Family Wealth Management

07/17/2026

07/15/2026

A new study published in PNAS Nexus extrapolated current trends across 4,400 rockets launched from 1960 to 2025 to determine how inexpensive it will be to yeet something into orbit in the future. The cost of sending a pound (lb)of payload to orbit was $1,755 last year, down from $39,463 per lb. in the 1960s and $9,072 per lb. in the 1970s, and that trend is expected to persist. The study projects a 58% decline in payload launch costs by 2030, when it will hit $712 per lb., and then as low as $124 per lb. by 2040.

07/07/2026

International Energy Agency found that fossil fuels continue to accrue substantial subsidies from governments that otherwise mouth along to their green transitions. One third of government energy spending or $939 billion goes towards energy affordability, benefitting oil, gas and domestic coal, as well as electrical bills overall. In 2025, 68% of all money spent on the fossil fuel system came from taxpayers when accounting for public investment and public subsidies, up from 59% in 2015.

07/02/2026

Homeowners in the United States installed 673 megawatts of battery storage in the first 3 months of 2026. This is even after the federal government stripped the incentives that had previously been fueling the rise in solar installs. Most of the installations were in California (375 megawatts) and Hawaii (130 megawatts), which both incentivize battery installations at the state level. California installed 1.2 megawatts of residential storage for every one megawatt of solar. Hawaii offered homeowners a one-time $400 cash incentive for every kilowatt of battery storage added.

07/02/2026

The Dolphin Mine in Australia is the highest-grade large tungsten deposit outside of China, and tends to restart ahead of major wars given the necessity of tungsten in weapons applications. It opened in 1917 and shut down 3 years later, started up again in 1938, faltered but then saw new demand ahead of the Korean and Vietnam Wars and then shut down in 1990 for good (12 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall). Now that the cost of a metric ton of 88.5% ammonium paratungstate jumped from $343 at the beginning of the year to over $3,000 today, the mine just reopened and is doing great, with each container of tungsten it ships out worth about $2 million.

06/29/2026

The report from the World Shipping Council about containers lost at sea is out, with the industry estimating that 1,478 containers were lost overboard last year out of 280 million containers transported overall. That is up from 576 containers last year, driven by just a few major incidents (the MSC ELSA 3 sinking off the coast of India with 640 lost containers paramount among them) but still overall well under the historical average.