How a space mission shaped my investment journey
The Voyager program continues to teach us a lot about the universe. Here’s what it can teach us about managing our money.
Charlie Munger, one of the great thinkers, had a unique approach to investing. He borrowed ideas across disciplines — a far cry from today’s finance bros. While everyone today obsesses over every detail in finance and geopolitics, he was passionate about many other things. In fact, Mr. Munger was a part-time architect!
He’d take evergreen principles from every field to enrich his investment philosophy. Take, for instance, his deep understanding of behavioural psychology. A knowledge of cognitive biases is crucial to becoming a better investor.
While finance is my mainstay, I’m able to draw lessons from other fields too. In recent years, I’ve taken to the field of astrophysics. It is fascinating how an entire world beyond ours — much vaster than ours — continues to remain unexplored. And one mission that has always fascinated me — the Voyager program — has taught us a lot about the Cosmos.
Throughout this article, you’ll find out how space exploration has so much in common with investing. After all, both deal with the unknown. And for a space mission to work, you have to bear a lot of uncertainty.
So, let’s start with a little background about the mission.
History of the Voyager Program
The Voyager program was timed to take advantage of a rare planetary occurrence. Planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune — would be positioned in such a manner that a spacecraft could swing from one to the other. This manoeuvre is known as a gravity assist and would help cut the travel time for Neptune from 30 years to 12 years!
You might be thinking — this stuff is straight out of the movies. So, who came up with this brilliant plan?
In 1961, Minovitch, a Mathematics graduate at UCLA, was juggling his internship and PhD to solve one of the hardest problems known to us — the three-body problem. In short, it involves predicting how gravitational forces from two celestial bodies would influence a third body. Specifically, how a space probe would interact with the forces of the Sun and the planet nearest to the probe.
Actually, we still don’t have a theoretical solution to the three-body problem. That is, there’s no general expression that describes how three bodies will interact with each other in every possible situation. What we do have are computer simulations that can quite accurately predict how such systems work.
It’s a bit like chess. There’s no formula for the perfect move in any given position. So, chess engines evaluate positions based on prior patterns to present a sequence of moves. While the combinations of moves are limitless, after a while the options become limited. In both cases — celestial mechanics and chess — simulations help us prepare for such specific situations.
At the time, Minovitch ran some simulations on his high-end IBM computer. Then verified his results at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And he found that a probe flying close to a planet — orbiting around the Sun — could “steal” some of its orbital speed.
Although he had a unique approach, the idea of using gravity assists was shelved. It wasn’t until, 1965, Gary Flandro — another summer intern — revisited the calculations and decided there was immense potential in this idea. He knew the realities of space travel and found that the manoeuvre could actually work.
He went through Minovitch’s results and found that there was a narrow window of opportunity where four planets could be explored in quick succession. Flandro noticed that such an alignment would only occur once every 175 years — and if a spacecraft launched in the late ’70s, it could use gravity assists to slingshot from one planet to the next, drastically reducing fuel requirements.
The four-planet exploration program was called the Grand Tour Program and at the heart of it was Minovitch’s concept of gravity assists. However, NASA had envisioned that four space probes would cover the Grand Tour. Two would visit Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto, while the other two would visit Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. But due to budget constraints, only two probes — Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 — were approved.
So, the rare planetary occurrence allowed them to reach where they are today — far, far beyond their intended checkpoint of Jupiter and Saturn.
Originally, the aim of the mission was to get up and close with Jupiter and Saturn. At the time, studying Saturn’s rings and the bigger moons of both planets were high-priority items. Naturally, such an ambitious mission left NASA scientists utterly exhausted.
The art of elimination
NASA scientists ran through over 10,000 trajectories before deciding on two. Quite a high rejection rate, right?
They had a few guidelines in mind. The final trajectories should allow for flybys to:
- Jupiter and its large moon Io
- Saturn and its large moon Titan
Having a set of objectives meant they’d have to narrow their options down to what really works.
