In a recent blog, Professor Brian Cox, the new champion of space for the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, asked Baroness Catherine Ashton, chair of the UK Engagement with Space Committee, about how governments should manage trade-offs between commercializing space and feeding the poor. This is probably the one question that reminds many government bureaucrats to be prudent and not frivolous.
Finding the right balance and knowing how to seed such long-term investment is the challenge of the moment. This is probably the powerful, yet invisible barrier that has deterred many governments from venturing into a sensible discussion of commercializing space. Space is hard and expensive. Space is about physics and hard math, some would say.
Where and how to begin this trade-off?
Despite those invisible forces of ignorance, Baroness Ashton urged the United Kingdom government to act now or lose out. The UK could trace that nearly 18 percent of its GDP is attributed to space tech, none of which, however, it owns. With that as a backdrop, where and how should Hong Kong begin? In this article, I shall attempt to address the strategy that Hong Kong should adopt, which should be one of emergence and not one of planning prematurely and laying down any fast and hard infrastructure. Probe, test, and monitor closely should be the strategy. This is because the space economy is too new and requires time for adoption. One should not design a strategy when there are so many emerging properties inherent in the NewSpace economy.
From autonomous vehicles to the cushioning in one’s shoes, to the technologies behind smoke alarms, space innovation has given so much to humanity. Fundamentally, space is very much about the movement and distribution of data, the heart of artificial intelligence. Which technologies are powering our future and producing data lakes? The answer is our highly responsive communication infrastructure made up of satellites, and pretty soon, a database in the sky, as well as the interlinkages of edge computing on your phone. Soon you will be able to dial direct from your phone, bouncing off those miniature satellites in the low earth orbit, bypassing long-distance carriers. Why is it that Elon Musk’s Starlink is now valued at over $1 trillion?
Moving into 2026, it is time for Hong Kong to establish its own chamber of space commerce, and help cherry-pick outstanding domestic space companies that can be packaged for global investors and global buyers of space services. This is because NewSpace is the next economy and should now be debated and discussed at the Legislative Council. The alternative is that we ignore this reality and just live in yesteryear, forgetting about attracting the best and brightest talent to Hong Kong
Starting in 2025, economies began to migrate into this ultimate economy which is the NewSpace economy. The NewSpace economy is the economy. Anyone born in 2026 will be living and working in the NewSpace economy. China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) is expected to put space squarely in its core strategy. Quietly and unassumingly, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) established the Commercial Space Department a few weeks ago to foster the sector’s development. Of the many policy initiatives, it asked local governments to be a buyer. Local governments are asked to build supply chains for smart satellites, space environment simulations, and testing needed for satellite manufacturing and commissioning. This one act alone, in my opinion, will kick-start and coordinate the process for many local governments on the Chinese mainland. That is, the government must become a smart buyer of space services and products. Space needs patient capital and the very best of talent. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government can do well by encouraging single-family offices and other investors to co-invest in one of the three sub-economies of the NewSpace economy, which is the downstream economy, powered by the thousands of satellites above.
Commercializing space is not easy, but it can be leveraged. The key is knowing where and when to seed. Like any good investment, it requires a good understanding of its fundamentals, which, interestingly enough, are in alignment and are now being seeded by the mainland, which is setting up a space fund. In this direction, why not task the Hong Kong Investment Corp to set up a space fund and encourage venture capitalists to shortlist space companies in the mainland that can be enhanced through Hong Kong? Let professional investors decide where to invest.
Hong Kong is not a manufacturing center, and perish the thought of Hong Kong making satellites. We don’t have the engineers or the supply chain. However, the city is a mecca of testing and certification, potentially of data downlink and the development of AI applications for data centers. With nearly a dozen tests to pass before any satellite can be launched, why not certify them here in Hong Kong and enrich the ecosystem for entrepreneurs to discover the proper payload for CubeSats? Why not test the soundness of the concept of a database in the sky by putting them in a vacuum chamber set up in Hong Kong? What we need here is a space accelerator where fresh ideas in the NewSpace economy are nurtured and harnessed, and eventually feed into the city’s IPO pipeline. Perhaps some of these testing facilities should be set up in the Northern Metropolis?
Already, the Orion Astropreneur Space Academy (OASA) has identified more than 60 companies in the NewSpace economy across the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and that number is growing by the day. MagicCube, a young CubeSat design and manufacturer in Shenzhen, has a CubeSat constellation of 22 satellites and has now even created educational tours in Hainan province and Shenzhen. Another new CNSA policy is its focus on opening up the global discussion on space debris and its removal. The recent need for China to pick up its Taikonauts with Shenzhou XXII — after space debris put Shenzhou XXI out of commission — brings home the case in point. Factoring in Hong Kong’s role as an international mediation and arbitration center, it is quite obvious Hong Kong needs to step up in fostering discussions on the tracking and removal of space debris. Last year, with the foresight of Professor Quentin Parker of the University of Hong Kong and a shoestring budget, they quietly played host to the global Space Sustainability Conference with EPFL Switzerland, which saw more than 20 nations in sensible dialogue, with participants from the United States, the Chinese mainland, India, Russia, and elsewhere. Imagine what extra funding and some clear HKSAR government policies could have done.
Underpinning the many new policy initiatives cited by the CNSA, one theme came through clearly for me. China, with its historically conservative and reserved space agency, needs to raise the level of trust, openness, and governance of space even more. Potentially, Hong Kong, given its global connectivity, could help unify new global space standards, from the shaping of space data to identifying new risk mitigation instruments such as catastrophe bonds that are sensible investment vehicles for sophisticated single-family offices.
The US began its commercialization efforts in 2009 with the arrival of Elon Musk and his reusable launch vehicles, which cut the price of sending things to low earth orbit by a tenth. China quickly followed suit in 2014, by starting to develop a reusable launch vehicle, and my guess is by the end of 2026, we will see its birth, further lowering the cost of launches and cadence. The low Earth orbit ecosystem brought low latency and further powered the internet of things and autonomous vehicles. The creation, storage, movement and transmission of data at breakneck speed is now the game. Soon, remote surgery and anything that relies on fast data transmission speeds will set new service standards.
Moving into 2026, it is time for Hong Kong to establish its own chamber of space commerce, and help cherry-pick outstanding domestic space companies that can be packaged for global investors and global buyers of space services. This is because NewSpace is the next economy and should now be debated and discussed at the Legislative Council. The alternative is that we ignore this reality and just live in yesteryear, forgetting about attracting the best and brightest talent to Hong Kong.
The author is an adjunct professor of innovation and entrepreneurship, founding chairman of the Orion Astropreneur Space Academy, a serial entrepreneur, and an adjunct professor at the Lab for Space Research, Hong Kong University.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
