In this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan welcomes Dave Lashmet back to the show. Dave is the editor of Stansberry Venture Technology, an advisory that takes a "venture capitalist" look at the market. Dave scours the market looking for little-known small-cap companies that are potentially producing the next wonder drug or technology.

Dave kicks things off by discussing the SpaceX IPO. He calls the company a "Tower of Babel," saying the best use case for Starlink is to replace cell phone towers. However, Starlink's satellites can only provide service for up to 1,000 people. In rural areas, this is fine, but larger cities and the surrounding areas would have higher demand. Additionally, Dave says that there's a 10-year gap between Earth-based and space-based communications. Unlike cell phone towers, satellites have to go through additional processes to ensure that they will function properly while they're in orbit. But in the midst of the IPO, Dave says that Alphabet subsidiary Google will be a major winner...

Because of the EchoStar purchase, Google owns a piece of Starlink and SpaceX. So Google will use SpaceX like dump trucks to carry messages. Google has Android in two-thirds of the world's smartphones, where they own the operating system for free in exchange for all the data they get from the smartphone customers, which are probably the top billion buyers in the world... Google also gets Maps and Search on iPhones... What do people want to find and where are they? That's still a pretty rich data stream. And if you're on one of their sites, they can hit you with ads. So Google's a monster... Google can use SpaceX's conduit, but Google can monetize it because they already own everything about the users that they sell ads to.

Next, Dave shares how the SpaceX IPO will result in many folks investing in 401(k)s to be holding shares of the company unintentionally and how that happens. And they'll have an unreasonable percentage of their portfolio owning a stock that isn't gushing cash. Dave then talks about how cameras will be the future of space. Sony's research and development division created a "four-color camera" that operates on the red, green, blue, and shortwave infrared spectrums. Infrared doesn't currently work in any functional capacity for everyday users, but for the companies that build telescopes, the next breakthrough was evident. And this technology can help with "seeing" better than other cameras...

From space, if you look at the world in shortwave infrared, there's no blue, there's no wave, there's no current. There's only black or ship or island. And it is by far the best sensor ever built, put in by far the best telescope ever built... So in a red/green/blue [spectrum] where all three colors make white if you turn the intensity all the way up [and] make black [turning] the intensities all the way down... everything's a zero, unless it's a ship. And then you get a precise picture of the ship... And it sees through cloud and fog and dust.

Finally, Dave breaks down "near space," the region of the atmosphere between the stratosphere and space. It's tricky to station anything there due to the high amount of air resistance and insufficient amount of air that could support the lift needed for wings, so there's little interest in going there. But one company Dave is looking at is developing the "basking shark" capable of enduring in near space. And if the U.S. government wants its "golden dome," it needs to go to this company. And Dave marvels at how space is able to improve many things on Earth that wouldn't be possible otherwise...

Space is incredibly valuable. The ability to make weather satellites actually useful is because we have the ability to reach space. Thirty years ago, weather satellites were horrific, and you never knew what was going to happen. Now we have stunning predictions about three days out, fairly accurate predictions about five days out, and a reasonable shot at seven days out. And our world is better because of that space capability... GPS and weather alone are pretty profound uses of space... [And] ships at sea or planes at sea that run into trouble aren't in trouble because they can get help. So space is lucrative and useful.

Click on the image below to watch the video interview with Dave right now. For the audio version, click "Listen" above.

(Additional past episodes are located here.)

The transcript is coming soon.

This Week's Guest

Dave Lashmet is the editor of Stansberry Venture Technology, a monthly advisory that takes a "venture capitalist" approach to investing. He was one of the first employees at Stansberry Research back in the early days of the business. His unique insight into new technologies has led to some of the biggest gains in the company's history. Dave has spent 10-plus years teaching and writing about medicine and technology at major research universities. He has also conducted research at some of the most important facilities in North America, including Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Canadian Centers for Disease Control, just to name a few.

Dave returned to Stansberry Research in 2014 after a stint at a consumer-electronics company where he managed a team of experts. His work there took him around the world, delivering presentations in Germany, Taiwan, China, Canada, New York, and Los Angeles. He has even delivered a briefing before a congressional delegation. Dave is also an analyst for Stansberry's Investment Advisory.