January 14, 2021
Word came down to the Bureau of Economic Analysis in 2019: We’d like you to measure the American space economy, please.
The task fell into the capable hands of Tina Highfill, a 17-year veteran of the statistical agency. Her role as a research economist includes developing new measures of economic activity that don’t fall into neat buckets already, like travel and tourism or healthcare . These are called “satellite accounts,” and now they need one for satellites.
The first challenge? Defining “the space economy.” For that, the BEA developed a three-part test that includes products used in space or supporting space activities, products requiring space inputs, or products associated with studying space. So, rockets, satellites, and antennas are in the first group, remote sensing in the second, and the college tuition paid for astronomy class is in the third.
Even that gets complicated. Consider solar electricity. You can’t make that without a key input from space, but it’s not included in this account for largely conceptual reasons: People in the space sector and those in the energy sector don’t see themselves as working in the same industry. But that might change if visions of orbital solar panels beaming electricity to the earth ever come true.
After setting their parameters, Highfill and her colleagues then had to comb the BEA’s detailed measures of goods and services produced in the US to isolate space production. They also relied on tax filings, occupational data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and National Science Foundation records, among other sources.
“I was surprised by how pervasive space activity is within our economy,” Highfill told me. “Even if it’s small, every major sector of our economy has some space activity in it.”