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Space has helped inform wars on Earth for decades.
Now the United States has acknowledged that it is prepared to fight there, too.
On Monday, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink publicly confirmed for the first time that the U.S. has deployed what he called “on-orbit space-control weapons.”
He did not say what they are. He did not say how many exist. And he would not explain whether they jam hostile signals, disable enemy satellites electronically, or use some other method entirely.
The details may be classified, but the message is not…
Space is becoming the next battlefield.
That would be a major story on its own.
It is also arriving as a French-UAE consortium commits $1 billion to an AI-enabled satellite constellation, Planet Labs (PL) reports record revenue, BlackSky (BKSY) grows sales 50%, and another rocket startup – Stoke Space – raises $1 billion to expand launch capacity.
For years, investors valued the space economy largely on what it might become. Global internet from orbit. Persistent surveillance. Lunar infrastructure. Factories in microgravity. Data centers floating above Earth.
Now the vision has customers.
Government budgets are becoming contracts. Satellite fleets are becoming recurring revenue. AI is moving onboard spacecraft. Launch providers are raising billions to meet an expanding manifest.
The space economy is beginning to show up where Wall Street can measure it.
Defense Spending Is Becoming a Growth Engine for Space Stocks
We’ll start with the national security angle.
Governments are waking up to the uncomfortable fact that space is the new strategic battleground.
Satellites provide battlefield intelligence, secure communications, missile warnings, navigation, targeting, and surveillance.
Modern militaries would struggle to operate without them. Yet, that dependence also makes satellites targets.
China and Russia have spent years developing systems that could jam, disable, deceive, or destroy spacecraft. The U.S. government has repeatedly warned that losing access to orbital systems could cripple military operations on Earth.
Now Washington has publicly acknowledged its response.
Meink said the Space Force has weapons in orbit capable of defending American forces from hostile action. The exact systems remain classified, so investors should resist the temptation to guess which contractors built them.
Which Space Stocks Are Exposed to Defense Spending?
Instead, remember that this is a long-term arms race – one that favors nimble, responsive space companies with launch capacity, satellite imaging capabilities, and hardware manufacturing.
The usual suspects benefit here:
- BlackSky and Planet Labs provide Earth intelligence.
- Rocket Lab (RKLB) offers launch, spacecraft, and space-system capabilities.
- Palantir (PLTR) helps military customers turn enormous streams of information into decisions.
- And traditional defense companies such as L3Harris (LHX) supply communications, sensors, electronic warfare, and command systems.
We estimate national defense TAM in space is about $30- to $40 billion today. But as intelligence demand and geopolitical tensions escalate, it could easily double over the next decade.
And it’s just one vertical of the multi-faceted Space Economy…
Satellite Internet Is Expanding the Space Economy
Another big vertical here is space-based communications because the entire communications industry is being rewritten from orbit.
The world is moving toward a space-powered internet: a global, always-accessible broadband network delivered from thousands of small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO).
This is more than a theoretical future. It’s already in action:
- Starlink now has over 10,000 satellites in orbit and serves 12 million users worldwide.
- Amazon Leo (formerly dubbed Project Kuiper) continues building out its constellation to support AWS and global internet.
- AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) is taking another route, building satellites that connect directly to ordinary smartphones without requiring a separate dish or terminal.
That’s a major step up, especially considering that 2.2 billion people worldwide still lack reliable internet access, and billions more suffer from poor mobile coverage.
Not to mention, we still don’t have cell coverage on airplanes. And natural disasters like earthquakes, fires, and tsunamis often knock out cell coverage when we need it most.
The opportunity here extends beyond just the companies operating the constellations.
Every network needs antennas, radio-frequency chips, optical links, ground equipment, spectrum, cybersecurity, and a steady flow of replacement satellites.
A successful constellation is not a one-time hardware sale.
That’s why we think the total addressable market here is huge. We see it climbing toward $40 billion by 2035 – possibly much more if these constellations become the backbone for rural broadband, global telecom, and even cloud connectivity.
Orbital Data Centers Could Become the Space Economy’s Biggest New Market
Here’s the vertical that didn’t exist when we first started writing about the space economy – and it may end up being the biggest of them all.
AI’s growth is running into hard physical limits on Earth. Data centers need enormous amounts of land, power, and water – and communities increasingly don’t want them nearby. Lawmakers in at least 14 states have introduced legislation to restrict new data center construction.
That has pushed companies toward a much bigger idea: Move some of the computing into orbit.
The most ambitious version involves large orbital data centers powered by solar energy and linked through laser communications.
Of course, that will take time. Launch remains expensive. Radiation damages electronics. Hardware is difficult to repair. And while space is exceptionally cold, engineers haven’t yet cracked efficient GPU cooling in orbit because there’s no air for convection.
The long-term race is already drawing some of the biggest names in technology and space.
SpaceX has filed with the FCC to launch up to one million orbital data centers. Google has entered talks with SpaceX to expand its own space-based compute efforts. Anthropic has expressed interest in partnering on orbital AI capacity. And Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin just asked the government for permission to launch more than 50,000 orbital data centers of its own.
Most recently, on Sept. 9, a consortium involving companies in France and the UAE committed $1 billion to a new 50-satellite constellation carrying radar, optical cameras, and other sensors.
BlackSky will serve as the exclusive provider of its very-high-resolution optical satellites. Mistral AI is involved on the model side to process information in orbit and deliver useful alerts within seconds.
Giant data centers can come later. The first commercial win may simply be making today’s satellites much smarter.
