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The Big Bet on the Emerging Space Economy

September 14, 2026
Cogs of War

Cogs of War

The Big Bet on the Emerging Space Economy

Dan Wald, Brian Weeden, Joseph Yaffe, and Jonathan Panter
September 14, 2026

The space economy has surpassed $600 billion in annual value, with some projecting it will reach a trillion by the 2030s. Jonathan Panter is joined by Joseph Yaffe (Cowboy Space), Brian Weeden (The Aerospace Corporation), and Dan Wald (Booz Allen) to weigh where the real growth is. They discuss how AI infrastructure is blurring the line between the space economy and the regular economy, the regulatory tangle, the leap toward autonomous constellations of hundreds of thousands of satellites, competition with China, and the dual-use risks of data centers in orbit.

Image: Giuseppe Donatiello via Wikimedia Commons.

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