Around the corner…

Space becomes a destination… Instead of a European getaway, you could be hopping on a space shuttle to eat at a restaurant on the International Space Station (try the spaghetti Apollo-gnese). NASA is leaning on private sector companies to help it commercialize space. In 2021, high-profile suborbital flights from Elon’s SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Branson’s Virgin Galactic created unprecedented momentum for space tourism. Virgin aims to start flying tourists for $250K/seat in early 2022. By the 2030s, the price of a space ticket could fall to the cost of a business class ticket to Europe today.

AR eats the world… AR went mainstream thanks to Snap filters and Pokémon Go. But in five years, you could be navigating cities and calculating tips all through augmented reality glasses. Every effort at smart glasses from Google Glass to Snap Spectacles has flopped, but AR shades could gain traction as they become more useful and #stylish: Facebook plans to infuse AR into its new smart Ray-Bans, and Apple could launch AR headsets by late 2022. Nio just debuted an EV sedan with an AR glasses-powered dash. AR glasses sales could reach 22.8M this year. And some companies are working on AR contacts.