One of the topics of discussion within the United States, especially in the political circles, is the migration taking place. Over the last few years there was a massive move away from the blue states towards the red. This, of course, is only a trend and could reverse at anytime.

The three big winners according to the experts (for what that is worth) are Texas, Florida and Tennessee. These state are seeing economies growing at a pace that exceeds most other states.

Will this continue? Again, we are looking at trends that contain a variety of factors. Some of these could shift, causing a slowdown.

When it comes to industries, one that is receiving a lot of attention, along with funding, is space. Right now, this seems to be dominated by SpaceX with Jeff Bezos Blue Origin seeking to be a competitor.

Whatever the eventual outcome, we can conclude that space will be the "next frontier". It is hard to deny the fact that the opportunities are enormous. This is not a 5-10 year horizon however. We have to understand this is a 20-30 year window (at a minimum).

In this article we will present the opportunity that is being laid out.

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The Future Is Space

The investment world has spent a lot of time focusing upon the SpaceX IPO, slated to take place this month.

It will be the largest IPO in history, and by a wide margin. The valuation is between $1.5T-$2.0 based upon the estimates. SpaceX might walk away with $75 billion, money is sorely needs for infrastructure buildout.

Some are excited about this opportunity while others think the numbers are absurd. Personally, I understand both sides. This is not a value play. One needs to project into the future to see the vision. This, naturally, is a dangerous game to play. The proponents are already doing this, seeing it as a $10T-$20T company. This would be a fantastic return....if it happens.

The future of space starts with data centers. This is something that was not even being discussed a year ago. However, today, it is all over the news.

SpaceX stands to benefit from this. The merger between xAI and SpaceX was viewed as Elon simply manipulating the markets, hiding his losses in a larger entity. That was the claim at the time of the deal.

Ironic, this is now looking like a major miscalculation by the naysayers. The deal with Anthropic is paying SpaceX over $1 billion per month. SpaceX is one of the few companies in the world with servers it can rent out for mass scale AI. Elon was buying GPUs like an addict over the last couple years. Today, he holds more compute than just about anyone.

Anthropic was constrained. While everyone looks at the models, judging where Grok was in relation to the others, Elon was going down the stack, to the infrastructure, to put SpaceX in position.

Data Centers in Space

Data centers are the focal point. It is also a contentious issue.

Big Tech needs more data centers. There simply is not enough. Anthropic is a prime example. Things were throttle due to the fact they lacked the compute. The day the deal with SpaceX went live, it lifted most limits on its users.

Communities are pushing back. Data centers, according to the narrative, are noisy, cause pollution, and suck up energy. The latter is beyond dispute. Of course, these companies are tasked with providing their own power since these cannot be connected to the grid.

Here is where data centers in space becomes the solution. While it might seem outlandish to many, it makes perfect sent. The ongoing costs are a fraction of here on Earth. This helps the tech companies. The present challenge is the technology is not feasible at the moment.

It also eliminates any pushback. People are getting upset about this, resulting in the NIMBY (not in my backyard) crowd getting vocal. Nobody is going to pushback on space.

My view is these data centers are a certainty. Companies are looking for the compute and it is not likely to diminish. AI services are only growing in number. Inference demand is orders of multitude higher than training. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, placed it at a billion times in 10 years.

Florida The Winner

SpaceX has operations in Texas and Florida. It is headquartered there along with having its own town. The launch operations are out of Cape Canaveral.

Blue Origin is located near the Kennedy Space Center (in Florida). In spite of its recent struggles, it is hard to bet against Jeff Bezos and his personal war chest of hundreds of billions of dollars.

SpaceX might have the lead but it will not be the only player in the game. We are going to see a number of companies emerge as this industry matures.

What does this mean for Florida? When we look at things geographically, it could be a major winner for the state. Florida could become the world's spaceport. SpaceX is already having launches ever couple days. Elon has a goal to get that down to ever few hours.

Over time, other areas will develop. However, the advantage of being first is the infrastructure is in place. Silicon Valley is a prime example of this. So was Hollywood. These became the leaders and held strong for decades. Hollywood was destroyed by Silicon valley is still strong. To date, nothing has replicated it within the US. There are other tech areas but they lag northern California.

NASA started launching rockets on Florida's east coast during the space race with the Soviets. Today, private companies are doing the majority of the launches. Data centers and other communication systems are only the start. Both Elon and Bezos talked about space colonization. However, neither touched upon space tourism or manufacturing, two potential industries that could emerge.