Sat, Jul 18, 2009
Study Predicts $1.5 Billion Market
You've heard of Big Oil and Big
Pharma, but what about Big Moon? A study performed by the Futron
Corporation, an aerospace consultancy based in Bethesda, MD,
predicts that companies such as those competing for the Google
Lunar X PRIZE will be able to address a market in excess of $1
billion over the course of the next decade. The results of the
study resonate with the expectations of the X PRIZE Foundation,
which conducts the $30 million competition that challenges space
professionals and engineers from across the globe to build and
launch privately funded spacecraft capable of exploring the lunar
surface. The market projection demonstrates the breadth of
commercial opportunities that companies are likely to pursue either
during or after the conclusion of their Google Lunar X PRIZE
missions.
The study, which involved a detailed examination of the 19 teams
already registered in the competition, as well as a robust analysis
of potential lines of business, identified six key market areas:
hardware sales to the worldwide government sector, services
provided to the government sector, products provided to the
commercial sector, entertainment, sponsorship, and technology sales
and licensing. Taken together, the study projects the value of
these markets to be between $1 - $1.56 billion within the next
decade. Additionally, some Google Lunar X PRIZE competitors have
set their sights on additional market sectors that fell outside of
the scope of the Futron report, which could result in an even
higher total market size.
File Photo
The breadth and the size of these projected markets are
attributes of a new era of lunar exploration quite different from
the Apollo era. "The glories of the first Moon race were
accomplished with only two real developers and two real
customers-the national space programs of the United States and of
the Soviet Union," said William Pomerantz, Senior Director of Space
Prizes at the X PRIZE Foundation. "Now, we're entering a new
paradigm - Moon 2.0 - that features an enormous variety of
innovators each trying to serve a wide range of customers. National
space programs such as NASA's will certainly benefit, but so will
academia, the general public, and the economies of those nations
where teams step up to meet the challenges of lunar exploration.
That breadth of impact will make Moon 2.0 much more sustainable and
longer lasting than the first era of lunar exploration"
"We examined a wide range of markets that teams could address,
both those that exist today and those that could be enabled by
low-cost commercial lunar exploration," said Jeff Foust, a senior
analyst with the Futron Corporation. "If one or more teams are able
to win this prize competition, they will be able to serve markets
potentially far larger than the prize purse."
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