Space Industry and the Financial Crisis
Assessing the potential impact of the financial crisis on the space industry shall first start with an overview of the evolution of the global space activity.
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Space Industry and the Financial Crisis Jean-Jacques Tortora
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Brief Overview of the Recent Evolutions of the Global Space Activity
Assessing the potential impact of the financial crisis on the space industry shall first start with an overview of the evolution of the global space activity. Fig. 5.1 shows the overall annual fluctuations of the number of launches realised worldwide, and in yellow of the number of satellites produced. The gap between both reflects the number of multiple launches performed. The length of the period of observation makes Fig. 5.1 quite significant and some major historical events are clearly visible here: – The strong decrease observed all along the 90s, linked to the discontinuation of major space programmes carried out at the time of the former Soviet Union, – A noticeable peak at the end of the 90s, reflecting the intensity of the business generated by the deployment of the constellations Globalstar and Iridium, – The relative slowdown observed in the middle of 2000s, which is the conjunction of several factors, including the end of the constellations and the consolidation of the Space telecommunications operators leading to an optimisation of the fleets in orbit. During this period, the business of space manufacturers active on the commercial market was strongly depleted. Since then, and in particular over the period 2008–2011, the space activity worldwide, has been steadily increasing, confirming the recovery of the commercial market, but this trend must be analysed in greater detail. The next level of analysis is to differentiate the various types of Space applications. Fig. 5.2 displays the evolution of the total mass launched, broken down by main kinds of missions. J.-J. Tortora (*) Eurospace, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] C. Al-Ekabi et al. (eds.), Yearbook on Space Policy 2011/2012, Yearbook on Space Policy, DOI 10.1007/978-3-7091-1649-4_5, © Springer-Verlag Wien 2014
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Fig. 5.1 Evolution of worldwide space activity (Source: Eurospace)
Fig. 5.2 Launched mass by mission categories (Source: Eurospace)
It shows that the major contributor to the recent increase is Space transfer to LEO and the associated manned flights. This is of course a consequence of the major effort made by NASA to terminate the deployment and assembly of the ISS. This has generated a lot of business for the space manufacturing industry, in particular in the US, but the situation will shortly stabilise with the retirement of the Shuttle and the end of the associated major operations. Fig. 5.2 then shows slight and regular increase of launches carried out for space based operational services. The other remaining categories of missions, including Science, Defence and Technology demonstration appear rather stable, with a limited impact on the overall
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Fig. 5.3 Evolution of the launched mass for operational space-based services (Source: Eurospace)
activity when measured by the launched mass, which is not pr
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