SpaceX's eye-catching claim to the largest total addressable market in human history may actually understate the long-term opportunity in space, according to Peel Hunt, which argues that falling launch costs could unlock demand on a scale that current projections cannot fully capture.
The broker's sector note uses the 19th-century Jevons Paradox, the observation that making a resource cheaper tends to expand rather than reduce its total consumption, to argue that SpaceX's $28.5 trillion market estimate is better understood as a demand floor than a valuation ceiling.
SpaceX's S-1 filing breaks down its addressable market as $370 billion in space-enabled solutions, $1.6 trillion in Starlink connectivity, and $26.5 trillion in AI, with $22.7 trillion of that sitting in enterprise applications alone.
Starlink, the satellite broadband division, is already a proven, high-margin business generating $11.4 billion in revenue and $7.2 billion in adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the 2025 financial year, with 10.3 million subscribers across 164 countries.
Peel Hunt flags five themes it believes are underappreciated by the market, each of which it argues could replicate terrestrial industries in orbit over time.
The first is in-space manufacturing, where the absence of gravity allows materials such as optical fibres, pharmaceutical crystals, and semiconductor alloys to be produced with a purity and consistency that is unachievable on Earth, with UK companies including Space Forge in Cardiff and OrbiSky in London already operating in this space.
The second is earth observation as intelligence, where the real value lies not in satellite imagery itself but in the AI-powered analytics layer running on top of it, a market Peel Hunt estimates at $103 billion compared with just $4 billion for the underlying satellite data.
The third is the lunar economy, where water ice at the Moon's poles could be converted into rocket propellant, effectively turning the Moon into a refuelling hub for deep space commerce and reducing the cost of missions to Mars and beyond.
The fourth is space medicine and longevity, where the accelerated ageing effects of microgravity on astronauts are providing insights into conditions including osteoporosis and muscle wastage, while also enabling the growth of more uniform pharmaceutical crystals.
The fifth is in-orbit servicing and debris removal, a market Peel Hunt values at $2.4 billion today and projects to $5.1 billion by 2030, driven by rising insurance costs and tighter disposal regulations that are turning debris management from optional to mandatory.
On SpaceX itself, the broker urges caution, noting that enormous execution risk is concentrated on a single individual and a next-generation rocket that has yet to deliver a commercial payload.