“The global space sector is a high-technology niche with a complex ecosystem, which employed at least 900 000 persons around the world in 2013, including public administrations (space agencies, space departments in civil and defence-related organisations), the space manufacturing industry (building rockets, satellites, ground systems); direct suppliers to this industry (components), and the wider space services sector (mainly commercial satellite telecommunications). But these estimates do not take into account universities and research institutions, which also play a key role in R&D, as receivers of public contracts and initiators of much of the space sector’s innovation.”
“Globalisation is affecting the space economy at different levels. In the 1980s, only a handful of countries had the capacity to build and launch a satellite. Many more countries and corporate players across a wide range of industrial sectors are now engaged in spacerelated activities, a trend that is expected to strengthen in the coming years. Supply chains for the development and operation of space systems are also increasingly evolving at the international level, even if the space sector remains heavily influenced and shaped by strategic and security considerations. Many space technologies are dual use, i.e. employed for both civilian and military programmes, which tends to constrain international trade in space products. Nonetheless, as evidenced by recent OECD research on global value chains, product and service supply chains for space systems are internationalising at a rapid pace. While the mode of interaction between space actors may vary (e.g. in-kind co-operation among space agencies, contracting out to foreign suppliers, industrial offset programmes), the trend towards globalisation is having an impact right across the space economy – from R&D and design, to manufacturing and services.”
You can read or download a copy of OECD’s new report “The Space Economy at a Glance 2014” (in 24 languages) here