Histometrics

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Industry Primers

Bottom-up NAICS industry primers written for both public-market and private investors. Leaf industries are researched from the ground up; every group, subsector, and sector above them reads as a contrast across the industries beneath it.

2122 industries · 24 sectors · NAICS 2022

Researched with AI assistance from official U.S. statistics and independent sources, with citations on every page. Figures are not individually verified against pinned evidence — primers marked Evidence-verified are. Industry research, not investment advice. Methodology.

GroupNAICS 9271Public Administration

Space Research and Technology (U.S.) — NAICS 9271

A Histometrics rollup primer for public-market and private investors.

1. Overview

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is the U.S. federal standard for sorting business establishments into industries. NAICS 9271 — "Space Research and Technology" is a four-digit industry group inside Sector 92, "Public Administration." Like the rest of Sector 92, it does not name a commercial market: it covers government establishments that administer and operate space flights, space research, space exploration, and government space-flight centers.[1] In plain terms, it is the government-function core of the U.S. space effort — chiefly the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its federally operated field centers — not the private companies that build rockets and satellites.

The takeaway for an investor is the one that runs through the whole branch: nothing is "listed" or sold under this code. It is a taxpayer-funded public activity that acts as a customer and demand source for the commercial space economy, which is classified under other NAICS codes (manufacturing, research and development, satellite services, data). Federal demand provides the foundation; commercial returns depend on reliability, launch cadence, reusable hardware, recurring services, and capital discipline.

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

A four-digit NAICS industry group can contain several five-digit industries. NAICS 9271 contains exactly one:

  • 92711 — Space Research and Technology (which in turn holds a single six-digit national industry, 927110).

Because the group has a single child, 9271 and 92711 are effectively identical — the same definition, the same scope, the same government-only ownership. NAICS carries the code down the tree unchanged because the U.S. does not subdivide space research and technology into narrower government functions. There is no additional activity captured at the four-digit level that the child page does not already cover.

This page is therefore a short pass-through. The full treatment — investable universe, contract economics, demand drivers, regulation, consolidation, risks, and how to invest — lives in the child primer for 92711. What follows here is only this level's own size figures (Section 3) and a compressed pointer to that detail.

3. How big it is (this level's figures)

We have no ingested federal statistics for NAICS 9271, and none for its child 92711 either — so we state that honestly rather than invent a value. The absence is structural, not a gap on our side:

  • The Economic Census, County Business Patterns (CBP), and the Statistics of U.S. Businesses (SUSB) program all exclude Sector 92 (Public Administration) and government-owned establishments by design.[2][3] There is therefore no official establishment count, payroll figure, or receipts total for this industry group — not because the activity is small, but because federal business surveys do not cover government functions.

To size the activity you look at the government core and the cross-industry space account instead — the same sources the child page uses:

  • Government core. NASA's enacted budget for fiscal year (FY) 2026 is about $24.4 billion, roughly flat with FY2025.[8][9] On the national-security side, the U.S. Space Force's FY2026 discretionary funding was about $26.1 billion, rising above $40 billion once reconciliation money is added.[12][13] The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) add further government demand.
  • The whole space economy (BEA). The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Space Economy Satellite Account measures space activity across all the relevant private and government codes. Its March 2025 estimates put U.S. space gross output at $240.9 billion (2023) and its contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) at $142.5 billion, or about 0.5% of GDP, with 373,000 private-industry jobs.[5] An earlier BEA cut split 2022 output into roughly $126 billion private and $70 billion government, underscoring how large the government share of this specific activity is.[6]

Undercount caveat. NAICS 9271 captures only the government slice, and standard business statistics do not even publish that; ownership here is a single federal function, so no business census will ever count it. Judge the industry group by the BEA space-economy account and agency budgets, never by a (non-existent) business count under this code. See 92711 for the fuller budget and BEA breakdown, including the caveat that BEA has said these space-economy statistics will no longer be produced on a regular schedule.[5][7]

