The Future of the Outer Space Economy: Powerful States and Visionary Entrepreneurs in the Exoeconomic Paradigm Call for articles
The analysis of the economic integration of the off-planet space in the sphere of human activities is an arduous and complex process, a crucial, even vital one. The exploitation of the outer space has become a decisive component of the technologically advanced economies, offering capabilities that result from applications linked to critical goods and services with millions of users and billions of beneficiaries.
Currently, the space economy is largely composed of satellite services and industries that support their performance and perpetuation. In the (more or less) near future, the hope is to insert various cosmic material resources and sources of energy in the economic metabolism of our planet and extend it towards other celestial bodies. Over the last few decades, we have witnessed an organic yet uneven evolution of the space economic sphere that has acquired strategic and even existential valences. This new environment has the potential of unfolding specific “competitive” features (much as oligopolistic), with public or private actors as allies/adversaries, and “sustainable” concerns (although redesigned), since the outer space is seen as a buffer for the terrestrial tense ecology, where, however, the care for renewability remains valid due to its hostile conditions.
This scientific-journalistic project has a threefold objective:
(1) to analyze the conceptual and contextual relationships, respectively, between the competitive processes and those pertaining to sustainability in the economy, with a focus on the contemporary management of earthly resources;
(2) to canvass the foundations of the “exoeconomic” paradigm (framing the economic life in the extra-terrestrial space), highlighting “updates”/ “upgrades” of the nowadays international institutions;
(3) and to review the geo-political and geo-economic competition in cosmic affairs and the routes by which the transition from current space exploration to future space exploitation might be undertaken in a sustainable demeanor.
The Market for Ideas launches a series of articles discussing “the future of the outer space economy”. Those interested in joining the present debate are kindly advised to contact the editor, Professor Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Ph.D. ([email protected]).
