The Installation Costs of a Satellite and Space Shuttle Launch Complex as a Public Expenditure Project

TL;DR

This paper estimates the costs of establishing a satellite launch complex in Turkey, analyzing international examples and discussing potential public benefits to support space research development.

Contribution

It provides a cost analysis and projections for Turkey's space launch infrastructure, highlighting the importance of public investment in space research.

Findings

Estimated costs of launch complex and satellite in Turkey

Analysis of international launch site costs

Potential public benefits of space research in Turkey

Abstract

From the 1940's to the present, space explorations, which is a highly important topic for the world and human beings, penetrate into many areas from the communication to the national security as well as from the discovery of exoplanets and new life forms to space mining. On the top of the countries which do researches on these fields are the developed countries and the developing countries are only used as launch areas, in an irrelevant manner of the research and development. However, developing countries can significantly reduce foreign dependency and security flaws as well as providing important reputation gain in international platforms by conducting space research and development activities as already done by developed countries. All the large scale space probes conducted by developed countries oblige Turkey to develop space researches in terms of economy, security and scientific aspects. Due to these reasons, the approximate costs of a launch base, which will be installed to conduct space researches in Turkey, and of a satellite or a spacecraft, which will be able to launch from this base and serve a variety of purposes, are calculated in this study. In an effort to make the mentioned calculations, examples of various countries that have already established a launch base and already launched from these bases are analyzed and some projections are built for Turkey by calculating the estimated costs. Since these projections must be carried out by the Republic of Turkey since the private sector in Turkey will not be willing to invest in such activities, the possible public advantages can be gained through these activities are also mentioned and evaluated.