4. The investable universe (where value concentrates)

With a single child, all of the investable exposure sits exactly where the 92711 page places it — in the codes next door, not in Sector 92. Investors reach the theme through three groups:

  • Diversified defense/aerospace primes, where space is one segment among many — Lockheed Martin (LMT), Northrop Grumman (NOC), Boeing (BA), and Amazon (AMZN, via its Amazon Leo satellite-broadband program).[27][28][29][40]
  • Publicly traded space pure-plays (higher growth, mostly pre-profit) — Rocket Lab (RKLB), AST SpaceMobile (ASTS), Intuitive Machines (LUNR), Planet Labs (PL), Redwire (RDW), Firefly Aerospace (FLY), Voyager Technologies (VOYG), Viasat (VSAT), and Virgin Galactic (SPCE).[30][32][33][34][35][36][38][39]
  • Large private owners — most importantly SpaceX (which per secondary reporting moved toward a 2026 public listing under ticker SPCX) and Blue Origin, plus Sierra Space, Axiom Space, Vast, and the Boeing/Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance (ULA).[24][25][26][35][36][37][38][39]

The child primer carries the full tables, scale markers, and the important caveat that a company's "space revenue" is usually an adjacent exposure, not revenue classified under this code.

5. How the money works

Two very different engines run here, exactly as the child page details. The government core (9271 / 92711) does not earn a profit — it is funded by annual congressional appropriations and measured by what it spends, so its "unit economics" are political: appropriations levels, program starts and cancellations, and multi-year commitments such as Artemis and International Space Station successors.[5] The commercial ecosystem around it monetizes through government procurement, launch services, spacecraft and components, satellite communications and data, and lunar/station/in-space services. The distinctions that separate winners — contract type (cost-plus vs. firm-fixed-price/milestone), funded backlog and book-to-bill, launch cadence × cost-per-kilogram driven by reusability, recurring services over one-off hardware, and cash burn/dilution among the pure-plays — are all developed in Section 5 of the 92711 primer.

6. Demand drivers

The demand picture is the child's: federal budgets (NASA, Space Force, NRO, NOAA) are the single biggest driver;[8][11][12] great-power competition with China and Russia pushes national-security spending;[11] satellite constellations (Starlink, Amazon Leo/Kuiper) dominate launch and manufacturing demand;[15] and broadband and direct-to-device connectivity, Earth observation/weather/positioning, falling launch cost and rising cadence, and exploration and commercial stations round out the list.[5][15] See 92711, Section 6, for detail.

7. Regulation

The government core is the regulator's employer; the commercial ecosystem faces a layered licensing regime covered in full on the child page — the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (Part 450 launch/reentry licensing), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Space Bureau (spectrum and orbital-debris rules), the NOAA Office of Space Commerce (remote-sensing licensing and space-traffic coordination), and export controls under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR).[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] A 2025 deregulation push (Executive Order 14335) aims to raise launch cadence.[22]

8. Consolidation

Nothing consolidates within this government code — it is a public function. Consolidation happens in the surrounding ecosystem, where SpaceX's reusability advantage sets launch prices (161 of 195 FAA-licensed launches in FY2025), the primes defend deep national-security franchises, the 2020–2021 special-purpose-acquisition-company (SPAC) wave sorts into winners and stragglers, and active mergers continue (Northrop/Orbital ATK, Redwire/Edge Autonomy, Rocket Lab/GEOST, Voyager/Astrobotic).[15][28][30][32][40] Full treatment in 92711, Section 8.

