Old space policy vs. new space policy
The article discusses the transition from Old Space to New Space, highlighting the role of private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin in driving innovation. It notes that the most significant surge in space innovation occurred in the 1990s, with incumbent firms continuing to dominate patenting. The findings suggest that New Space is more interconnected with Old Space than previously thought, emphasizing the government's role in creating markets for innovation.
- ▪The emergence of private firms has marked a significant shift in space innovation.
- ▪The largest surge in space innovation occurred in the 1990s, before the rise of high-profile startups after 2005.
- ▪Incumbent aerospace firms account for most space-related patenting, while new entrants contribute a minority share.
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Record
| Original publisher | Marginal Revolution |
| Canonical URL | https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/old-space-policy-vs-new-space-policy.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=old-space-policy-vs-new-space-policy |
| Publication time | Tue, 19 May 2026 18:17:48 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-19T18:19:57.889Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-19T18:19:57.889Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | None |
| Cluster logic | Not yet clustered, or no peer story found in the clustering window. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Old space policy vs. new space policy by Tyler Cowen May 19, 2026 at 2:17 pm 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.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Marginal Revolution.
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