Over the next decades, our relationship with space will change dramatically. It will increasingly become a place where business and industry thrive. Tourists will go into orbit, taken there by private companies; new launch vehicles will take off, different in design but sharing the challenge of slashing the cost of space access. Energy and data will rain down from orbiting satellites, some owned by governments, others by private organizations, and many networked together to create a giant Internet. Entire industries will spring up to create an off-Earth economy.
Space access costs continue to drop rapidly, with launch prices over 20 times lower than in 2010 and satellite production more than 150 times cheaper. The global launch services market reached 30 billion dollars in 2025 and is projected to hit 300 billion dollars by 2050.
In-space manufacturing provides a unique class of products highly valuable to the communications, materials and biomedical industries on Earth. Space manufacturing is a rapidly growing market and it is estimated to reach $180 billion by 2050.
Space tourism is expected to become a new industry. The space tourism market could generate up to $150 billion annually by 2050. Suborbital tourism is expected to grow faster than orbital tourism over the next decade.
Demand for energy and resources will double from 2025 to 2050. Space mining will become a reality. There are between 1 and 3 million tons of helium-3 on the Moon, enough to power Earth for approximately 3,000 years.
Global demand for data and connectivity is soaring, with internet traffic up 30% annually and satellite networks rapidly expanding. The geospatial market will reach 3 trillion dollars by 2050, and in-space data centers will anchor the emerging orbital data economy.
Space exploration is poised to bring historic discoveries. Robotic missions have found water, but if life exists beyond Earth still remains a mystery. Detecting exolife will be the greatest discovery of all time, changing our understanding of the universe and our place in it forever.