From Urbanite to Astronaut: The Territorial Economics of Space

In his inaugural lecture, Professor Leslie Budd will explore the recent increase in public interest in space exploration and the future of using urban and regional economics for assessing its impact.

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Abstract

The recent increase in public interest in space exploration has both supported and questioned the value of this important branch of scientific discovery and its societal applications. Examples include the NASA Mars Preservation Rover landing and in the last 20 years the European Space Agency (ESA) has contributed significant funding to the International Space Station (ISS), leveraging advances in space science whose multi-disciplinary impacts have led to the identification, evaluation and potential measurement of a wide range of socioeconomic benefits. Until recently, the contribution of these benefits to economy and society has tended to be overlooked.

It is estimated that the global space economy will grow form US$350bn in 2019 to over US$1 trillion in 2040. Consequently, space is becoming an increasingly important industrial sector whose development is a key component in industrial strategies that are based on the concept and practice of Industry 4.0. The European Union (EU) and ESA promulgated their own Space 4.0 in 2016 under whose rubric is the rise of space city-regions and localities in which space is a propulsive industry for a number of beneficial outcomes. This analytical framework creates the opportunity to investigate and analyse the increasing integration of the Earth and Space Economy.

These outcomes that can be identified, analysed, and evaluated by drawing upon urban and regional economics, in particular the generation of what is called activity-complex economies: an important type of agglomeration economy The arguments of this lecture are given context through exploring the International Space Station (ISS), the NASA/ESA Orion Lunar missions and UK-based spaceports.

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