The space sector is booming. But it is also running up against limits we are only beginning to acknowledge.
Like many industries, it is expanding as if resources such as materials, energy and orbital capacity were eternally abundant, when in reality all three are becoming more constrained, more contested and more expensive. At the same time, the environmental impact of space activities, long treated as marginal, is coming into sharper focus. From atmospheric effects linked to re-entries to emissions from launch vehicles, the evidence is still incomplete but everything suggests that they constitute a serious problem.
Meanwhile, Earth’s orbits are filling up rapidly, driven largely by commercial uses whose collective value is not always obvious.
This raises a simple but uncomfortable question: Can we continue to increase indefinitely the mass we place in orbit each year? Or is it time to prioritize fewer, longer-lasting and more efficient systems?
The difficulty is that space is no longer optional. It has become critical infrastructure, essential to Europe’s strategic autonomy and to a growing range of public services and economic activities. The challenge, therefore, is not whether to rely on space, but how to sustain that reliance in a world where resources (material, energy and orbital) are not limitless.
Bigger, cheaper and worse? The ambiguities of the space industry model
At first glance, calling for restraint in space activities seems to run directly against the industry’s dominant logic: more volume, lower unit costs, greater efficiency. But this logic is less straightforward than it appears.
Not everything in space needs to be “mega.” In fact, it is often the most ambitious, large-scale architectures (megaconstellations or some very speculative “visions”) that raise the most serious questions about their real economic and societal value.
And economies of scale, while powerful, come with trade-offs: Increasing volume does reduce unit costs, but it also drives up total system costs, sometimes dramatically, and amplifies negative externalities. What looks like efficiency at the unit level can become inefficiency at the system level.
In this sense, the space sector is following a familiar industrial trajectory. It is moving away from a model based on highly specialized, high-performance and often unique systems toward one focused on standardization, simplification and mass production. The shift is clear: from craftsmanship to industrialisation.
This transformation has delivered real gains. Since the late 2010s, production lines such as those developed for large constellations have enabled near-automated manufacturing of satellites and their components. Costs have fallen; output has increased.
But this success comes with a blind spot. Part of the cost advantage of mass-produced systems comes from what they leave out of the equation: shorter lifespans, faster replacement cycles and the cumulative impact of deploying — and redeploying — large numbers of objects in orbit. In other words, the model optimizes production efficiency, while quietly shifting inefficiencies elsewhere.
The more we launch, the more we have to launch
No discussion of the space sector can ignore the central role of launch costs, which shape the system.
When launches are rare and expensive, the logic is clear: maximize the value of every kilogram sent into orbit. Satellites are built to last, designed with redundancy, and optimized for long-term performance. This is the model that has long dominated higher orbits such as GEO and MEO, where longevity is a necessity.
Lower launch costs change that equation entirely. When access to space becomes more frequent and affordable, it becomes viable to operate in lower orbits, where satellites have shorter lifespans and must be replaced regularly. In this model, performance is no longer tied to durability, but to rapid iteration. Systems can be less robust individually because they are renewed continuously.
Shorter lifespans mean more satellites. More satellites mean more launches, and more launches reinforce the very conditions — high volume and frequency — that made this model possible in the first place.
The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: lower launch costs enable mass deployment, and mass deployment, in turn, sustains lower launch costs. Volume is no longer just a parameter of the system, it becomes one of its driving forces.
This is the paradox at the heart of the current model. What makes it economically viable in the short term (scale, frequency, replacement) also increases its long-term pressure on resources, infrastructure and the orbital environment.
No scale, no progress?
It’s often forgotten that production volume doesn’t just affect costs. Some performance improvements only become possible because there is sufficient demand to justify the investments. For example, the mass production of optimized components (particularly ASICs, solar cells or batteries) is made possible by large production volumes and, therefore, high demand.
Thus, launching satellites more frequently and in larger quantities can accelerate technological progress while, conversely, drastically reducing the number of satellites launched could slow down certain technological trajectories.
Five ways to stop filling orbit blindly
If the current model is reaching its limits, the question is no longer whether it should change, but how. The answer is unlikely to be a single solution. The space sector will need to navigate along several complementary paths, combining restraint where necessary with targeted expansion where it still makes sense.
First approach: embracing scarcity. This could involve fewer but much more capable infrastructures, designed for long lifespans and, as far as possible, reconfigurable from the ground. In this model, the unit cost would increase, but the number of objects in orbit would decrease. Innovation and skills maintenance would rely more heavily on digital simulations, with physical deployments occurring later and relatively rarely.
It should be noted that this scarcity model will obviously have a negative impact on launch costs, as it would not generate sufficient volume demand to justify operating one or more reusable launch vehicles.
