All the Arguments for Space Exploration Ever — Part 5
The act of exploration of space is certainly driven by curiosity but is surely underpinned by the human necessity to progress. Space is a 300 billion dollar plus industry. A third of this pie comes through expenditure from government budgets around the world. The Commercial Infrastructure and Support Industries and Commercial Space Products and Services comprise the rest of the pie.
Space is a huge industry and growing.
It is estimated that there are 10⁸⁰ atoms that comprise the observable universe. Right outside the exosphere, lies a virtually inexhaustible storehouse of resources: both matter and energy. When the cost of entry to space exploration goes down below a threshold, we would witness a boom in mineral and energy extraction from outer space by governments and private companies alike.
You may be reminded of the morbid sounding quote from the movie Fight Club: “When deep space exploration ramps up, it’ll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks.” If you sell bananas for a living and the rate at which your customers consume bananas exceeds the rate of banana production, you are in trouble. You either: a) need the banana producers to get more land and grow more bananas or b) do something because everyone loves bananas.
In other words, the demand for resources (not necessarily bananas) would eventually drive existing providers or new players in the game to build extra-terrestrial resource farms given the limited resources we have on earth. This sort of thinking would form the foundation of the economics of the future space industry. We can only hope that the corporations would come up with better names.
*The majority of literature as well as research regarding the space economics has been done out of the United States of America. So please excuse me if only one major organization features in this section predominantly.
The space industry workforce numbers in the hundreds of thousands. It helps to keep the working-age population employed and productive. Apart -from the hands and legs that is characteristic of a manufacturing-heavy industry, a higher percentage of semi-skilled and skilled workforce, especially those of the space and space-allied sectors, shows up directly in every per capita income and domestic product paradigm.
Given the efficiency of implementation private companies bring to the table, it is heartening to note the rapid growth of private efforts in the field of space. Private companies are joining space exploration in the fields of crew and cargo transport vehicles, space station modules, planetary probes, research craft and technology demonstrators, space-based manufacturing, space mining, space habitation, spaceliners (for space tourism) as well as spacecraft component developers.
The commercial space sector (Direct-To-Home services are estimated to be worth a $100 billion) directly and indirectly help meet payrolls, pay taxes and sustain economic growth. This cash-return-heavy end of the space industry is of late not leaving any stone unturned in terms of milking land-based commercial, societal and individual.
A study conducted in 1976 by Chase Econometrics estimated that for every dollar invested into the space program, 7 dollars were returned to the economy in new jobs, factories and technology. The study also found that Federal dollars spent on research and development by NASA, with its mission orientation, were four times as effective as other R&D spending, and that applications of technological breakthroughs were visible in the economy within two years of their achievement.
Another major study considered the quantification of benefits due to four NASA technologies: cryogenics, gas turbines, integrated circuits and the NASA Structural Analysis (NASTRAN) computer system. Based on microeconomic consumer surplus theory, the study found the total economic benefit due to the four cases studied was of the order of $7 billion.
A study even correlated the increase in spending on the R&D with significant increase in the GDP, reduction in the rate of increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), reduction in unemployment and increase of labour force.
Then there are other off shoots, which may often seem surprising. As a result of on blended winglet design that originated from NASA, 2 billion gallons of jet fuel or a cost saving of more than $4 billion dollars was realized. That essentially means that next time you book that cheap airline ticket for your holiday, you could do with a word of thanks for space research.
Also read other parts of the series: