Monthly Networking Event – Why SpaceX didn’t create a Space Economy

SpaceX cut launch costs by a factor of twenty, and the industry assumed this would unlock a downstream space economy. But it didn’t.

This talk argues that launch cost was never the binding constraint. Rather, the binding constraint is the absence of market and institutional architecture downstream of launch: no pricing mechanisms, no resource rights, no interface standards, no repeat customers.

Using the Architecture Readiness Index, I show exactly where the gaps are, and why space-based data centres are the clearest current example of a premature market.

SpaceX didn’t find demand at scale; it got around industry creation by manufacturing its own.

Sinéad O’Sullivan is a space and defence economist whose work focuses on why breakthrough technologies fail to become industries. She will be speaking at the ECSECO Monthly Networking Event on Thursday 7 May at 18:00 CET.