European Human Space Transportation: Technological, Social and Strategic Benefits [Dec/2022]
Major space players exercise their essential sovereign
capability and soft power through human space exploration enabled by domestic
human space transportation systems. Space exploration encompasses a variety of
constituent elements while directly contributing to generate knowledge,
innovation, and economic growth through industrial productivity and new
markets.
A study by the consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
was conducted to assesses the future market for human space transportation that
would be addressable by European providers over 2028-2040, characterises the
economic, strategic and technological benefits of developing autonomous
European human space transportation capabilities, and evaluates the impacts and
cost of opportunity of not developing autonomous European human space
transportation capabilities.
The study concludes that the development of several
technologies and concepts would boost the European industrial landscape and
would significantly reduce Europe’s dependence on foreign capacities for the
access to HST-related and adjacent technologies. The development of autonomous
European capacities would not only support the economic development of industry
but would also lead to additional revenues generated from commercial and foreign
institutional demand, that would be captured by European HST services.
Furthermore, autonomous, and independent European HST capacities would
reinforce Europe’s sovereignty and strategic positioning in a domain directly
impacted by the geo-political consequences of the conflict in Ukraine and would
strengthen Europe’s role in future collaborative missions for Human Space
Transportation and exploration beyond LEO. Overall, the report estimates:
- €5.9 to €9.9 Billion generated by European Industry thanks to autonomous European HSTS capacities;
- Under a scenario assuming that Europe does not develop its own HST system, between €1 and €1.7 billion would be spent outside of Europe for the acquisition of European Institutional seats from non-European HST service providers;
- €3.6 (+30 seats) to €6 Billion (+50 seats) captured by the European Industry within European commercial and Rest of the World commercial and Institutional demand;
- Autonomous and independent European HST would enable a secured access to exploration launching capacities which could be obtained by leveraging existing raw skills and knowhow in Europe for the development of a complete end-to-end HST system;
- 25 critical technologies should be developed by Europe to achieve independent and autonomous European HST capacities;
- 140 novel technologies should reach a higher level of maturity to support the development of European HST capacities.
The full study report can be accessed in the restricted area here (please log in before).