Commercial space gets attention when rockets launch or land dramatically. But the interesting commercial opportunities aren’t primarily in launch - they’re in what happens after things reach orbit.

I’ve been digging into this sector for the past few months. The landscape is more mature and more practically investable than most innovation managers realize.

The Launch Cost Revolution Is Real

Let me start with the foundation: launch costs have genuinely transformed.

In the Space Shuttle era, getting a kilogram to low Earth orbit cost around $54,000. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 brought that to roughly $2,700. With Starship achieving routine operations, costs could drop below $500 per kilogram.

This isn’t just an incremental improvement - it’s a change that makes entire categories of business possible. A business case that didn’t close at $50,000/kg might work fine at $1,000/kg.

The implication isn’t that everyone should build rockets. It’s that applications which depend on space infrastructure become more viable as launch costs drop. The launches are becoming commoditized; the value moves upstream to what you do in space.

Earth Observation: The Quiet Giant

Satellite imagery and Earth observation data have become a mature, growing market without most people noticing.

Planet Labs operates the largest fleet of Earth-imaging satellites - over 200 spacecraft imaging the entire landmass of Earth daily. Maxar provides high-resolution imagery used by governments and commercial customers. Spire Global collects weather data from a constellation of satellites.

The applications are more varied than you might expect:

Agriculture: Crop monitoring, yield prediction, irrigation optimization. Farmers can track plant health across thousands of acres without ground visits.

Insurance: Damage assessment after natural disasters, risk modeling for underwriting, monitoring of insured assets.

Finance: Alternative data for investors - tracking retail parking lots, shipping traffic, oil storage levels, construction activity.

Environmental monitoring: Deforestation tracking, methane emissions detection, water resource management.

Supply chain: Port congestion monitoring, inventory visibility, logistics optimization.

The business model is increasingly SaaS-style: continuous data feeds and analytics rather than one-time imagery sales. Companies like Planet are building platforms that make the data accessible to customers without space expertise.

For innovation managers, the question isn’t whether to launch satellites. It’s whether Earth observation data could improve your operations, and which data providers make sense to partner with.

Satellite Communications: Connectivity Everywhere

Starlink gets the attention, but the broader satellite communications market is evolving rapidly.

What’s changed: Traditional geostationary satellites (high orbit, expensive, limited bandwidth) are being supplemented or replaced by low Earth orbit constellations (thousands of smaller satellites providing lower latency and higher aggregate bandwidth).

Starlink dominates consumer attention, but the enterprise and government markets are equally significant. Amazon’s Kuiper constellation is in deployment. OneWeb serves aviation and enterprise customers. Telesat is building a constellation focused on business applications.

The practical implications:

Truly global connectivity becomes possible. Assets in remote locations - ships, aircraft, mining operations, agricultural facilities, remote workers - can have reliable, high-bandwidth connections.

Backup connectivity that doesn’t depend on terrestrial infrastructure. For organizations where communications reliability is critical, satellite backup becomes more practical.

IoT in remote areas where cellular coverage doesn’t reach. Millions of sensors and devices in remote locations can now report data regularly.

The challenge for enterprises is navigating the options. Different providers have different coverage, capabilities, and cost structures. The market is still shaking out.

Space-Based Manufacturing: Longer-Horizon Opportunity

Here’s where we move from proven to speculative.

Certain manufacturing processes work better in microgravity. Fiber optics with unusual properties. Pharmaceutical crystals with improved structures. Metal alloys that don’t separate by density.

Companies like Varda Space Industries are building platforms for orbital manufacturing. The thesis: produce high-value materials in space, return them to Earth for sale.

I’m cautiously interested but not convinced the economics work yet. The value density needs to be very high to justify launch and return costs. We’re likely looking at niche applications - specialty pharmaceuticals, exotic materials for research - rather than commodity manufacturing.

Watch this space (sorry) for proof points: actual returns of valuable materials, evidence of customer demand, and unit economics that improve with scale.

The Investment Landscape

Commercial space startups raised approximately $8 billion in 2024, down from the peak but still substantial.

Categories I find most interesting for investors:

Space-derived data and analytics: Companies that turn satellite data into actionable intelligence for specific verticals. Lower capital intensity than hardware, clearer path to recurring revenue.

Ground segment and software: The infrastructure to manage satellite constellations, process data, and serve customers. This benefits from growth regardless of which specific constellations win.

Components and supply chain: Specialized hardware, electronics, and systems that go into satellites. The growth in satellite manufacturing creates demand.

New applications: Business models that only become viable as space infrastructure matures. These are harder to evaluate but could provide the largest returns.

Categories I’m more cautious about:

Launch: Extremely capital-intensive, and SpaceX has a dominant position that’s hard to challenge.

Space tourism: Uncertain demand elasticity, high costs, regulatory and safety risks.

Asteroid mining and deep space: Exciting but extremely long time horizons.

What Innovation Managers Should Do

If space isn’t your primary business, you probably shouldn’t be building space infrastructure. But you might benefit from using it.

Evaluate Earth observation data for your industry. If you have geographically distributed assets, agricultural operations, supply chain complexity, or environmental monitoring needs, satellite data may be practical now.

Assess connectivity needs for remote operations. The satellite communications landscape has changed enough that solutions that weren’t practical five years ago may be viable now.

Monitor the sector for emerging applications relevant to your business. The technology is maturing faster than awareness in most industries.

Space is graduating from a government-dominated frontier to a commercially practical domain. The opportunities aren’t about rockets - they’re about what rockets enable.