The SpaceX IPO tells one story. Here is the more important one.

A false-color image of the United Kingdom acquired by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-3A satellite. Credit: ESA

When SpaceX publicly listed, the coverage focused on the rockets, the valuation, and the personalities. That’s understandable. But the more important story is what the IPO signals about where the space economy is heading — and what that means for the countries and companies that have been quietly building it.

For most of the history of space, getting there was so expensive and difficult that only governments could do it. SpaceX changed that. Cheap, reliable launch has become the enabling technology for a new space economy, much as affordable computing underpinned the rise of the internet. That shift has created entirely new markets: satellite communications, like Starlink; in-space manufacturing; potentially even orbital data centres. McKinsey and the World Economic Forum project the space economy could reach $1.8 trillion by 2035. Parametric insurance — where satellite data triggers claim payouts when flood, wildfire or drought thresholds are crossed — is projected to reach $51 billion by 2034. Not a space market, but mainstream financial services that run on space infrastructure.