Investment in commercial spaceflight grows by 20% from 2008 to 2009

An article here from Spaceref today details the continued increase in investment in commercial spaceflight, an industry that is continuing to grow rapidly in spite of the still quite dreary economic climate. There are actually quite a few of these studies put out every year on various aspects of the space industry that each focus on a different part of it (with/without public investment, just aerospace, just human spaceflight etc.) and three other posts on Page F30 have followed some of these numbers such as this one from April 2008, this one from June 2008, and this one from December 2008. The one from June is the one that deals with the same subject as this one, but note that the number in the headline for this year ($1.46 billion) is about investment, whereas the number in the headline last year was about the size of the industry itself over the year.

Regardless of the details, the fact that the industry is continuing to grow at such a rapid pace is good news. Let's not forget that suborbital flights haven't even begun yet, and this is a completely new field that is wide open at the moment.