Space Possibilities for Our Grandchildren: Current and Future Economic Uses of Space

Alessio Terzi and Francesco Nicoli

No 211, European Economy - Discussion Papers from Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission

Abstract: For too long, space has been dismissed as a science endeavour at best, and a delusionary science fiction fantasy at worst. In this paper, we make three fundamental points. First, with strong commercial activity taking place in Low Earth Orbit since the late 1980s, space already today is a market-place and therefore responds predominantly to economic incentives. Second, launch costs have been on a very steep downward trend hitherto, even by historical comparison to other transport technologies. Under a set of credible quantitative scenarios, leveraging Wright’s Law, we show how these costs are likely to drop further in a significant way by the end of this decade, and more so in the 2030s. Looking at it through a trade economics framework, we argue that we are entering a period where (space) trade frictions are falling, and new markets will be created as a result. Third, we propose a taxonomy to help think about the creation of further value added in space going forward. For all these reasons, we maintain that space should be worth of greater attention by the economics profession.

JEL-codes: B27 D23 F10 F50 J20 J30 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2024-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/publications/ ... onomic-uses-space_en (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:euf:dispap:211

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in European Economy - Discussion Papers from Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ECFIN INFO ().