Space Markets: 1996 in Review

• First space advertisement (Pepsi-Mir).
• Big LEO comsat constellations making progress and booking launches (e.g. ICO).
• First operational Little LEO (ORBCOMM; although this is not yet a real-time service).
• Private investment in space theme parks like the KSC Visitor Center ($80 million expansion opened in late 1996).
• Lots of activity in new entrepreneurial launch companies (Kistler, Kelly, etc.). Of course most will fail, but that is entrepreneurship for you and these companies do pass a basic plausibility test better than many past space startups.
• Boeing's Mir Pathfinder takes the first (small but concrete) step towards commercial space stations (program announced 1996, first launch scheduled for March 1997).

• First space burial (was to be in 1996, slipped to 1997 due to launcher problems).
• First Iridium launch (was to be in 1996, slipped to 1997).
• First Globalstar launch.
• Will the KSC Visitor Center achieve its goal of 4 million visitors per year?
• Will LunaCorp succeed, both technically and financially, with Robots in Cyberspace (as of 28 Dec 1996 their web page still says mid to late 1996 but 1996 is over and I don't see no robots) and Desert Trek (scheduled for 1997)?

So you can see various signs of market expansion, but also a certain unsteadiness in terms of hardware actually getting built and launched on time. It sure looks to me like the markets are there and the customer (communications, burial, entertainment, etc.) businesses are there. But can the companies who actually build space hardware (especially launchers) step up to the challenge? Or are they going to dither and underinvest and fail to outgrow their government contractor culture, thereby delaying the explosion and insuring that when it does happen, they will be sitting on the sidelines?

More information on each of these items should be available elsewhere on the space markets page in most cases, or I'm probably willing to dig up some references upon request.