FPRI Launches Private Space Industry Dialogue Series

 

The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) announced today it is launching a two year project to assess the risks to private assets in space. The project will bring together private sector actors and leading researchers from FPRI and Middlebury College to develop an action plan for the sustainable use of outer space. The project is generously supported by a $320,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. 

 

The new space industry is worth about $600 billion today, with projections for it to grow to more than $1 trillion in the 2030s. This industry is heavily oriented toward communications, but also has an important presence in markets for navigation, remote sensing for agriculture, and national defense. These assets are a critical infrastructure upon which power grids, financial markets, public transport, aircraft, hospitals and farms all depend. The total value of on-orbit assets today is between $50-100 billion. These assets are largely uninsured from acts of war. 

 

The goals of the project are threefold: First, begin a discussion among new space entrepreneurs and their insurers about the changing risk profile in space.  Second, develop a roadmap for new space stakeholders to minimize risk and increase transparency. Third, widely promote these recommendations to key stakeholders and national governments. 

 

“We will be directly engaging with the private space companies that the government contracts with to build the next generation of privately owned and operated satellites that this nation – and its allies – have come to depend on for communication, sensing, and global connectivity. The discussion will help us work together with the private sector in space to think about how to protect private assets in orbit,” said Aaron Stein, President of FPRI. 

 

“The new space entrepreneurs have real skin in the game. We want to help them start a dialogue about how to protect the assets they’ve put in orbit that create so much value down here on earth,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a Distinguished Scholar of Global Security at Middlebury College and a Distinguished Fellow at FPRI.

 

FPRI – with the generous support from the Carnegie Corporation –  will work with the private sector to think through the future risks to private assets and what actions could be taken to limit the risks to these privately held assets.