Sir Richard Branson, the founder and CEO of Virgin Galactic, announced a surprising plan to travel to space on July 11, beating Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to it.

Virgin Galactic, the space subsidiary of the Virgin Group, has been working on Unity rocket plane in the US for about 20 years now, in a push to fulfill Sir Branson’s long-held dream to touch the space someday and to make way for others to do the same.

This comes after the US Federal Aviation Administration in late June gave Virgin Galactic permission to take paying customers into space after a successful test flight in May.

The announcement has added to the culminating space frenzy kicked off by SpaceX founder and CEO, Elon Musk. Since May last year, when SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft leaped on a Falcon 9 rocket from the Launch Complex 39-A at Cape Canaveral in Florida, marking a new era of commercial spaceflight, the billionaires’ race to space has intensified.

The aim has been, among others, to develop commercial spacecraft services that anyone who can afford it would hitch to the edge of the earth or the orbit.

“I truly believe that space belongs to all of us,” Branson said. “I’ve always been a dreamer. My mum taught me to never give up and to reach for the stars. On July 11, it’s time to turn that dream into a reality aboard the next @VirginGalactic,” he said via Twitter.

Sir Branson will be journeying alongside employees of Virgin Galactic, Beth Moses, Galactic’s chief astronaut instructor; Colin Bennett, lead operations engineer; and Sirisha Bandla, vice president of government affairs. Dave Mackay and Michael “Sooch” Masucci will be the two pilots up front.

Last month, Blue Origin, Bezos’ space company, announced the winner of a $28 million auction to ride alongside Bezos on the New Shepard rocket on July 20. Bezos also announced he would be accompanied into space on 20 July by Wally Funk, a female aerospace pioneer, who was denied the chance to be an astronaut in the 1960s due to her gender. The 82-year-old will be the oldest person ever to travel to space.

However, the cost of the trips has varied with each of the space companies. In January, a trio of American real estate investors, a Canadian investor, and a former Israeli Air Force pilot teamed up to pay $55 million each to be part of the first fully private astronaut crew to journey to the International Space Station (ISS), on board SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule early next year.

Virgin Galactic has sold tickets to about 600 passengers at a price between $200,000 and $250,000 each, although the company expects it could increase its prices substantially for the first commercial flights.

Blue Origin said its ticket pricing is yet to be determined, but Bezos expects his company will price flights on New Shepard in comparison to competitors. Analysts expect its flights to cost as much as $500,000 for a brief up and down that includes several minutes of weightlessness.

The reason for the differences in pricing is because the three competitors have developed quite different technologies, offering varying flight altitude. SpaceX offers orbital trips, including to the ISS, reaching an altitude of over 400 kilometers above the earth, while Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin offer suborbital, which reaches an altitude of about 100 kilometers above the earth. Virgin Galactic launches its rocket ship from an aircraft, reaching an altitude of roughly 55 miles (88km). Blue Origin launches its New Shepard rocket from the ground, with its capsule soaring to about 66 miles. The orbit services thus justify the wide pricing gap between SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin.

Despite the cost, the space commercial transport services has been dubbed the fastest-growing part of the luxury market, holding a future multi-billion dollar sector.

CNBC reported on Cowen and UBS recently conducted surveys of high net worth individuals and their interest in suborbital tourism. Cowen’s survey found suborbital flights have a total addressable market of about 2.4 million people among individuals with a net worth of more than $5 million.

UBS surveyed more than 6,000 high net worth individuals specifically on flying with Virgin Galactic. About 20% of those UBS surveyed said they are “likely to purchase a ticket on a spacecraft within 1 year” of the company beginning regular flights. That number increases to between more than 35% “after several years of safe operation,” UBS said.

With the increasing interest in Space travel, a new multi-billion dollar sector has been born. The global space economy is expected to be worth at least $1.1 trillion in 2040, if the current trend is sustained, According to Forbes.

The best strategy is NEVER lose hope: tomorrow is a promise. Those days in FUTO, we skipped meals. Then, in days, after receiving the first paycheck, the past became history. Never doubt the promises of tomorrow. Do not feed your mind so much with Abuja. Find the energy to do productive and creative things. Like in the acres of diamond, think of  the periwinkle: you must crack it to get the cryolite, the precious gem. #believe

The cryolite is a precious gem. Some of the finest types are made from periwinkle. But that only happens when the animal shell is cracked.

Many who rose to the mountaintop like Nelson Mandela experienced the cracking of their shells. But instead of the agonies of pains, they released abundance and hope, elements of societal priceless gems, which changed the destinies of people.

The key is this: do not give up because the NEXT chapter could be awesome.

Join me to thank Femi Akintunde , CEO of Alpha Mead Group for funding all the current Final Year students of Industrial Engineering department of the University of Ibadan, their lecturers and all current executive members of the Industrial Engineering Students Association (IESA) to Tekedia Institute CollegeBoost. Let me also thank Mr. Akintunde for sending dozens of Alpha Mead team members to Tekedia Mini-MBA. 

