Jeff Bezos wants to build permanent outposts on the moon and colonize space. Richard Branson wants to make spaceflight as natural as air travel. Elon Musk wants to settle on Mars to make humanity multiplanetary.
IBX's Kam Ghaffarian wants to go even further: the stars.
“There is a common denominator: combining altruism, doing something purposeful and good, and combining it with capitalism to make a positive impact,” he told CNBC's Morgan Brennan at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. “The vision for IBX is to protect our home, our planet, and then find new homes and stars and everything that entails. So if we say on the space side that the ultimate destination for humanity is interstellar travel, and going to space, the stars, then we have to take a lot of intermediate steps to do that.”
It would sound far-fetched if it weren't for his track record. Ghaffarian has been instrumental in ushering in the new space economy, having co-founded and invested in a cadre of commercial space ventures.
Publicly traded Intuitive machineswhere Ghaffarian is co-founder and executive chairman, recently made history when his Odysseus spacecraft successfully landed on the moon, becoming the first commercial lander to do so.
Ghaffarian is also co-founder and chairman of Axiom Space, which now regularly sends private astronauts on commercial missions to the International Space Station – the first company allowed to connect modules and provide full-service missions to the ISS – as it works on the build your own space station.
At Quantum Space, where he is also executive chairman, the focus is on commerce and communications in deep space via a superhighway of satellites stretching from Earth orbit to the moon and beyond; X-Energy, which he founded, has developed working nuclear reactors that it says are “designed to be intrinsically safe,” as well as nuclear propulsion capabilities.
His family office, IBX (which stands for “Imagine, Believe, Execute”) is at the center of this space exploration constellation.
'We have to do all the intermediate steps. I'm with Elon [Musk] and Jeff [Bezos]both my dear friends, to be able to do the LEO first [low earth orbit]”Being able to go to the moon and Mars, because we have to do that before we can go interstellar,” Ghaffarian explained on CNBC's Manifest Space podcast.
Follow and listen to CNBC's Podcast “Manifest Space”.hosted by Morgan Brennan, wherever you get your podcasts.
Unlike other high-profile billionaires who build commercial space companies, Ghaffarian made his fortune from the space industry. Instead of focusing on access to space, he is taking advantage of those falling costs to build out infrastructure and business activities in space.
The Iranian-born entrepreneur, who immigrated to the US some four and a half decades ago, co-founded a government services company called Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies, which became a top contractor for NASA before KBR acquired it in 2018.
“If you create a company that's fantastic, and you develop incredible technologies, but no one wants to buy it, or there's no business case, then you haven't made any difference,” Ghaffarian said. “How do you create a business model where you're purpose-driven, you make a difference, but you can also … deliver returns to the investors in a huge way?”
Ghaffarian believes the space economy will be worth trillions of dollars – and sooner than many realize. He sees technological leaps forward in artificial intelligence and quantum computing as crucial to unlocking the full potential of space.
He said microgravity-based pharmaceutical research and industrial production, sustainable propulsion and energy sources, and building out lunar infrastructure will be some of the capabilities and services in greater demand in the coming years.
“It's normal that people don't fully appreciate it. … When did people appreciate the AI revolution – 10 years ago? Not really, right? And suddenly now we have a herd mentality where everyone is jumping in,” Ghaffarian said, who also mentioned the early days of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Tesla and SpaceX, even air travel, as templates for the space world. “I think we're just getting started there in this space exploration and space ecosystem, the space economy, and it's still not there yet, but I believe it's going to take off and grow quickly, and I truly believe they” We underestimate the size of the market.”
As investors press on, the aerospace billionaire's ventures will continue to aim for the stars.