Space Policies, Issues and Trends in 2011/2012 Report 42 May 2012 Cenan Al-Ekabi Short title: ESPI Report 42 ISSN: 2076-6688 Published in May 2012 Price: €11 Editor and publisher: European Space Policy Institute, ESPI Schwarzenbergplatz 6 • 1030 Vienna • Austria http://www.espi.or.at Tel. +43 1 7181118-0; Fax -99 Rights reserved – No part of this report may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose with- out permission from ESPI. Citations and extracts to be published by other means are subject to mentioning “Source: ESPI Report 42; May 2012. All rights reserved” and sample transmission to ESPI before publishing. ESPI is not responsible for any losses, injury or damage caused to any person or property (including under contract, by negligence, product liability or otherwise) whether they may be direct or indirect, special, inciden- tal or consequential, resulting from the information contained in this publication. Design: Panthera.cc ESPI Report 42 2 May 2012 Space Policies, Issues and Trends in 2011/2012 Table of Contents Introduction 5 1. Global Political and Economic Trends 6 1.1 Global Economic Outlook 6 1.2 Political Developments 7 1.2.1 Geopolitics 7 1.2.2 Environment 8 1.2.3 Energy 9 1.2.4 Resources 10 1.2.5 Knowledge 11 1.2.6 Mobility 13 2. Global Space Economy 15 2.1 Global Space Budgets and Revenue 15 2.2 Overview of Institutional Space Budgets 15 2.3 Overview of Commercial Space Markets 19 2.3.1 Satellite Services 20 2.3.2 Satellite Manufacturing 22 2.3.3 Launch Sector 22 2.3.4 Ground Equipment 24 2.3.5 Insurance Sector 25 2.4 Sectoral Overview 26 2.4.1 Launch Sector 26 2.4.2 Manufacturing Sector 29 2.5 International Sectoral Comparison 32 2.5.1 Launch Sector 32 2.6 Transatlantic Industrial Comparison 37 2.6.1 State of the European Industry 37 2.6.2 State of the United States Space Industry 40 3. Space Industry Evolutions 42 3.1 Europe 42 3.2 United States 45 3.3 Russia 47 3.4 Japan 47 3.5 China 48 3.6 India 49 3.7 World 49 4. European Institutional Market 50 4.1 European Institutional Features 50 4.2 Civilian Space Expenditure 50 4.3 European Space Agency (ESA) 51 4.4 EUMETSAT 54 4.5 National Agencies 56 4.5.1 France 56 4.5.2 Germany 57 4.5.3 Italy 58 4.6 European Union (EU) 58 4.7 Emerging Commercial Activity 59 ESPI Report 42 3 May 2012 5. The Defence Perspective 60 5.1 Trends in Military Expenditure 60 5.2 Europe 61 5.3 The United States 62 5.4 Russia 63 5.5 Japan 64 5.6 China 65 5.7 India 66 5.8 Iran 67 5.9 North Korea 68 6. Space Policies and Strategies around the World 70 6.1 European Union 70 6.2 European Space Agency 71 6.3 EUMETSAT 73 6.4 National Governments 74 6.4.1 France 74 6.4.2 Germany 74 6.4.3 Italy 75 6.4.4 United Kingdom 75 6.5 United States of America 76 6.5.1 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 76 6.5.2 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 78 6.6 Canada 79 6.7 Russia 79 6.8 Japan 81 6.9 China 82 6.10 India 84 6.11 Brazil 85 6.12 Emerging Space Actors 85 List of Acronyms 88 Acknowledgements 93 About the Author 93 ESPI Report 42 4 May 2012 Space Policies, Issues and Trends in 2011/2012 Introduction When reading this issue of Space Policy, Issues and Trends it should be kept in mind that there is a remarkable lack of consistency in the publicly available figures on space activity. This is attributable to varying methodologies used by the data providers, currency conversion issues, and periodicity variances. The lack of consistency starts at the very top, with the estimates of the overall size of the global space economy, where there can be differences between sources of tens of billions of Euros; and it continues down to company to company comparisons, where different accountancy rules might bring considerable contortion. But it is, of course, also a commonplace that differences in purchasing power in different economies, and differences in wage and infrastructure cost make one-to-one comparisons very difficult. Some countries are very restrictive on providing institutional data, for instance on defence spending. Still, this issue of Space Policy, Issues and Trends will provide many insights, since all the data uncertainties do not mask many important trends and developments. As Winston Churchill taught us, statistics must be taken with a grain of salt, yet purely by looking at relativities much can learned. This is not a reason to be complacent about the precision of figures. Space has a great societal importance and the space community owes it to political decision makers to be able to provide normalised, accurate figures. In this domain, the United States is clearly ahead of the game, and Europe must perhaps consider whether institutions such as Eurostat should not become more in- volved in the data collection and processing for the space field. ESPI Report 42 5 May 2012 