Proceedings for the Second Symposium on Space Economy, Space Law and Space Sciences
Türki̇ye’s Space Economy Preparation Roadmap
Cüneyt DiricanAfter the global crisis in 2008, the budget deficits of the treasury of many countries increased, and this situation, together with the COVID-19 pandemic, created greater pressure on public resources. Although there has been an improvement in the budget of the United States (USA) Space Agency NASA, which fell after 2008 for this reason, in recent years, it has not yet reached the high budget rates as before 1969. In addition to the budget, in order not to fall behind in the competition, due to the fact that each country can copy each other cheaper and faster with global technological developments, other forces and searches are in the agenda. With the facilitating and accelerating effect of the contribution of Industry 4.0 technologies and the increase in the appetite of other countries in this field, commercial space studies have gained more momentum due to these two mainstream developments. On the other hand, the Cold War period, which was re-entered with the last Russian-Ukrainian War, brought competition to the fore again in the presence of countries here, as well as the threats that may come from the above atmosphere, similar to the previous one. With the presidential decision signed by Trump in the last term of his presidency, the necessity of detailed investigation and disclosure of the records of the U.S. Navy on unidentified objects by the Pentagon has brought the interest in space more to the forefront, at the size of the magazine with the first commercial space flights with space tourism and the first civilian astronauts. In addition to the establishment of a space army by various countries, one of the reasons for the increase in the number of commercial space companies working in different fields in different countries is not only technical issues such as orbit, launch, capsule, rocket, but also attractive subjects such as space mining, Exoplanet and maybe water at many points in space, including the Solar System. It is seen that there are also potential opportunities for the existence of life.
The fact that Türkiye’s F-35 aircraft project was blocked by the Pentagon due to S-400 missiles, F-16 aircraft demand remained in the approval process in the U.S. Senate, and the success of Turkish (Bayraktar) Drones in the Russia-Ukraine War are actually living examples of the vision of “The Future is in the Skies”. Despite Russia’s threat to use nuclear weapons, the tests of the U.S. Space Forces to destroy missiles at the atmosphere level seem like international relations and astropolitics topics, but are actually a part of the space industry from the defense industry dimension.
In this conceptual study, in the light of the reflection of Türkiye’s commercial space activities in social sciences, the steps to be taken in subjects such as economy, finance, trade, banking, business, public and private sector and the topics that are beneficial to be done academically are discussed. It will be an important start for “Space Homeland” to implement the topics suggested in this study with a comprehensive road map in a project, in order to give an idea about the work of the relevant institutions and the regulation in line with the plans in coordination with the TUA.
