Quartz By Tim Fernholz December 30, 2019
The first time I can find “space economy†and “trillion dollars†in the same sentence is in 1984, when then-congressman Robert Walker told the Associated Press that a space station in low-Earth orbit could “lead to a half-trillion-dollar economy in space by the turn of the century.â€
Some 35 years later, we’ve fallen short of the mark. The best estimates of the money made from space—which these days mostly come from building and operating rockets and satellites, and using them to provide services back on Earth—is about $400 billion. To be fair to Walker, now a lobbyist who served on US president Donald Trump’s NASA transition team, the space station under discussion didn’t begin operations until 2000.
The turn of the century was a hard time for the space economy, as tech bubble-driven dreams of internet satellites and venture-backed moon missions fizzled out alongside the stock market.
More:
https://qz.com/1774249/2020-is-the-year-of-the-1-trillion-space-economy/
