Morgan Stanley Projects the Space Economy Could Reach $1 Trillion in the Coming Decades. 3 Companies Positioned to Benefit.

The market is likely overconfident on the category while underestimating how slowly value accrues from “space” to public equity. The nearest-term cash flow accrues to the companies that already control launch infrastructure, government procurement, and spectrum distribution, not the ones with the flashiest TAM slide. That makes LMT the cleanest public-market proxy: it monetizes space through budgeted programs today, with far less binary execution risk than the venture-like names.

ASTS is more interesting as an option on a distribution shift than as a fundamental compounder at this stage. The real gating items are not satellites themselves but carrier integration, device compatibility, and uptime at scale; any slippage there pushes revenue recognition out by quarters and compresses credibility fast. VZ is a mixed case: it can benefit if satellite coverage lowers rural capex or boosts ARPU through premium bundles, but over 6-18 months it also risks having its coverage advantage commoditized if direct-to-device becomes good enough.

The consensus is missing that the biggest economic winner could still be private capital/secondary owners of launch capacity, while public investors are left with either low-beta defense exposure or high-beta pre-profitability stories. If ASTS succeeds, IRDM/GSAT-style legacy niche connectivity names and long-term rural coverage economics at carriers face substitution pressure; if it stalls, the multiple can compress violently because the stock is priced on narrative, not current earnings. For LMT, the upside is steadier but the share price will only re-rate if space segment growth turns into durable backlog acceleration rather than one-off program wins.