8. The sphere and scale of commercial services in space are growing. This is especially noticeable in the area of satellite communications where initially Intelsat system's services were used by just a few states that had large land-based stations. As time went by, the commercial satellite communications system came to serve hundreds and thousands of private firms, banks, communication and telecasting networks, thousands of mobile transport means, millions of individual satellite TV and radio receivers.
9. The steady advancement of personal satellite communication systems provides for high quality transmission of voice, high-speed data flow, and multimedia. Also, it enables conferencing, interactive communication, and access to the Internet.
10. The space commercial infrastructure is now in the making. Designed to meet the demand for services and materials manufacture, it is progressing steadily. Most of commercial systems of satellite communication deployed to date have their own land-based spacecraft control stations. A variety of commercial launch vehicles have been created. In production now are commercial multi-mission all-purpose space platforms.
11. A space industry has been created that specializes in development and manufacture of spacecraft, orbital injection facilities and land-based space complexes.
12. Competition is stiffening on the world's market of space products and services both between countries and between private commercial organizations and firms. This is giving impetus to the restructuring (toward consolidation) of the space industry. An enlargement of space enterprises proceeds on an unprecedented scale.
13. The space systems are becoming ever more sophisticated, which, in turn, complicates technological and ecological problems associated with their manufacture. More stringent demands are being made of space technologies.
14. A new branch of jurisprudence, space law, has emerged and is steadily developing. This regulates relations in space exploration both at home and abroad.
Thus, space exploration as a new type of economically very promising human activity generates problems similar to those which mankind faced during the emergence and evolution of various new sciences and technologies (e.g. aeronautics, radio communication, and others). The trends peculiar to exploration and utilization of space are in many ways similar to those encountered in many fields of human research work. The main difference of space exploration from other activities apparently lies in the unmatched rate at which countries and their organizations intensify their efforts in space research and development.