AN ECONOMIC BENEFIT DERIVING FROM SPACE ACTIVITIES - INTEGRATION BETWEEN SCIENCE INSTITUTIONS AND INDUSTRY

A lively debate is taking place in Italy on the assessment of the econ omic benefits deriving from the national expenditure in space programm es. Specific studies have been recently committed by the Italian Space Agency on this subject. This paper aims at providing an original insi ght in this debate by focusing on the often underestimated effect that the development of space programmes has on the process of integration of university, research centres and industry. In fact, the economic a nalysis of the technology innovation evidences that the integration of research institutions and industry represents a key issue in the esta blishment of an effective national innovation system towards a higher industrial competitiveness. It is widely recognized that the initiatio n and promotion of the process of integration of industry and research institutions is primarily dependent on their cooperation within large public funded programmes in the field of high technology. Do space pr ogrammes show any peculiarity which make them especially suitable to g enerate an effective cooperation between industry and science institut ions? The major goal of this paper will be to give an answer to this q uestion through the analysis of the main characteristics of space prog rammes as far as the integration process is concerned. Space programme s will then be analysed identifying the critical aspects related to th e process of research and technology development. Following, it will b e demonstrated to which extent cooperation between industry and scienc e institutions has been helpful in solving the identified critical asp ects. The analysis will also address the organizational issues in orde r to identify the cooperation modes. Furthermore, an attempt will be m ade to assess the benefits deriving from the identified forms of coope ration in view of an increasing integration between industry and scien ce institutions. The analysis will then be focused on the microgravity field; in fact, on the basis of the MARS Center experiences, a great improvement of the integration has been identified as a consequence of the European and national expenditure in this area of space activitie s. An estimate of the previously stated issues will be performed on a meaningful set of programmes funded on a European and National basis.