In recent years, the human presence in space has transitioned from geopolitical “competition” between the USA and the USSR during the 1960s and 1970s, to a thriving business industry with annual revenues in the billions of euros per year.
The space race has evolved into a new competitive landscape driven by space companies that offer various products and services that contribute to the wider development of space exploration. These services could range from a simple space trip to a sub-orbital environment to the mining and exploitation of mineral resources on asteroids.
In the first chapter of the book “The Space Economy – Capitalize on the Greatest Business Opportunity of Our Lifetime” [1] the author draws a parallel between the impending growth of the space industry and the development of IT and the Internet from the 1980s onwards. Furthermore, the author aptly asks “How many people wish they could have invested in Apple in 1983 or Google in 2002”. Although many missed the “opportunity” of the IT and Internet market, history is repeating itself with a new wave of opportunities in the New Space Economy (In-Space Economy). In 2024, we can anticipate the arrival of this new era with the growth of a technology that we all use every day developed in space – the GPS (Global Positioning System), which created a market of trillions of dollars [2].
The NewSpace Economy Market includes a range of activities that hold promise not only for corporate stakeholders, companies, and investors but also for a broad and augmented human activity in our solar system by realizing what was previously confined to “the realm” of science fiction. At Starttech Ventures, we have recognized this huge opportunity. In the last months, we have already taken the first step to identify and record the different factors that will contribute to the success of the NewSpace Economy in the next decades. Through a series of articles, our objective is to investigate these various sectors and analyze initiatives that could bring a technologically advanced and mutually beneficial future for humanity.
[1] Anderson, C. (2023). The Space Economy: Capitalize on the Greatest Business Opportunity of Our Lifetime. John Wiley & Sons.
[2] O’Connor, A. C., Gallaher, M. P., Clark-Sutton, K. B., Lapidus, D., Oliver, Z., Scott, T. J., Wood, D. W., & Brown, E. G. (2019). Economic benefits of the Global Positioning System (GPS). RTI International.
