Old Space, New Space: A Commercial Revolution in Innovation? | NBER
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Old Space, New Space: A Commercial Revolution in Innovation?
Ruben Gaetani
& Alexander T. Whalley
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Working Paper 35212
DOI 10.3386/w35212
Issue Date May 2026
The emergence of firms like SpaceX and Blue Origin has made space a leading example of how private enterprise drives innovation, marking what many see as a sharp break between Old Space and New Space. Yet little systematic evidence documents when the transition to this new phase of space innovation occurred and which firms drove it. We use patent data to provide this measurement and find that the largest surge in space innovation occurred in the 1990s, coinciding with demand-side market creation, and preceding the entry of high-profile startups after 2005. Throughout this period and since, incumbent aerospace firms account for most of the space-related patenting, with entrants contributing a growing but minority share. The same geographic regions that dominated space innovation during the post-Apollo era remain dominant today. These patterns are consistent with directed technical change: incumbents direct R&D toward policy-created markets accessible from existing capabilities, while entrants bring science-based insights into domains requiring new paradigms. Our findings suggest that New Space is more closely connected to Old Space than prevailing narratives imply, and that government's most consequential role in space innovation may lie in constructing appropriable markets. We make patent data on space-related technologies available for future research.
Acknowledgements and Disclosures
We thank Luisa Corrado, Benjamin Jones, Josh Lerner, Matt Weinzierl and participants at the NBER Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy Conference 2026 for helpful comments. We thank Apoorva Babbar, Nathanael Hammond, Dipto Sikdar, Sonia Siming Tao, and Oliver Whalley for outstanding research assistance. Whalley thanks the Space-Defence Technologies Alberta initiative for research funding. Ruben Gaetani is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
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Ruben Gaetani and Alexander T. Whalley, "Old Space, New Space: A Commercial Revolution in Innovation?," NBER Working Paper 35212 (2026), https://doi.org/10.3386/w35212.
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Industrial Organization
Industry Studies
Development and Growth
Innovation and R&D
Regional and Urban Economics
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Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
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Entrepreneurship
Innovation Policy
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NBER Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy Conference, 2026
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