Deloitte sees a $566 billion lunar economy by 2050

I was looking for a word to describe an unimagined market and the best fit I could find is terra incognita , or “unknown land.” Roman cartographers used the term to label mystery territories on maps for explorers.

This all came up because Deloitte just published its attempt at a value for the moon economy—and all the cascading unknowns that could flow from going there like finding rocket fuel, extracting minerals, and forming data center manufacturing hubs.

The value of a lunar economy is $566 billion in an accelerated-growth scenario by 2050, and $343 billion under a more conservative scenario.

But there’s a separate $541 billion that Deloitte pinned to the space-based potential stemming from scientific advances, new energy sources, and innovative commercial applications.

That’s the terra incognita—what could come.

I spoke with the coauthors of the report , “ Building the Lunar Economy ,” Brett Loubert, who leads Deloitte’s space practice, and Raquel Buscaino, head of its novel and exponential technologies team.

I asked Buscaino about risk, and she told me the “uncertainty and ambiguity” around the unimagined market isn’t necessarily a warning, it’s a sign of “extraordinary possibility.” “Uncertainty isn’t a flaw in the story,” said Buscaino.

“Some of these distant opportunities could have extremely large upsides.” No one knows yet which ones will pan out or what will ultimately matter the most in a market we haven’t imagined yet, she said, but it’s a critical piece of what’s playing out right now in space.

“The uncertainty is part of the reason so many investors, countries, agencies, and folks within your community might be interested in this,” Buscaino said.

Deloitte’s model drew on more than 25 interviews and 400 model inputs to map two value pools.

The first is core lunar infrastructure, which is what you need in space.

Transportation, energy, communications, life support, and construction come in at $282 billion through 2050.

Not a shock that transportation soaks up $206 billion of that figure.

The second pool is what all that infrastructure can enable.