A Glimpse at the State of Space
Yesterday I attended the Space Foundation’s State of Space event in Washington D.C. It was a well done event with good panelists and discussions. Overall the takeaway was that all of the incredible developments we have seen over the last decade will serve as a platform for much more transformative change ahead.
I’ve compressed the panel discussions into some key insights below.
The space industry continues to experience remarkable growth - roughly $500b now growing to $1 trillion in ten years - but economic and political stability is critical for this forecast
Decentralization of the space industry is spurring this enormous growth, and opening access to space to many new countries and companies. But managing the public demands in a private dominated market will be important and complicated.
Space is about data. Until the market becomes about extraction and colonization, the greatest product returned from space is data about our home.
NOAA is sitting on 60 petabytes of atmospheric data and most of it is ready for analysis by AI/ML applications.
AWS companies are using the 100 terabytes of data coming from satellite communications to spot methane leaks, provide real-time wildfire response, and accurately forecast severe weather.
Is there such a thing as "bad data" or does every piece of data tell us something?
AI in edge compute will grow everywhere but in space it is particularly useful to parse and sort data before transmitting to Earth.
Amazon compared the cost of AI and data with space investments: they are building 2 data centers in Mississippi for $10b and updating data centers in Japan for $15b, and that is just a few of the investments they are making in data just to keep up.
Amazon has committed to training 2 million people in AI skills by 2025!
There are significant advances in space technologies that will deliver transformative changes in the next few years:
Starlink and other LEO networks are becoming "mission critical" on Earth
Starship's impact will be far greater than anticipated
AI will enable "2 guys in a garage" to scale new companies in the space industry doing things we cannot predict.
While it seems we've almost become accustomed to the recent massive leaps in space technologies, it is clear that the next 5 years will be populated by many more technologies and companies coming online creating enormous gains in functionality, cost reduction, and access to space.