From: Wales.Larrison@ofa123.fidonet.org
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Commercial Space
Date: 19 Aug 92 02:25:32 GMT
X-Sender: newtout 0.01 Jul 13 1992

dann cutter writes:
   >Could anybody out there please tell me the current status of the
   >private space industry world wide. What comapnies exist... what
   >they have done... thanks
  
Listing individual companies is a bit difficult, since there are
several thousands of them.  For a general overview, from Commercial
Space News #15 , which I posted a month or so ago...
  
1- COMMERCIAL SPACE BUSINESS INDICATORS UP
  The annual issue of "Space Business Indicators" published by the
Department of Commerce's Office of Space Commerce is about to be
released.  As compiled from the Office of Business Statistics, the
U.S. Commercial Space Industry saw another record year of space
sales, and is expected to reach about $5 B in sales in 1992.
  A summary of the results are:                        (est.)
                        1988     1989     1990     1991     1992
                       -----     ----     ----     ----     ----
Commercial Satellites    550      900     1000     1300     1100
Satellite Services       600      750      800     1200     1500
    Fixed Services      (600)    (700)    (735)   (1115)   (1350)
    Mobile Services     (  0)    ( 50)    ( 65)   (  85)   ( 150)
Satellite Ground Equip   600      790      860     1350     1700
    Fixed               (600)    (690)    (715)    (970)   (1200)
    Mobile              (  0)    (100)    (145)    (380)   ( 500)
Commercial Launches        0      150      570      380      500
Remote Sensing            90      115      140      170      200
                        ====     ====     ====     ====     ====
Annual Sales ($M)       1840     2705     3370     4400     5000
  
  To summarize what is included in these groupings:
  Commercial Satellites - sales of satellites to foreign and non-
governmental entities.  For example, sales of communications
satellites to foreign and commercial customers.
  Satellite Services  - the sale of satellite provided services to
customers, including broadcast TV, telecommunications, data and
navigation services. Examples of this include TV broadcasts and
vehicle tracking services. Fixed services are those to fixed ground
sites, such as TV broadcast to home receivers or cable services.
Mobile services are sales of satellite service to non-fixed ground
sites, such as air-to-ground phone service, ship-to-shore
telecommunications, and vehicle tracking.
  Satellite ground equipment - the sale of satellite ground
receiving and transmitting equipment.  Examples of this include
satellite dishes, mobile communications suites, and navigation
boxes.  An example of fixed ground equipment is a satellite dish for
home satellite TV reception.  An examples of mobile satellites
ground equipment would be a hand held GPS navigation reciever.
  Commercial launches  - sales of launch vehicles to foreign or
commercial customers to launch satellites.  This also includes
"commercial launch service contracts" to the US government, which
are based upon a commercial firm launching the satellite rather than
the more typical government practise of procuring a satellite
launcher and operating it under government control.
   Remote Sensing - includes the sale of directly derived Earth
observation data by U.S. firms.  This is essentially sales of
Landsat data through the EOSAT corporation.
  [Commentary:  I could spend the rest of this column discussing the
contents of these statistics, but to save bandwidth I will just point
out this data represents a average annual growth rate of over 25 %
for space-related commercial products and services.  A simple
extrapolation of the historical data shown above indicates there is
still a large up-side to this market. From the perspective of an
individual investor in the space market, this data indicates there
is are substantial market opportunities in the satellite business.
  It is also interesting to note that about 90% of this market is
driven by satellite communications products of some type. While
remote sensing data sales have been growing at over 20% per year,
these sales only comprise about $200 M per year.  Furthermore, most
of the attention paid to commercial space activities seems to be
directed at the launch systems segment, which really is a very small
part of the commercial activity (about 10%).  There's a lot more
going on, and I will try to focus more on those other areas in
future articles.]
 ------------------------------------------------------------------
 Wales Larrison                         Space Technology Investor

--- Maximus 2.00