Across Africa, more students are getting real-market business education in Tekedia CollegeBoost. We provide a platform where executives from great local and global companies teach. The impact is huge across campuses.

Tekedia CollegeBoost is an Advanced Diploma in Business Administration designed for students in colleges. It involves an 8-week program which could be broken into two semesters or taken in one semester, depending on the arrangement with the school or group of students. This course is only offered to a group of students.

We wish Mr. Akintunde and Alpha Mead open markets and territories for funding the Future. Thank you.

(Source: LinkedIn)

When I joined banking many years ago, I developed this simple playbook to become efficient in meetings and tasks. I called it the NEWT model. Today, I use it a lot as I interact with teams, founders, colleagues, etc. Using a text file in my laptop, I maintain order, chronicling outcomes of meetings, etc.

A physical diary keeps long-term actions which are seasonably broken down and moved into the text file. As the days go, I move things around the file. Every evening, I write down on a piece of paper what I have to work for the next day, making provisions for emergencies. You will always see a piece of paper on my desk!

This is the NEWT: after every meeting, I think through it before I move to the next thing. I quickly update the necessary files where necessary.

• – Next action to be taken: what do I have to do next based on this meeting?
• – Extra factors of production required: what resources or people can help me make this a success?
• – Who owns the action: In all, which actions should I focus and concentrate and own?
• – Time to execute action: when do they expect me to revert with results?

If for any reason I could not make sense of some of these, I will quickly check with a meeting attendee or the host to ensure alignment. Sure, these days, I have people who help but the process remains.

Nigerians are guilty of favoring foreign-made goods and services at the expense of the locally manufactured ones. They also prefer services rendered by foreigners even when there are locals that can do those works. In as much as it’s not every Nigerian that harbors this bias against locally made goods and the services rendered by the locals, the number of those that value foreign goods and services supersede that of their counterparts on the other side. The bias even exists in agricultural produce, where Nigerians will rather pay heavily for foreign rice than go for the local ones that have almost the same quality. Today, there is this accepted notion that only the poor go for Nigerian-made products while the rich use foreign ones. This, of course, is not true. However, fact remains that Nigerians, who can afford to, opt for imported goods, irrespective of their country of origin.

But, sometimes, you don’t have to blame people for seeking foreign products even though the Nigerian equivalents exist. Yes, some people use foreign goods because they want to show off but that is not the case all the time. There may be no excuses for people that exhibit this prejudice in the case of food items and agricultural produce but when it comes to manufactured goods, it becomes a different ball game altogether. The truth is that Nigerian manufacturers encourage the preference for foreign goods; they are doing their best to push out their customers.

In a little survey I conducted last year, concerning Nigerians’ preference for foreign clothes and shoes, I realized that many people will not go for Nigerian-made clothes and shoes if they have a choice. From the information I got, I discovered that the quality, quantity, and price of Nigerian-made products are some of the reasons discouraging Nigerians from patronizing Nigerian-made goods. How these factors do this are briefly discussed below.

• The Quality of Nigerian Products as a Discouraging Factor

If you ask the person sitting next to you to compare Nigerian and foreign products, they will not waste time telling you how odd it is for you to even consider the two are comparable. Some will tell you, you are living in limbo to think Nigerian products are in any way closer in quality to foreign ones. Believe me, these people are not saying something out of place because some Nigerian producers exhibit this “anyhowness” with their products. It is as if they don’t consider Nigerians good enough to enjoy good quality products. As a result, they plague the nation with things that are not worth the value for their money.

• Quantity as a Hindrance to Patronising Nigerian Products

A good example I will use here is the discrepancies between the size of the 50kg bag of local and foreign rice. Maybe the scale used for bagging Nigerian rice is different from the one used for foreign rice. Even a child can comfortably carry the 25kg local rice without qualms. This makes one wonder why Nigerians are bent on lying and cheating in everything.

• Price of Nigerian Products as a Discouraging Factor

It is ironic that the prices of some Nigerian products are trying so hard to compete with that of their foreign counterparts but their qualities cannot measure up. This is common among clothes and footwear. For this, many people will rather go for foreign ones that are more durable, even if they are used, than opt for local ones that can disappoint their users.

Note that some Nigerian manufactures are doing their best to measure up with the international standard but many are still dragging them behind. The few bad eggs among these producers are the reason the manufacturing industry will take a long time to revive because many people are still not comfortable with Nigerian-made products. This is because if no one buys what these manufacturers make, they will definitely be discouraged from producing more. I hope that does not happen.

But I believe the reason we have substandard locally made products in our markets is that the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) is not doing its job as it is supposed to. Today, it is uncertain if this agency conducts a quality assurance test on all these goods flooding our markets. If they do, then how come many of our locally made products do not give Nigerians the value for their money?

We can’t talk of employment and creating jobs if our manufacturing sector is down. But, unfortunately, the manufacturing sector can’t rise if the products they release into the market are substandard. These are problems that should be addressed as soon as possible. I believe SON needs to do more than it’s doing now.