1. Global Political and Economic Trends 1.1 Global Economic Outlook In the second half of 2011 and the first half of 2012, it seemed, superficially, that the world econ- omy was on a successful path out of the financial and economic crisis. The booming economies of China, India, Brazil, Russia in particular, and some other emerging and developing countries were providing impetus to global economic recovery. Due to strong export orientation, industrialised countries, such as Germany, were benefiting from demand from these countries. Thus Germany had record growth rates and declining unemployment. Nevertheless, there are developments in the global economy that give cause for concern. For many countries the financial and economic crisis of the last three years has begun to acquire a more permanent character: • Capital movements are rather detached from investments in the real economy; • National and international financial markets are above all secondary markets; • Financial markets are still highly speculative; • Financial markets are volatile due to overreaction and underreaction in financial and foreign exchange markets, as well as abrupt and voluminous international and domestic capital movements; • High reliance on liquidity interventions; • IMF, central banks and governments have limited room for backup at this time.1 The combined effects amassed over time on a global scale are creating concerning new problems and negative dynamics. Not only has global economic activity weakened, but the economic pace has also become more uneven, exacerbating inequalities on a global, regional and societal scale. These growing imbalances in the global distribution of wealth and trade could potentially increase geopolitical tensions and encourage politically radical and economically protectionist reflexes. How- ever, financial confidence in the United States is increasing, and the glacial European response to the Euro crisis has now possibly finally reached a turning point, despite recent events in Greece. Still, the world is facing a multitude of unresolved structural economic and financial deficiencies. Unforeseen geopolitical events, like the Arab spring, and natural disasters (such as the great earthquake of Japan) have multiplied the shocks to an already unsettled global financial and eco- nomic community. In the past three years mainly public funds have been used to secure the European financial sys- tem and buffer the Euro crisis, in turn triggering austerity measures in almost all countries but the United States. The newly elected President of France, François Hollande, plans to reopen talks on the European Union's hard-won fiscal austerity pact in order to refocus the EU's economic policy on growth. The realism of reopening the austerity pact might be questionable, but there is growing recognition also within the European Commission that austerity alone will not solve the situation, and that active investment in growth must operate in parallel. In this sense, Europe will likely start to move in the direction of the approach of the United States, where growth has always been the priority. Considering the aforementioned conditions, one must be cautious regarding the global economy’s short term prospects. In developed economies the pace of economic recovery continues to be slug- gish at best, with real economic growth reaching only 1.5% in 2011 and not expected to increase beyond 2% in 2012. On the other side, emerging economies have demonstrated a much more ro- bust expansion of approximately 6%, which is expected to continue in 2012 as well. As fiscal prob- lems in developed economies persist, however, the prospects for emerging economies begin to look more uncertain too.2 This is particularly true for countries that are more heavily dependent on 1 Kamppeter, Werner. “International Financial Crises in Comparison - Lessons for Managing the Current Crisis.” May 2011. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung - International Policy Analysis. 11 May 2012 <http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/id/ipa/08081.pdf>. 2 International Monetary Fund. World Economic Outlook 2011. Washington DC: IMF, 2011. ESPI Report 42 6 May 2012 Space Policies, Issues and Trends in 2011/2012 foreign demand for their products and services. The current global outlook is based on a series of assumptions, such as the containment of the Euro crisis; continued and successful fiscal consolida- tion in the U.S. without obstruction of economic recovery, especially on the demand side; the abil- ity of markets in advanced economies to absorb the shock of the gradual withdrawal of quantitative easing measures previously applied; the absence of further major geopolitical shocks; and that global market volatility and risk aversion will not become more pronounced .