And that leads directly into one of the space economy’s most established markets: Earth observation.
Four More Space Economy Markets Investors Should Watch
Defense, communications, orbital AI, and launch are the most visible parts of the space economy buildout.
They are far from the only ones.
Earth Observation: Turning Satellite Images Into Intelligence
There’s Earth observation.
We’re entering the age of persistent planetary surveillance. Think:
- Monitoring crop yields (for commodity traders)
- Tracking cargo ships (for logistics and supply chains)
- Detecting oil spills, deforestation, wildfires, and droughts
- Verifying carbon emissions and ESG compliance
Governments, hedge funds, insurers, farmers, and climate groups all want this data.
PL and BKSY are two of the biggest players in this niche. They control massive constellations of satellites and sell high-frequency data with AI analytics on top.
Planet just reported record quarterly revenue of $116.1 million, up 58% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA reached $13.9 million, while backlog ended the quarter near $815 million. The company also raised its full-year revenue outlook.
BKSY’s revenue rose 50% to $33.3 million. Adjusted EBITDA turned positive at $4.7 million. And its space-based intelligence and AI-services unit produced record revenue before the company was even selected for the new $1 billion constellation.
This market is becoming a real-time intelligence business.
Lunar Infrastructure: Building a Commercial Economy Around the Moon
Then there is the moon.
NASA’s Artemis program is building toward a sustained human and scientific presence beyond Earth. Private companies are developing landers, communications relays, navigation systems, and cargo services so the moon can eventually support:
- Water-ice extraction
- Rocket-fuel production
- Scientific equipment
- Communications infrastructure
- Telescopes
- Deeper-space logistics
Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft has already supported a mission to lunar orbit. And companies like Intuitive Machines (LUNR) are developing landers and the communications, navigation, and cargo systems needed to support repeat missions around the moon.
This remains a very early market.
But every commercial economy begins with infrastructure.
The moon will be no different.
In-Space Manufacturing: What Microgravity Makes Possible
There’s also in-space manufacturing because… let’s face it… why make stuff on Earth when microgravity offers the perfect conditions for making certain things? Like:
- ZBLAN fiber optics: cleaner fiber that carries data farther with less signal loss
- Protein crystal growth: larger, more orderly crystals that make it easier to study proteins and design better drugs
- Semiconductors: more uniform materials for advanced chips and electronics
Startups like Varda Space are building in-space factories. Redwire is printing tools on the ISS. In fact, Rocket Lab is already launching some of these missions.
Tiny TAM today – but potential for $10- to $20 billion by 2040.
Satellite Servicing: The Maintenance Layer of the Space Economy
And then you have the whole satellite servicing market.
Satellites are expensive. They age, fail… and then crash, rendering them nothing more than junk. The solution therein?
- Servicing and refueling in orbit
- ‘Tugboats’ for moving satellites
- Bots to clean up space debris
This is like the equivalent of AAA for space. And we think it could be a $10-billion-plus market by the 2030s.
The Bottom Line: Space Stocks Are Starting to Look Like Real Businesses
Put all this together – defense, communications, orbital compute, EO, infrastructure, manufacturing, servicing – and the total space economy TAM is already near $100 billion.
Depending on regulation and global policy, that number could stretch to unfathomable heights over the coming decades.
Now here’s the real kicker: outside of SpaceX, not many own this trade yet.
Planet Labs has a market cap of approximately $6 billion. AST SpaceMobile is right around $23 billion. And BlackSky is valued at about $870 million.
In terms of their addressable market, these are penny stocks with planetary potential.
Now, to be sure, not every company will win. Some will fizzle or get acquired. Some might crash and burn, literally.
But the winners will provide the foundational infrastructure for the next trillion-dollar economy. And as we saw during the early internet era, a single winner could 20X, 50X, even 100X in a decade.
So, the smartest approach here might be a simple one: buy a basket of them now. Don’t try to pick the single winner. Just be exposed.
Because if this space economy thesis plays out – and the signs are saying it’s already well underway – the upside will vastly outweigh any individual misfires.
There’s just one wrinkle to the basket approach.
For the first time, all the puzzle pieces I just described are being assembled under a single roof, by a single man.
Elon Musk took SpaceX public in the largest IPO in history. He merged it with xAI. And now, virtually every Silicon Valley insider, from his own biographer to the president of SpaceX herself, expects him to complete the consolidation with the biggest merger of all time.
The estimates around what it could be worth are staggering; bigger than AI, robotics, clean energy, and driverless cars combined.
And just like the space stocks in this piece, the biggest gains won’t come from owning the giant at the center. They’ll come from the small, little-known suppliers riding its coattails – including one that trades for just $15 a share.
I’ve laid out the full story – and the three steps to get positioned – right here.
P.S. Some of the biggest opportunities in a new industry can emerge long before most public-market investors gain access. Take SpaceX, for example. It started in a warehouse. Today, it launches more mass into orbit than every government space program on Earth combined.
I’m currently at the All-In Summit, where I’m sitting down with Jensen Huang and SpaceX’s Gwynne Shotwell behind closed doors to learn more. I don’t yet know which ideas I’ll come home with, but these conversations tend to be game-changing
As Jensen put it, a “second layer” is now forming beneath the AI Boom. It’s made up of smaller, private companies building the AI infrastructure this very boom relies on. One of them is a private company I see as the “Nvidia of Robotics.” And for a limited time, everyday investors can claim a stake in it with as little as $500.
But the window closes at midnight on Monday, Sept. 21. Get the company name and full details right here – for free – before it’s too late.
