Of the $70 billion in net growth over the past decade, government spending accounted for about 90%. Genuine commercial revenue grew by $6 billion — cumulatively, not annually.
Orbital Progress is a research institute for space market formation. We decompose the global space-sustaining economy into its constituent parts — traditional mission spending, commercially-procured government services, and genuine commercial revenue — and study the structural conditions under which space markets actually form.
Our work serves three audiences: capital allocators deciding where space investment has real commercial traction, procurement leaders and operators designing programs that build markets rather than just buy capabilities, and policy voices shaping the narrative around what the space economy actually is.
Every instrument and data set we publish is open. We invite disagreement on the scoring rather than on whether the questions are the right ones.
Eleven published pieces across four categories: market analyses, case studies, assessment frameworks, and framing essays. Every publication is accessible to any reader regardless of role.
The Market Signal tentpole. Three-way decomposition of the global space-sustaining economy, read against a decade of growth data.
§ Read →The commercial label vs. commercial discipline — applied to two programs that both carry the label.
NASA's $20B cislunar Ignition program through the SpaceX-vs-ULA precedent.
Two behavioral axes, four quadrants, and a migration path. First application: launch.