Space Economy, Tourism and Logistics

The advancements in technology that developed with the Industrial Revolution provided people with the opportunity to explore their surroundings. Especially, the rocket technology developed during World War II paved the way for space exploration. The launching of the first satellites by Russia and the USA in 1957-58 marked the beginning of understanding the unknown and uncertainty of space. With the initiation of space research by Russia and the USA, the magnitude of the space industry has been increasing day by day. In recent times, the space economy is around $240 billion, while space tourism is around $1.5 billion. Space has attracted the interest of both states and private companies. Particularly, after the 2000s, space activities have been commercialized by private companies. In this study, the space economy has been evaluated within the scope of space tourism and space logistics. Qualitative in-depth analysis and quantitative VOSviewer methods have been used together in the study. In recent times, with SpaceX's reusable rocket technology, Falcon 9, a revolution has taken place in transportation and logistics in space. Also, SpaceX's low-cost approach providing access to space at more affordable costs is a significant advantage for future crewed or robotic space missions. The increase in space research and travel to space, the Moon, Mars, and deep space in the future will increase the volume of space tourism and, generally, the space economy, primarily boosting the importance of space logistics as it forms the basis of this process.