9. Risks

The risks are those of the ecosystem, not of the code itself: appropriations and program risk (the White House proposed a ~24% NASA cut for FY2026, largely rejected by Congress), customer concentration on NASA and the Department of Defense (DoD), cash burn and dilution among pre-profit pure-plays, rich valuations, single-provider dependence on SpaceX for affordable launch, execution/physical risk (launch failures, schedule slips), supply-chain constraints, orbital congestion and debris, and geopolitical/export exposure.[8][9][15][18][28][36] See 92711, Section 9.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

There is no way to invest in NAICS 9271 directly — it names a government function you cannot buy, and federal business statistics do not even measure it. Because this level equals its one child, the how-to-invest playbook is identical to 92711's: public-market routes through the primes (lower-risk, dividend-paying), satellite/data operators (more recurring revenue), and pure-play launch/lunar/infrastructure growth names (higher upside, higher volatility), plus thematic space/aerospace exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for one-ticket diversification; and private routes through venture/growth equity and pre-IPO secondaries in late-stage names.[27][28][30][36][20] Track funded backlog (not merely announced awards), launch cadence and success rate, cost per launch, satellite deployment and capacity utilization, customer conversion, gross margin, and cash burn.

Bottom line: NAICS 9271 is a single-child pass-through — its scope, economics, and investable story are those of 92711 (and its lone national industry 927110), to which the reader should turn for full detail. Falling launch costs and sustained government demand are real tailwinds; budget politics, customer and single-provider concentration, cash burn, and rich valuations are the offsetting risks.

Sources

Drawn from the child primer (92711); numbering preserved.

