This week’s international edition of Newsweek has an article about the growth of space tourism. The article is pretty typical stuff, covering the major companies in the field and several of the new spaceports under development. There is one interesting nugget: “The market for commercial space tourism is expected to generate more than $1 billion in annual revenues by 2020, according to a study released last month by Research Reports International, a market-research firm based in Evergreen, Colorado.” Has someone else done a market study of the space tourism market?

As it turns out, my employer (Futron Corporation) had purchased a copy of this report, which I reviewed yesterday. It turns out that there is little, if anything, original in this report: it is a synthesis of a number of publicly-available documents and data on the industry. (Some sections of it seemed to be cribbed, if not outright copied, from a number of FAA/AST reports, unfortunately without attribution.) There’s no new research here: the figures above some from such sources as the space tourism market study we did at Futron back in 2002, as well as the overall ASCENT market study performed for NASA in 2001-2003. So if you’re looking for new market research about space tourism, you won’t find it in this report.

[Disclaimer: Yes, I work for Futron. No, I don't speak for them.]