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.
United Kingdom
The space budget for the United Kingdom amounted to GBP 312.52 million in 2010 (around USD 487.3 million). Around 13% is devoted to national programmes (GBP 41.34 million) (Figure 20.1). In April 2010, the UK Space Agency replaced the British National Space Centre (BNSC) to rationalise the British space efforts (UK Space Agency, 2010). BNSC has carried out periodic surveys of the size and health of the UK space industry since 1991. The most recent study, in 2010, found that the industry employed around 19 000 people, generating a turnover of GBP 5.8 billion (around USD 9 billion). This represented a rise of 8% on the previous survey from two years ago (Figure 20.2)...