The experts gathered at the Future Trends Forum dedicated to the commercialisation of space organised by the Bankinter Innovation Foundation in Madrid between 28 and 30 November 2018 identified the most viable fields of the new commercialisation of space: the development of a market in low-Earth orbit, bringing satellite connectivity to the whole world, democratization of access to space;

Of course, none of the major opportunities identified by the expert group will be able to succeed without funding. In this sense, the experts assessed the possibility of obtaining financing for each of them:

• Sustainable market in low Earth orbit: most believe that it is possible to finance activities in this area, but that it is not easy, although some believe that it is.
• Manufacturing, colonization, mining and cultivation in space: here clearly the majority opinion is that it will not be possible to obtain financing for another 10 years.
• Satellite connectivity, on the other hand, is a mature market – although always susceptible to disruptions that turn it upside down – in which it is easy to get financing if you have a halfway decent idea.
• Regarding the democratization of access to space , opinions are divided between that it is possible but difficult to obtain funding, which is the majority opinion, and that of those who think that it will be at least ten years before this funding is available… if it ever bes.
• The processing and exploitation of data is, of all the business opportunities identified, the one that experts are most clear is easy to finance, a little more so than that of satellite connectivity.

In any case, the number one objective of those who finance the commercial use of space has to be to make money, even if their motivations will be different if it is a venture capital fund, a millionaire who may not even care about making money or an investment fund. to name a few of the possible interested parties, which are the oxygen of the ecosystem; without them it is impossible to do anything and if they maintain their investments they can provide stability to the market.

Governments can incentivize private investment by trying to ensure regulatory stability, taking some responsibility for encouraging new entrants, and even agreeing to pay a little more than the strict market price at the beginning to ensure that stability.

Companies, for their part, have to be able to keep a cool head in the face of possible problems – which there will be – and make an effort to optimize processes and reduce production cycles.

1.- Market in Earth orbit

The Future Trends Forum expert group identified several future business opportunities in the creation of a market in LEO (lack of orbit):

– Develop the capabilities and infrastructure necessary to establish research and development programs in low-Earth orbit.

– Develop a space tourism industry beyond the suborbital flights that companies such as Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic are currently working on. The option could involve private space stations such as those planned by Bigelow Aerospace, whose BEAM module has been docked to the International Space Station since the summer of 2016 and has proven to be a viable option, to the point that the ISS partners have decided to keep the module as storage space. although occasionally it has also been used to carry out experiments inside.

– Offer governments and space agencies services that free them from certain tasks, as is already happening with the supply missions to the ISS carried out by Northrop Grumman, SpaceX, and soon also Sierra Nevada Corporation. The same will happen shortly with the launch of crews to the Station, as it is expected that throughout 2019 the manned capsules of Boeing and SpaceX will enter service. Other business opportunities may be in the development of service satellites that can refuel satellites already in orbit or satellites capable of eliminating space debris. The launch of satellites or probes is also a business opportunity open to more and more companies such as Rocket Lab or SpaceX, which are making a name for themselves in a market dominated until now by the large aerospace industries of all life.

– The reduction in the cost of electronic components and the development of the CubeSat standard for small satellites are also an opportunity for more and more educational entities and even non-governmental organizations to access space by launching these small devices, either directly into space or from the International Space Station using NanoRacks launchers or through the design and development of experiments to be carried out in space aboard a space station or a satellite. It is a great opportunity, in the opinion of our experts, to attract students to the field of STEM, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Companies could enter this business segment by developing the toolsets that would allow interested institutions to develop and launch these experiments and miniature satellites. Another option is to finance these types of activities through their corporate social responsibility programs.

– Advertising can also have its site in low Earth orbit, either by sponsoring any of the aforementioned educational activities or with things as simple as sending one of its products to be consumed in orbit or even with the mere inclusion of its corporate image on a rocket, space station, or satellite.

The biggest complication of all this would be to be able to create a demand for all this, for which it would be necessary to start by being able to clearly communicate to potential stakeholders what the value proposition is for them in each of the identified areas as well as the unique differentiating points of each of them.

In turn, being able to define this requires the identification not only of what already exists in the current market, but also the identification of new products, regardless of who offers them, and to see their suitability and possible areas of application; It is also important to assess the costs of access both in terms of the launch and the platform on which the projects would be installed.

And these are not economic access costs, as important as they are, but costs such as the difficulty of a regulatory framework that does not always make things easier, as NanoRacks discovered when it set to work on the launch of an experiment developed by Chinese universities to the International Space Station.

In this sense, the role of governments should be to encourage, facilitate and, ultimately, get out of the way as far as possible when the market is sufficiently mature, as they have done in the past in many other industries.

The factors that drive a commercial space station.

Lecture by Michael Lopez Alegría, former US Navy test pilot and NASA astronaut, consultant and speaker, at the XXXI meeting of the Future Trends Forum on the Commercialization of Space.

Michael explains the reasons why it is necessary to develop a commercial space station.

