Just wait for upcoming asteroid mining startup bubble.

Why wait? Start it yourself. With a little imagination you can get it started before we even have the capability to achieve asteroid mining.

After all, there's a star naming registry that will name a star of your choice to be recorded in their books for a nominal fee.

It is also important to intelligently select where your vertical leg is placed.

I feel that to be "among the best in their field within a narrow discipline" (the vertical leg) means you have a natural disposition and interest in that discipline. Not something you can just choose (that would be more about the horizontal).

Then the "where are you willing to work?" becomes an important factor. There aren't a lot of "high-precision mass spectrometry" work in a lot of towns.

Am I the only one that finds it hard to believe all of Valve's ~330 employees are among the best in their respective field?

I've heard this recently and it only seems to me it is too easily used to create a bad mix of people on a team to tackle problems.