Roadmap ⑧ · Available individually · €19 · web roadmap + A1 poster · Version 1.0 · As of 2026-08-19
Space & NewSpace
From launch price to orbital economy: reusability tipped the costs — now spectrum, debris and sovereignty decide
1 Executive summary (excerpt)
Space’s tipping point is behind us, and it was economic, not technical: when Falcon 9 boosters began flying ten times and more from 2021, the launch price fell to about $2,700/kg — a tenth of Shuttle levels. Since then the launch rate has doubled to more than 250 orbital flights a year, two thirds of them from a single provider. What followed was not a technology revolution but a volume revolution: mega-constellations with more than 8,000 active satellites, broadband from low Earth orbit, since 2024/25 mobile service direct to unmodified handsets, daily Earth observation of the entire land surface, commercial Moon landings at a fraction of state programme costs.
The next ten years no longer decide whether you can reach orbit, but who controls access and how long it remains usable. Three bottlenecks replace the launch price: spectrum and orbits (more than 100,000 satellites filed in ITU procedures), debris (more than 40,000 catalogued objects, tens of thousands of automatic avoidance manoeuvres per half-year) and sovereignty — the war in Ukraine showed what it means when critical communication depends on a private operator; Europe’s answer is IRIS² with €10.6 bn. Technically the open question is Starship: if operational reuse with on-orbit refuelling succeeds, the price per kilogram falls by another factor of five and things like in-orbit manufacturing or lunar resources become arguable. If it does not, the orbital economy remains what it is today: communication and data.
2 What you get
- Executive summary: what it is about, who it is relevant for, what the roadmap claims
- Roadmap panel: retrospective since 2020 and outlook today → 3 → 5 → 10 years in four layers — interactive, with rationale, dependency chains and confidence per entry
- ADL classification per reference industry (emerging · pacing · key · base)
- Maturity (TRL 1–9) per sub-technology with stated confidence and evidence
- Implications for action per horizon: watch · pilot · invest · ignore — with reasons
- Change journal and complete list of sources, methods used linked
- The A1 poster (594 × 841 mm, portrait) as vector PDF in English and German, plus PNG — with 50+ milestones in four layers, dependencies, key figures, TRL, ADL and action matrix
3 What a roadmap looks like
The freely accessible showcase roadmap Robotics & Humanoid Systems shows structure, depth and poster exactly as you get them here.
4 Questions about buying
- What exactly am I buying?
- Access to the web roadmap (permanent, tied to your e-mail address, sign-in by link without password) and the poster as PDF/PNG for download — as of the time of purchase (version and date are printed on page and poster). Later updates are not included.
- How does payment work?
- Via Stripe (card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, SEPA direct debit and others). You receive a receipt or invoice by e-mail. Price €19; no VAT is charged (German small-business rule, Section 19 UStG).
- Right of withdrawal?
- Digital content: by purchasing you request immediate provision and acknowledge that your right of withdrawal thereby expires — this is stated explicitly once more before payment. Details in the terms of purchase.
- For teams?
- Access is personal. For sharing within a company contact us: info@operation-zukunft.de.