Engineering the Space Ecosystem: Ron Birk Introduces the Lunaverse at SpaceNEXT
At spaceNEXT 2026, Ron Birk, Principal Director of the Space Enterprise Evolution Directorate at the Aerospace Corporation tackled one of the most difficult and least discussed challenges in the new space economy: not how to build individual capabilities — but how to engineer the ecosystem that allows them to function together.
“Ecosystem” has become a common term in space policy and commercialization circles. But as Birk cautioned, ecosystems are not simply collections of technologies or organizations operating in parallel.
They are interconnected systems — and without intentional design, interconnected systems create unintended consequences.
“As we know from ecological and biological ecosystems,” Birk said, “there can also be unintended consequences.”
The path forward, he argued, requires guardrails, coordination, and a shared operating picture.
Infrastructure Is the Foundation — But Not the System
The emerging space economy is increasingly described in terms of infrastructure layers: communications networks, transportation systems, power generation, in-situ resource utilization, logistics, spaceports, and beyond.
Birk and colleagues have identified at least a dozen infrastructure domains that must mature in parallel for a sustainable space economy to emerge.
But infrastructure alone does not create an ecosystem.
Infrastructure enables an ecosystem. An ecosystem enables an economy.
Without integration across those layers, duplication, conflict, inefficiency, and systemic risk become more likely — especially in a domain where orbital debris, spectrum conflicts, and resource contention have real consequences.
The scale of the challenge is significant.
Globally, more than 10,000 companies are reported to be operating in the space sector — approximately 5,000 of them in the United States. Government spending in space now exceeds $110 billion annually worldwide, with roughly $75 billion from U.S. agencies alone. Total global space activity is estimated at roughly $600 billion.
The question Birk posed to the audience was straightforward:
Where do these thousands of companies go to understand what others are building?
Where do investors, insurers, regulators, and integrators go to assess how systems interact?
How do we build efficiently without building blindly?
From Digital Engineering to Ecosystem Engineering
Birk described three interlocking dimensions of engineering required for the next phase of space development:
Digital engineering of systems
Enterprise engineering of organizations and stakeholders
Ecosystem engineering of how systems and organizations interact
In earlier eras, engineering often focused narrowly on hardware performance. Today, with hundreds of public and private actors developing capabilities simultaneously, system-of-systems coordination is essential.
To illustrate the concept, Birk offered an analogy from the digital economy.
Spotify transformed the music industry not by creating music, but by creating a digital marketplace, an integration environment, and a platform for innovation.
Airbnb and VRBO performed a similar function in real estate — enabling discovery, licensing, and aggregation at scale.
“As Spotify is to music,” Birk explained, “the Lunaverse is intended to be a resource for the space community.”
Introducing the Lunaverse
The Lunaverse is an industrial metaverse framework designed to create a shared digital environment — a “digital commons” — for evolving space ecosystems.
Originally developed in part through Department of Defense–sponsored analysis of the first decade of the emerging lunar economy, the framework includes:
An immersive digital twin of the Moon
A system-of-systems simulation environment
A common operational picture of lunar and cis-lunar capability development
This digital twin environment allows stakeholders to model infrastructure interdependencies across domains such as:
Communications
Power generation and distribution
Transportation networks
In-situ resource utilization
Spaceport development
Rather than waiting for physical infrastructure to collide in real space, the Lunaverse enables participants to test interactions, identify friction points, and evaluate sequencing decisions in a simulated environment.
The goal is not centralization.
It is coordination.
A Marketplace, a Planning Tool, and an Innovation Platform
Birk described the Lunaverse as serving three functions simultaneously:
Digital Marketplace — A place where capabilities can be discovered, compared, and integrated.
Integration Environment — A platform for assembling combinations of technologies into coherent solution sets.
Innovation Engine — A framework that allows emerging actors to plug into a larger ecosystem.
Participants may include:
Capability developers
Investors
Insurers
Regulators
Acquirers
Integrators
Government agencies
All require a common source of authoritative information on what exists, where it exists, and how it interacts.
“We need a common operating picture,” Birk emphasized.
From Momentum to Maturity
National and international momentum behind space development is accelerating. Public investment is rising. Commercial infrastructure is expanding. Policy debates around lunar activity, resource rights, governance frameworks, and civil-military boundaries are intensifying.
In that environment, coordination becomes a strategic asset.
Without it, ecosystem growth risks fragmentation.
With it, the emerging lunar and cis-lunar economy can move faster — and with greater resilience.
The Lunaverse, Birk argued, is an early instantiation of that coordinating layer.
Infrastructure builds ecosystems. Ecosystems build economies.
The challenge now is engineering all three — deliberately.
