The Space Economy at a Glance 2011
Space applications have become an important part of everyday life. Weather forecasting, air traffic control, global communications and broadcasting, disaster management -- these and many other key activities would be almost unthinkable today without satellite technology. The space industry itself is relatively small compared to other manufacturing sectors, but its technological dynamism and strategic significance mean that it plays an ever more critical role in modern society.
This book assembles information on the space economy from a wide range of official and non-official sources. Together these paint a richly detailed picture of the space industry, its downstream services activities, and its wider economic and social impacts. Who are the main space-faring nations? How large are revenues and how much employment is there in the sector? How much R&D goes on, and where? What is the value of spin-offs from space spending? Answers to these and other questions are provided in this second OECD statistical overview of the emerging space economy.
A dynamic link (StatLink) is provided for graphs, which directs the user to a web page where the corresponding data are available in Excel® format.
The satellite telecommunications sector
Satellite communications and broadcasting represent the most important space-related commercial market. Revenues of satellite operators are mainly generated by sales of capacity (i.e. leasing of satellite’s transponders: data links and bandwidth) and added value services. The bulk of the satellite communications business comes from television. By early 2010, there were 1.4 billion households with a television around the world, providing roughly five billion people access to TV programmes at home (ITU, 2010). In the OECD, 95% on average of all households have at least one television (OECD, 2009). The number of households around the world with direct-to-home (DTH) satellite dishes rose from 82 million in 2000 to 177 million in 2008 (ITU, 2010). As shown in Figure 5.1 the number of direct broadcast satellite (DBS) subscribers outnumbers the numbers of terrestrial and cable broadcast viewers in 11 countries (particularly Austria, New Zealand, Germany and Ireland)...