While it is a simple process of elimination, it is what drives most winning investment strategies.
Most people ignore crucial things like valuation, profitability, and cash generation — they have an obsession with the share price. However, creating non-negotiables can help you filter out a huge chunk of the listed universe.
Now you only have to work with companies that make the cut. And picking winners from this pile is much simpler.
Setting your goals
Did you know the Voyager 1 could’ve reached Pluto?
As discussed, the original plan was to have a party of four space probes to cover the entire Grand Tour. NASA scientists foresaw that the Voyager 1 could reach Pluto in 1986. But there were a few complications.
Pluto was relatively unknown at the time. Scientists only knew it as a dwarf planet with a methane atmosphere and a moon. On the other hand, Saturn’s moon, Titan, was a high-priority goal because there was a lot more information on it.
Also, Titan was an alluring prize in the world of space exploration. And the problem was the Voyager 1 couldn’t simply tweak its path to include both in its way. Instead, it had to either conduct a flyby of Titan or forego it, then, head for Pluto.
At the time, astronomers had no idea that there wouldn’t be a third Voyager to come along and explore Pluto. Neither did they know that it would take a whopping 30 years more to reach Pluto. New Horizons completed the milestone back in 2015.
While it might seem like a missed opportunity, there’s an interesting lesson here.
You never know what the future holds. But it always helps to stick to facts and reasoning when building a future-proof thesis.
Too many people are obsessed with picking winners that they’re paranoid about missing one. However, a sound logical framework is all you need for investment success.
While NASA scientists missed Pluto, they got to get some incredible pictures of the moon, Titan. So there’ll be times, you’ll have to be at peace with skipping the next multibagger in pursuit of your goals.
The fact is, scientists didn’t know enough about Pluto to treat it as a high priority. But if they’d known that it would take 30 years to reach the outermost planet, they’d probably have taken a different course of action.
Similarly, in the pursuit of wealth, there will always be winning opportunities you’ll miss. And they’ll seem obvious in hindsight. However, if they don’t fit your framework, you have to be comfortable with others making more money off them. Trust me though, in the long run, logical stock ideas always beat speculative bets.
Pale Blue Dot
6 billion kilometres away, Earth appears as small as a speck. And that is what the Voyager 1 captured on Valentine’s Day in 1990–13 years after the launch date.
Thanks to Carl Sagan’s advocacy for the photo, we got one of the most symbolic pictures of our home planet. In reflection of the moment, he wrote these lines:
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
The distance covered by the space probe was unprecedented. However, it leads us to another important lesson — one on compounding.
You’ll face many challenges on your journey. Times when consolidating a bet will seem hopeless. However, very good ideas take years to generate solid returns. And every small amount, you added to your portfolio, will suddenly snowball into a sizable corpus.
You just have to be patient. And when you look back on this moment, decades from now, you’ll think about the first stock you bought, with fondness. While you’d have made many mistakes along the way, you’d have learned even more about investing.
Investing is also a humbling and character-building experience. And you’ll have to accept your losses with grace.
Conclusion
At this point in time, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are now in interstellar space — beyond the influence of the Sun. And Voyager 1 is the fastest human-made object relative to Earth. It is travelling at 17 km/s — 25 times faster than a bullet.
Voyager 2 is fairly close as well, speeding at 15 km/s!
The reason this mission caught my imagination was that the scientists designed the space probes to last five years. After being in motion for nearly 50 years, NASA scientists shut a couple of instruments of each probe — early this year — to conserve power.
That’s what a real space mission looks like. It tests your limits, forces you to think creatively, and even pushes your patience. As an investor, the goal is not to just pick winning stocks but to learn how to deal with uncertainty. After all, during the worst market downturns, the most irrational behaviour becomes the norm.
That’s when people make mistakes with their money. And this hinders their survival in a game that rewards patience rather than book-smarts.
