The $1 trillion unexplored market that you cannot afford to overlook is the space economy. Before you leave the house this morning, check the weather app. When you drive in, a navigation prompt will appear. Keep track of a package that will arrive this afternoon. Get an estimate of crop yield from a satellite tracking a farm three thousand miles away.
These don’t feel like space-related activities. They don’t resemble the dramatic footage of rockets rising from Cape Canaveral, the moon landings, or the shuttle launches that most people associate with the space industry. However, all of them rely on space infrastructure, including satellites in orbit, data transmitted at speeds that have drastically decreased in cost over the last 20 years, and a quiet revolution in launch economics that has been developing mostly behind the public’s awareness and is now near enough to maturity that the financial figures associated with it have begun to draw significant attention.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Industry | Global Space Economy |
| Current Market Value (2024) | ~$596–630 billion USD |
| Projected Market Value (2035) | ~$1.8 trillion USD |
| Annual Growth Rate | ~9% per annum (significantly above global GDP growth) |
| Space-Enabled Solutions Share (2024) | ~$308 billion of total market value |
| Satellite Launch Growth Rate | ~50% per year over recent decade |
| Launch Cost Reduction | Down ~10-fold over 20 years; projected -95% by 2040 |
| Peak Investment Years | $70+ billion invested in 2021 and 2022 |
| Top 5 Growth Sectors | Supply chain & transport, food & beverage, defense, retail/consumer, digital communications |
| Space Tourism Market (to 2035) | Estimated $4–6 billion; primarily ultra-high-net-worth in-orbit stays |
| Key Companies | SpaceX, Axiom Space, Planet Labs, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab |
| Most Valuable Asteroid Deposits | Estimated at more than $100 trillion |
| Reference Website | World Economic Forum — Space: The $1.8 Trillion Opportunity |
Depending on the methodology employed, the global space economy was estimated to be worth between $596 and $630 billion in 2024. The World Economic Forum and McKinsey predict that it will reach $1.8 trillion by 2035, growing at a rate of about 9 percent per year. This rate is significantly higher than the growth of the global GDP and is maintained, in contrast to many projections for the technology sector, by underlying demand that is already producing real revenue from industries that most people have no connection to space.
By 2035, these five industries alone are expected to account for 60% of the space economy: supply chain and transportation, food and beverage, retail and consumer goods, digital communications, and disaster mitigation. That is not a situation from science fiction. It is an extension of current events.
Those who have been observing this industry from a distance and believe it is still essentially a government program with a few ambitious billionaires attached tend to change their minds after reading the cost story. Over the past 20 years, launch costs have decreased about tenfold, and as reusable rocket technology advances and competition heats up, Citigroup analysts predict that the decline could reach 95% by 2040. Every year, the number of satellites launched has increased by about 50%.
As those costs decreased, the economics of launching something into orbit became something that a startup with the right technology and a small amount of venture capital could now take into consideration. Previously, this calculation was only available to national space agencies and major defense contractors. The industries being developed on top of the space economy’s physical infrastructure are beginning to compound at a rate that was unthinkable fifteen years ago.
The similarities to the early commercial stages of the internet are difficult to ignore. Fiber cables, server farms, and the network’s physical layer were the first infrastructure investments, and to skeptics who couldn’t see what would eventually run on them, they appeared costly and speculative.
The businesses that recognized the infrastructure shift early developed positions that compounded for decades, and the applications that justified those investments came later, frequently from unexpected directions. The window for early positioning is real but finite because the space sector is in the middle of an analogous transition.
A helpful illustration of how the commercial logic functions is provided by Planet Labs, which operates one of the biggest constellations of Earth observation satellites. The infrastructure consists of the satellites themselves. The data, such as crop monitoring for agricultural businesses, deforestation tracking for ESG reporting, port activity analysis for supply chain intelligence, and damage assessment following natural disasters, is what is being sold to clients rather than the satellite.
This type of space-for-Earth market, where the asset is in orbit and the customer is firmly on the ground operating a business unrelated to rockets, accounted for about 95% of the space economy’s $366 billion in revenue in 2019. As launch activity and space tourism have increased, that percentage has somewhat changed, but the core idea—space infrastructure creating value on Earth—remains the industry’s driving force.
Although the asteroid mining issue is farther down the timeline, it is important to recognize it because it influences the aspirations of those constructing the more immediate infrastructure. The most valuable asteroid deposits are thought to be worth more than $100 trillion, which is more than the current global economy. The underlying geology is real: near-Earth asteroids contain concentrations of metals that would be economically extraordinary if extraction became feasible.
That may sound like a promotional brochure for a startup, and it probably is. In order to achieve that goal, businesses are investing in the exact same launch and orbital technology required by the satellite industry. As a result, the infrastructure being developed for commercial Earth observation is also gradually being developed for everything that comes after it.
When observing this industry from the outside in 2026, there is a clear conflict between the size of what is being developed and the comparatively little coverage it gets from mainstream financial media in contrast to AI or cryptocurrencies. In 2021 and 2022, investments reached record highs of more than $70 billion before declining due to the wider venture market correction.
For investors prepared to look past a challenging two-year period at an underlying demand curve that hasn’t changed, that correction produced the kind of selective skepticism that typically results in intriguing entry points. For the industries that depend on it, space-enabled technology is a must. It is already incorporated into the logistics models of businesses that depend on GPS accuracy, in agricultural operations that make planting decisions based on satellite imagery, and in insurance pricing models that use Earth observation data to evaluate risk. The space-based economy has already emerged. The question is whether those who are paying attention now are early or just on time, as well as how big it gets and how quickly.
