Cybersecurity

The Satellite Industry Is Fueled by Your Need for Global Connectivity

Forget brave new worlds. Communications and Web traffic are fueling demand for launches.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launches with the JCSAT-14 communications satellite on May 6 in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Source: SpaceX

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By Kyunghee Park

May 18, 2016 at 11:00 PM UTC

Updated on

May 18, 2016 at 11:12 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

This article is part of the May 23, 2016 issue of businessweek.

When Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies (known as SpaceX) set a rocket down on a barge floating in the Atlantic Ocean on May 6, many cheered it as the latest sign man is quickly moving toward being able to explore brave new worlds. Yet the more immediate beneficiaries of SpaceX’s satellite-ferrying rockets will be businessmen checking e-mails from Singapore Airlines flights above the South China Sea or teens posting photos on Facebook from Indonesia’s jungles.

While the global satellite industry brought in $203 billion in revenue in 2014, the latest year for which Satellite Industry Association data are available, only $5.9 billion of that came from launches. Half of satellite revenue, $100.9 billion, came from consumer services, such as transmitting TV programming or cell phone calls, or providing broadband Internet via satellite.