  1. U.S. Census Bureau. "2022 NAICS — 927110 Space Research and Technology" (definition and cross-references), 2022 NAICS Manual. https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=927110&year=2022&details=927110
  2. U.S. Census Bureau. "County Business Patterns — FAQs (industries excluded, including Sector 92)." https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/about/faqs.html
  3. U.S. Census Bureau. "Economic Census — Understanding NAICS (government establishments excluded)." 2022. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census/year/2022/guidance/understanding-naics.html
  4. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. "New and Revised Statistics for the U.S. Space Economy, 2012–2023." Survey of Current Business, March 2025. https://apps.bea.gov/scb/issues/2025/03-march/0325-space-economy.htm
  5. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. "New and Revised Statistics for the U.S. Space Economy, 2017–2022." Survey of Current Business, June 2024. https://apps.bea.gov/scb/issues/2024/06-june/0624-space-economy.htm
  6. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. "Space Economy" (data special topics; discontinuation note). 2026. https://www.bea.gov/data/special-topics/space-economy
  7. NASA. "FY 2026 Budget Request." 2025. https://www.nasa.gov/fy-2026-budget-request/
  8. SpacePolicyOnline. "Great News for NASA in the House-Senate FY2026 Appropriations Report." 2026. https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/great-news-for-nasa-in-the-house-senate-fy2026-appropriations-report/
  9. U.S. Space Force. "Budget Request Directs Record Funding to Air Force and Space Force" (FY2027 request detail). 2026. https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4465543/
  10. SpacePolicyOnline. "Adding Reconciliation, Space Force Budget Tops $40 Billion in FY2026." 2026. https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/adding-reconciliation-space-force-budget-tops-40-billion-in-fy2026/
  11. Congressional Research Service. "Defense Primer: U.S. Space Force" (IF12610). 2026. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12610
  12. Federal Aviation Administration. "Aerospace Forecast, Fiscal Years 2026–2046" (licensed-launch counts, forecasts). 2026. https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation/aerospace_forecasts/FY_2026-2046_Full_Forecast_Document_Tables.pdf
  13. Federal Aviation Administration. "FAA Streamlines Commercial Space License Approvals" / Part 450 guidance. 2026. https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-streamlines-commercial-space-license-approvals
  14. Congressional Research Service. "Commercial Space Launch and Reentry Regulations: Overview and Select Issues" (R48582). 2025. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48582
  15. Federal Communications Commission. "Second Report and Order on Orbital Debris Mitigation (five-year disposal rule)" (FCC 22-74). 2022. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-22-74A1_Rcd.pdf
  16. NOAA Office of Space Commerce. "Navigating U.S. Commercial Space Regulations" (remote sensing, 15 CFR Part 960; space-traffic coordination). 2025. https://space.commerce.gov/links/resources-for-space-entrepreneurs/navigating-u-s-commercial-space-regulations/
  17. U.S. Department of State, Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. "International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR)." 2024. https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/
  18. U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security. "Export Administration Regulations (EAR)." 2026. https://www.bis.gov/regulations/ear
  19. Greenberg Traurig LLP. "Executive Order Aims to Accelerate Commercial Space Development Through Deregulation" (EO 14335). 2025. https://www.gtlaw.com/en/insights/2025/10/executive-order-aims-to-accelerate-commercial-space-development-through-deregulation
  20. Sacra. "SpaceX — revenue, valuation & funding." 2026. https://sacra.com/c/spacex/
  21. Morningstar. "6 Charts on SpaceX's S-1 Financials." 2026. https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/6-charts-spacexs-s-1-financials
  22. ValueAdd VC. "SpaceX IPO / SPCX — S-1 breakdown and valuation." 2026. https://valueaddvc.com/spacex-ipo
  23. Via Satellite. "Lockheed Martin Space Sales Grew 4% in 2025"; Lockheed Martin 2025 Form 10-K. 2026. https://www.satellitetoday.com/finance/2026/01/29/lockheed-martin-space-sales-grew-4-in-2025/
  24. Via Satellite. "Northrop Grumman Space Segment Ends Streak of Growth in 2024"; Northrop Grumman Form 10-K (Orbital ATK acquisition, 2018). 2025. https://www.satellitetoday.com/finance/2025/01/30/northrop-grumman-space-segment-ends-streak-of-growth-in-2024/
  25. The Boeing Company. Form 10-K (Defense, Space & Security segment). 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/12927/000162828026004357/ba-20251231.htm
  26. Rocket Lab. Form 10-K, FY2025 (revenue $601.8M, 21 launch missions, backlog $1.85B, GEOST acquisition). 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1819994/000181999426000013/rklb-20251231.htm
  27. Redwire Corp. Form 10-K, FY2025 (Edge Autonomy acquisition). 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1819810/000181981026000029/rdw-20251231.htm
  28. Intuitive Machines. Form 10-K, FY2025 (lunar transport, backlog). 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1844452/000162828026019865/lunr-20251231.htm
  29. Voyager Technologies. Form 10-K, FY2025 (Starlab, defense/space). 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1788060/000162828026016543/voyg-20251231.htm
  30. Firefly Aerospace. Form 10-K, FY2025 (launch, lunar landers; 2025 IPO). 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1860160/000119312526116309/fly-20251231.htm
  31. AST SpaceMobile. Form 10-K, FY2025 (direct-to-device, capital needs). 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1780312/000178031226000006/asts-20251231.htm
  32. Planet Labs PBC. Form 10-K (Earth-observation imagery & data). 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1836833/000183683325000050/pl-20250131.htm
  33. Viasat Inc. Form 10-K (multi-orbit satellite communications). 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/797721/000095017025077138/vsat-20250331.htm
  34. SpaceX. "Mission: Starlink and Space Transportation"; Amazon "Amazon Leo" (formerly Project Kuiper). 2026. https://www.spacex.com/mission/starlink/
  35. Blue Origin. "New Glenn." 2026. https://www.blueorigin.com/new-glenn
  36. Sierra Space. "Spaceflight Hardware Product Catalog." 2024. https://www.sierraspace.com/
  37. Axiom Space. "Company Overview." 2026. https://www.axiomspace.com/
  38. Vast. "Company and Station Overview." 2026. https://www.vastspace.com/
  39. United Launch Alliance. "Vulcan User Guide." 2023. https://www.ulalaunch.com/
  40. Voyager Technologies. "Agreement to Acquire Astrobotic Technology" (2026). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1788060/000162828026040850/voyg-20260601.htm