Second approach: evolving systems rather than replacing them. Another approach, which can complement the previous one, would involve using multifunctional, high-performance platforms designed for long lifespans, as mentioned above, but which would also be capable of accommodating more modern and evolutive payloads over time.
On-orbit servicing missions would thus allow these systems to evolve without having to replace them entirely. However, this approach assumes conditions that are still far from being met and involves serious uncertainties, particularly regarding launch costs and the maturity of on-orbit servicing technologies.
Third approach: moving beyond a uniform approach. Not all applications justify massive architectures. The diversity of uses calls for a diversity of solutions, ranging from state-of-the-art systems for scientific missions, often unique, to constellations of varying sizes and performance levels for specific needs, without necessarily resorting to the gigantism of mass-market commercial applications such as broadband, direct-to-device and orbital data centers.
Fourth approach: revaluing higher orbits. In the telecommunications sector, the proliferation of satellites is one consequence of the need to reduce latency, which is often cited to justify lower orbits. Similarly, lowering the orbits of observation systems to increase their accuracy requires a growing number of satellites to be deployed to ensure the same coverage and revisit times.
Revaluing architectures in GEO, MEO, or even in the higher layers of low Earth orbit (up to 2,000 kilometers) makes it possible to reduce the number of objects and improve mission sustainability. Latency, for example, is actually critical for only a few specific uses or users, particularly in the military, and is not a deal-breaker for most telecommunications applications.
Fifth approach: making better use of existing resources. Current low Earth orbit (LEO) systems, by design, provide a comprehensive response to needs that are, in fact, highly localized. Better coordination, synergies between different systems or the pooling of their respective capabilities, would significantly improve their efficiency and performance for all their users/stakeholders. This responds also to the growing calls for action regarding interoperability standards, let’s cross fingers that they will be heard.
Do we really need all of this?
Behind these approaches lies a deeper reality: certain space infrastructures, particularly in LEO, exhibit characteristics close to a natural monopoly. Their efficiency increases, for a given infrastructure, with the number and global distribution of their users, while the proliferation of such infrastructures tends to degrade overall performance.
In this context, intra-European fragmentation (such as the proliferation of uncoordinated initiatives) is becoming increasingly difficult to justify. It increases costs, reduces the efficiency of each infrastructure and, above all, complicates the emergence of robust industrial solutions. If, for each national initiative and each use case, the institutional client demands the location of dedicated production capacity within its national territory, the industrial sector will be unable to generate economies of scale to meet a higher volume of demand. On the contrary, it will fragment its means of production and investments, and increase its structural costs.
Finally, one question remains, undoubtedly the most delicate: Is everything we plan to do in space truly worthwhile, provided the financial trajectory is viable? Some applications could be carried out differently, from the ground; others, perhaps, do not present sufficient interest in light of the resources they mobilize or the negative externalities they will cause. Answering these questions requires moving beyond the sole logic of launch cost per kilogram or return on investment, to incorporate broader criteria: energy consumption, environmental impact, social benefit, and other factors. Or perhaps we could study the sustainability of LEO architectures with their thousands of satellites packed with components of very short lifespans and systematically underutilised capacity?
Finally, we cannot ignore the risk that the exponential proliferation of satellites in LEO will eventually render LEO unsuitable for essential, critical or sovereign activities, whether due to the scarcity of available licenses or the increased risk of in-orbit collisions.
Infinite expansion, eventual strategic failure
The issue is no longer so much choosing between volume and efficiency, but rather accepting that the current model, based on continuous expansion, is gradually reaching its limits. And that this encounter with those limits is an existential risk that needs to be addressed. If those limits are ignored, they will not simply constrain growth, they will undermine capabilities that have become essential for the functioning of our society.
The real question then becomes: How can we push back this limit as far as possible while preserving access to the critical functions that space has rendered indispensable?
To this question is added another, equally crucial: How, in this context, can we maintain an industrial base capable of supplying these essential space infrastructures?
That tension, between physical limits and strategic necessity, is where the future of the space sector will be decided. The sooner it is confronted, the better our chances of shaping it.
Olivier Lemaitre is Eurospace Secretary General. A biologist by training and with a first career in nature conservation, Lemaitre get himself lost in space 20 years ago, first as part of the Belgian federal administration. He later joined the private sector with positions in Thales Alenia Space, as Head of EU Affairs and now Eurospace, where one of his main mission is to ensure that the association provides relevant information and recommendations to the decision-makers to help them make the best use of the capabilities and expertise of the European space Industry.
Pierre Lionnet is the Research and Managing Director at Eurospace, the trade organization of the European space industry. He labels himself a space economist, being an economist by training and being professionally involved in the analysis of space markets, space industry supply chains and space technology and innovation trends for the past 30 years.
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