2.- Manufacturing in space

Although it could be included within the previous section, the experts gathered at the forum wanted to emphasize the possibility of developing automated space factories capable of producing drugs or molecules for them in a free-fall environment that allows the creation of molecules with properties impossible to obtain on Earth. The same could happen with 3D printers, which when working in an environment like that are also capable of obtaining impossible results under the effects of gravity are a couple of opportunities in this area of business. We can even talk about the production of food in orbit to supply an unmet demand.
In the case of production of food in orbit, it would also be necessary to take into account the possibility that public opinion would be reluctant to use it, as is currently the case with transgenic products. This would mean that in this field it will probably take extra awareness-raising efforts to convince potential beneficiaries – whether the companies that are going to produce them or the people who are going to consume them – to see the opportunities.

Manufacturing in space to protect the Earth

Interview with Jason Dunn, Co-founder and Director of Made in Space, at the XXXI meeting of the Future Trends Forum on the Commercialization of Space. Jason explains that the use of Earth’s resources has a limit, so he proposes to manufacture in space to protect the planet.

3.- Global Connectivity

With some 3,000 million people – just under half of the world’s population – without access to telecommunications services, whether voice or data, the opportunity to cover them represents a huge business opportunity. It is also a population group distributed fairly evenly throughout the world, although with a special concentration in Africa, South America and Asia, so governments around the world may be interested. This can both make things easier and be a potential source of problems, as you will have to deal with different regulations in almost every one of them.

It is a market that can technically be covered by both satellites in medium orbit and in GEO orbit. GEO orbiting satellites are suitable for television or data broadcasting systems in which great interactivity is not expected or that are not in real time, since being at an altitude of more than 36,000 kilometers the time it takes for signals to go and return causes delays of about a quarter of a second. For services without these latency times, the solution is to use satellites in medium orbit, because being much lower, the delays are practically negligible. But in exchange, constellations of satellites are necessary to offer permanent coverage, since they cannot remain over a certain area like those in GEO orbit.

But in recent years there has been more and more talk of pseudo high-altitude satellites (HAPS) such as Airbus’ Zephyr, an electric plane with solar panels designed to stay in the air for months over a certain area, although there are also projects to assemble platforms of this style using airships. They have the advantage over satellites that they are cheaper to deploy and that communications delays are even lower, not to mention that they can be landed for repair and maintenance. The problem is that they are an idea that is not yet very proven.

And there is also the option of combining satellites in different orbits with HAPS to make faster and/or more needs-friendly deployments in some areas that are difficult to reach through satellite coverage and that do not have a high enough density of potential users to justify the investment.

In order to be competitive in this market, it is important that both the cost of user terminals and the price of the services are affordable, since many of its potential users are in developing countries or in the third world. This need to lower costs is an extra challenge. So is the charging system, as there will often be no infrastructure that can easily support it.

Space is digital

Juan Tomás Hernani, CEO of Satlantis, at the XXXI meeting of the Future Trends Forum, explains how the digital revolution has also reached space, not only in the management of supply and demand, but also in terms of the technology that facilitates access or the creation of a new paradigm for the commercialization of space.

4.- Democratization of access to space

Today, accessing space is expensive, whether to place a satellite into orbit, to send a probe to another place in the solar system, or to carry out experiments in Earth orbit or beyond.

Whoever manages to make it cheaper has a business opportunity that the experts gathered at the forum believe can have as many as 1,500 million potential users distributed among institutes and universities, companies and entrepreneurs, governments, research institutions, critical infrastructure operators, whether governments or not, and even private citizens who want to enjoy space tourism.

Factors that can influence it are:
– The need to educate the public so that they are aware that a lot of opportunities are emerging that did not exist before and that prices are falling.
– Have infrastructures that encourage innovation and make it clear to stakeholders that space is no longer unattainable.
– Having access to launchers – companies such as SpaceX, Rocket Lab or PLD Systems, which already have launchers on the market or are developing with more affordable prices than the previous ones and/or with shorter waiting times are beginning to demonstrate the validity of this market segment.
– Alternatively, facilitating access to data generated in space is also an option so that more and more people can use it.

But Esther Dyson commented during the celebration of the forum that one of the challenges facing humanity today is to transcend countries and understand once and for all that we are one planet; Perhaps achieving this democratization of access to space can be a first step in that direction.

Access to the space

Rachel Lyons, Executive Director of Space for Humanity and participant in the XXXI FTF meeting on “The commercialization of space” answers questions about the democratization of access to space.

5.- Data exploitation

There is an increasing amount of data available obtained by satellites and sensors of different types, which also revisit the areas of interest with increasing frequency, which makes it easier to follow the evolution of things; It is also important that the quality of the data obtained is increasing.

This allows the data to be customized depending on each type of user depending on the specific application of that data, which can be in:
– Infrastructure protection.
– Management and protection of natural resources.
– Economic valuations.
– Study of demographic patterns.
– Insurance.
– Monitoring of the state of the space environment, both from a civil and military point of view.

This data, in turn, can be used as a product in itself for users to use or as a basis for offering applications that work on it offering added value. Experts estimate that the current market in this segment is about 3,800 million dollars a year but that it can easily be 7,000 million dollars per year in the not too distant future of 5 or 10 years.

The biggest challenge is to identify new possibilities for data processing or new possible uses to further increase the base of potential customers.

The space must be regulated to offer opportunities for application

Interview with Javier Ventura, Head of the Galileo Scientific Office of the European Space Agency, at the XXXI meeting of the Future Trends Forum on the Commercialization of Space.

Javier explains why space regulation is necessary in order to offer new application opportunities. In Javier’s opinion, it is important that regulations go hand in hand with innovation.