Space exploration must find sustainability and growth in the space economy, whether the latter involves near-Earth production activities, the utilization of the Moon, or the exploitation of raw materials from asteroids. To guarantee our future, we also need to establish apposite rules and revise obsolete international treaties. Without such a framework, it is impossible to imagine a fair, profitable space economy.
The space economy, according to the OECD, is “the full range of activities and the use of space resources that create value and benefits for human beings in the course of exploring, understanding, managing and utilizing space.” The space economy encompasses all actors, public and private, involved in developing, supplying or utilizing products and services linked to space: research and development, building and using space infrastructures (Earth stations, launch vehicles, satellites), space-based applications (navigation instruments, satellite telephones, weather-related services, etc.), as well as the resulting scientific knowledge. In other words, the space economy goes far beyond the space sector in a strict sense, because it expands to encompass impacts that are ever changing and increasingly pervasive in terms of products, services, and knowledge derived from space. Countless applications in other sectors benefit from space data and technologies as well. Simply consider agriculture, environmental protection, natural resource management and transportation, to name just a few. The space economy today is worth $469 billion at a global level, with double-digit growth projections for the coming decades. But more importantly, space also offers opportunities for developing countries, contributing to reaching sustainable development goals. With these considerations, we launch into a fascinating voyage that fills the pages of this book: space exploration and space tourism, extra-terrestrial communications, the economy of asteroids, new products “Made in Space,” and the space debris floating around amidst congested orbital traffic. The future truly is right around the corner, and all that’s left to do is to prepare by providing our human resources with all the necessary knowledge to face it.
- Publisher: Egea
- Series: Frontiers
- Date of publication: August 2022
- EAN: 9788899902964
- ISBN: 9788899902964
- Pages: 208
- Format: paper, epub
