A Bigger Shock Absorber: Why a Deliberate Space Economy Can Help Recession-Proof Civilisation
A SpaceX launch at Boca Chica, Texas, United States. The company helped invigorate commercial life into the space industry and currently has approximately 536 successful launches into orbit to its credit.
Credit: Nader Saremi on Unsplash
A pragmatic case for a standards-driven space economy that cushions recessions by diversifying energy, industry and supply chains beyond Earth
The past two decades have taught us that macro shocks rhyme: the 2008–09 crisis, the pandemic, the 2022–23 energy price spike. Each exposed brittle supply chains and over-concentration in a few chokepoints—fuel, logistics, compute, labour. If the goal is resilience, not just recovery, we need a second engine that’s diversified by geography and even by physics. That engine can be the space economy—provided we build it deliberately.
First, this isn’t conjecture. The sector already shows demand breadth and relative resilience. During COVID, satellites underpinned remote work, tele-health/education and situational awareness; OECD and ESA note the space sector’s role in continuity of services when ground systems were disrupted. Launch cadence has since reset the cost base: 2024 set a new record with ~259 orbital launch attempts, ~70% commercially operated—evidence of scale and industrial learning effects.
Second, public investment in space returns more than curiosity. NASA’s FY-2023 economic impact was $75.6 billion in output on a sub-0.5% budget share—hard to match per-unit leverage in other domains. Independent evaluations in Europe report high multipliers from ESA participation; the UK’s latest synthesis estimates headline 11.8:1 GVA over 2020–2036 (with sensible caveats on spillovers’ timing). The point is not the exact ratio; it’s that space R&D spills into jobs, tax, and firm capability.
Third, the total addressable market is no longer “just rockets”. McKinsey and the World Economic Forum size the 2035 space economy at $1.8 trillion (from ~$630 billion in 2023), counting both backbone infrastructure (launch, satcom, PNT, EO) and the “reach” applications where space is an input to non-space revenues. That framing matters: the dividend shows up in agriculture pricing, insurance loss modelling, maritime routing, disaster response, fintech risk, and more.
Fourth, energy abundance is the hinge. Space-based solar power (SBSP) moved from fringe to mainstream analysis. NASA’s 2024 study is frank: SBSP is pricier than terrestrial options now, but costs can fall if capability gaps—autonomous assembly, power beaming, in-space manufacturing—are closed; ESA’s SOLARIS is running the European playbook in parallel. If SBSP clears technical and regulatory gates, it becomes a macro shock absorber—baseload clean energy uncorrelated with weather, geopolitics, or fuel markets.
Fifth, in-space manufacturing is no longer just theory. The ISS has hosted optical-fibre (ZBLAN) production with quality advantages over ground manufacture; 2024–25 programme updates cite multi-kilometre runs. Pharmaceutical processing has crossed key thresholds: Varda secured FAA re-entry licensing and has now raised substantial private capital after demonstrating space-crystallised APIs—signals that customers and regulators take the category seriously.
Finally, the cislunar build-out can compound returns. Peer-reviewed work shows conditions under which lunar-derived propellant becomes competitive, lowering the cost of everything else in space; NASA’s ISRU roadmaps are turning that into testable engineering.
None of this is automatic. Two things decide whether this becomes a recession-resistant engine or another hype cycle.
Governance and standards: Neutral, rules-based frameworks (e.g., via COPUOS processes) reduce political risk and open markets to more than a handful of incumbents. Power-beaming safety, spectrum, debris mitigation, refuelling interfaces, and rendezvous rules are bankability issues, not footnotes.
GTM discipline: Segment by buyer (sovereigns for climate/security; infra operators for comms/power; enterprises for data and materials). Package services with anchor tenants and usage-based contracts (e.g., EO subscriptions, power-as-a-service, propellant by the kilogram). Finance via consortia—public credit plus private equity—and insure with performance bonds tied to standards compliance.
The prize is not to “escape” Earth’s economy but to diversify it. A scaled space economy spreads risk across orbits and the lunar surface, across energy and materials, and across thousands of interoperable services. That is how you bend fragility into resilience—by adding a second platform that keeps working when the first one stumbles.
