The Saturday Morning Newsletter #71
New Year’s Eve Shows Time Matters, 2026 Is The Year of Space, and The Return of Supersonic Jets
This Week I’m Tracking: 17 developments across the sectors shaping our future
Reading Time: 6 minutes of curated insights
Your weekly pulse check: The most important events in venture capital, energy, space, economics, intellectual property, philosophy, and more. I distill the most important developments across sectors I track, saving you hours of research while keeping you ahead of the curve.
New to these updates? They pair with our bi-weekly Brainwave analyses for comprehensive sector coverage. Wednesday’s deep dive explored what superforecasters know that you don’t - catch up here.
Let’s dive in.
#1: Ruminant Biotech
Description: Ruminant Biotech is a developer of methane-reducing food for livestock.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Ruminant Biotech recently raised $9.5M in venture capital funding. Ruminant is developing a slow-release bolus food that reduces cattle’s methane emissions by 90%. Methane emissions from livestock are a major contributor to climate change, so this is a major development to efficiently reduce risks.
#2: Boom Supersonic
Description: Boom Supersonic is a developer of supersonic jets.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Boom Supersonic recently raised $300M in venture capital funding. Boom is reviving the trend of supersonic jet travel, already taking orders from United Airlines, American Airlines, and Japan Airlines. These planes will get you to your destination 2x faster than traditional air travel.
#3: Maritime Fusion
Description: Maritime Fusion is a developer of nuclear fusion reactors on boats.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Maritime Fusion recently raised $4.5M in venture capital funding. Maritime Fusion looked at the world and saw that fusion technology would be better suited to earlier stages of boat development than to the grid. As such, their goal is to develop viable boat-based technology, then deploy the proven technology across the grid.
#4: Reditus Space
Description: Reditus Space is a developer of commercial satellites.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Reditus Space recently raised $7.1M in venture capital funding. Reditus’s satellites are especially made for in-space drug production and microgravity manufacturing. They’ve designed their product with the return journey in mind, providing a valuable system for product development and testing, then surfacing actionable results.
#5: Flocean
Description: Flocean is a developer of subsea desalination systems.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Flocean recently raised $22.5M in venture capital funding. Current projections indicate that water demand will outpace supply by 40% by 2030. Flocean aims to deliver an affordable source of fresh water by leveraging the properties of deep-sea water. Conventional desalination plants have a large footprint, so subsea desalination offers an alternative solution.
Canary Media: Nuclear Power’s Loud But Quiet Year
If you wanted a high-level summary year in review of nuclear in 2025, here it is: “For press releases, policy changes, and promises to build new nuclear power, 2025 was a gangbusters year. For actually adding new reactors to the grid, not so much. In fact, around the world, more gigawatts’ worth of nuclear reactors were retired than turned on this year, according to new data from the consultancy BloombergNEF.”
ABC News: What to Know About Wind Power as the Trump Administration Pauses Wind Projects
The Trump administration announced this week that it would pause five offshore wind projects. As the United States faces an unprecedented increase in energy demand, this decision will reverberate across the energy sector, driving up electricity prices and intensifying consumer pressure to unlock wind power.
Energies Media: Colored Solar Panels Arriving in America
Solar panels have been adopted worldwide. However, they aren’t without their opponents. For instance, some claim solar panels ruin scenic views, require too much land, can’t be installed on all types of buildings, and generally aren’t visually pleasing. One company is looking to address some of these concerns by offering colored solar panels that appear more integrated with the surrounding environment.
The Conversation: The World Lost the Climate Gamble
In 2015, the Paris Agreement was the first major international attempt to prevent impending climate catastrophes. Unfortunately, in 2025, humanity is far from achieving the goals outlined in the agreement. What will the outcome of this be? It’s unclear, but scientists are beginning to claim that humans are living beyond the planet’s limits.
New York Times: Your Wait for These Space Events Is About to Pay Off
2026 promises to be the year of significant space developments. Here’s all that’s expected to happen:
NASA is sending astronauts to the moon
A major summer eclipse over Europe
Continuing emphasis on the new space race between the U.S., China, Russia, India, and private corporations across the globe.
Expanded insights and analysis from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory
Launching of the Roman Space Telescope
Japanese mission to Mars moons
TIME: The James Webb Telescope Transformed How We See Space
The James Webb Telescope is 4 years old now. It cost $9.7B to produce, and has definitely outperformed the investment, transforming how humans see space. The next question is how old the universe is, and the James Webb Telescope is the perfect solution for all our astronomy needs.
New York Times: AI Data Centers in Space
The major proponents of artificial intelligence are beginning to see that AI data centers will eventually require more energy and land than are available on Earth. The solution? Put the datacenters in space. For instance, Google is working on Project Suncatcher, a space data center project that will begin test launches in 2027.
The New York Times: The Global Economy Must Adapt to Avoid Tumult This Year
2025 was the year of minor setbacks and pitfalls for the global economy. In 2026, some are projecting an upturn; however, others are uncertain about our economic future. To continue being successful, we must make significant adjustments to our financial structure to address the underlying problems that continually plague us, rather than spot-checking solutions.
Business Weekly: Why Your Intellectual Property is Worth More Than You Think
Organizations are generating an unprecedented level of intellectual property. Most of this intellectual property remains underutilized and/or could be applied in new markets. To maximize the value of their intellectual property, businesses need to see themselves not as a business in a specific industry, but as a dynamic collection of intellectual property that can be applied to new markets.
Big Time: 3 Philosophical Questions That Neuroscience is Reframing
Advances in neuroscience continue to reveal secrets of the mind. Over the last century, our knowledge has come a long way. Neuroscience continues to drive insights into philosophical questions humans have been trying to answer for millennia. Here are three areas where neuroscience will provide further insights in 2026:
The concept of free will
The existential crisis of meaning
The concept of the self
Reddit: New Year’s Eve is a Collective Agreement to Pretend Time Suddenly Matters
I’ve always been interested in how people mentally approach a new year (if they even do), so this post caught my eye surrounding this discussion.
This poster’s thought is the following:
New year’s eve is fascinating when you strip it down. It’s a moment where billions of people collectively agree that a completely arbitrary transition december 31st to january 1st is deeply meaningful.
Nothing actually changes. The sun rises the same way. Our lives continue with the same habits, problems and unfinished business. There’s no natural shift, no physical boundary just a human made calendar flipping a page. And yet we load it with symbolism, expectations and emotional weight.
We decide this is the night for reflection, resolution, endings and fresh starts. Not because time itself demands it but because we agreed it does. That doesn’t make it meaningless it makes it revealing. Humans need markers.
We need moments to pause, reframe and tell ourselves a story about progress. New year’s eve isn’t about time changing it’s about us needing permission to believe change is possible.
It’s strange and kind of beautiful that something so arbitrary can feel so real just because we all agree to treat it that way.
I think that’s such a cool perspective on cultural practices and norms across the world. Humans need moments of reflection and connection.
Hope your holiday break went well!
That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.
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Drew Jackson
Founder & Writer
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