point. Data without context, without a clear call to action, is just… numbers. And numbers, as any hedge fund analyst knows (parenthetical clarification: that used to be me), can be manipulated to tell any story.
The launch itself was a success, of course. SpaceX executed two launches in less than four hours from Florida, demonstrating their operational efficiency. SpaceX launches 2 rockets less than 4 hours apart from Florida's Space Coast (video) The Starlink constellation continues to grow, with over 8,900 operational satellites in LEO. But these achievements, impressive as they are, shouldn't distract us from the fundamental question: are we using these technological advancements to solve the problems they help us quantify? And this is the part of the report that I find genuinely puzzling. It's like having a high-definition weather forecast but refusing to bring an umbrella.