Growing global interest in space

Nearly 100 countries now have an interest and some level of capability in space, says Kevin O’Connell, Trump’s former Director of Space Commerce.

Transcript

00:00In the past when people talked about the space race it was largely the US and

00:04Russia, Soviet Union I guess at that time, and and then China came in into the

00:09picture but now we have many more initiatives, Europe, India, Japan and

00:12others. Give me a sense of how many, because you mentioned it a little earlier

00:16about people coming in from other countries, how many nations have space

00:19programs now? So I think the last time we looked there were almost a hundred

00:22countries that had some kind of a capability in space and you know you see

00:26the United States, China, Japan, Europe being some of the larger participants in

00:34space but you also see countries now exploring this. This is another place

00:38where countries are very excited about what can be done with the space economy.

00:43Years ago I did a had an interview with a senior minister and he was very

00:47excited about space and he said to me you know Kevin I'm gonna have for my

00:50country I'm gonna have a launch capability and a sensing capability and

00:54a navigation and I said respectfully minister no you're not because you can't

00:59afford it actually but what we are seeing is we're seeing countries

01:03starting to focus on what space can actually do for them in terms of

01:07connecting people on earth, in terms of bringing education to people that could

01:11not have it historically, in terms of understanding how we're making use of

01:15resources on the planet. These are compellingly important.