When you think of the UK space industry, you might struggle to think of anything beyond Colin Pillinger’s Beagle struggling to beam a signal back from Mars. However, the UK space industry is a significant business, with more than 20,000 British workers engaged in cutting-edge research such as manufacturing semiconductors or pharmaceuticals in microgravity.
Some think it should be bigger, potentially taking on giants such as SpaceX and Amazon with a UK-based launch programme. Could the UK really make a serious dent in space? This is what politicians have been discussing for the past few months.
The UK space industry
The House of Lords might not seem like the obvious home of cutting-edge tech policy, but the Lords Committee on UK Engagement with Space has been hearing from experts, trying to understand the opportunities and challenges facing the UK space industry.
Calling it an industry, though, is stretching the term. It’s currently a diverse mix of businesses, some of which are on the very edge of what you might label “space” firms. Official figures claim there are about 52,000 people currently working in the UK space industry, but according to Dr Heidi Thiemann, director of the Space Skills Alliance, around 20,000 of those are in TV broadcasting – essentially Sky TV. “People who are working in the Sky offices and Sky call centres are counted because it’s part of the economy, because Sky are using satellites,” she said. “Our view is that’s not really spacey.”
Thiemann prefers to focus on the companies “manufacturing satellites – designing, building, launching and then operating them”. Then there are the businesses working with data beaming down from satellites, including Earth observation, communications and telecoms firms. “We do have a really great side of the space industry [based] around scientific exploration as well,” said Thiemann. “We’re very good at building small satellites doing really innovative things.”
“We do have a really great side of the space industry [based] around scientific exploration… We’re very good at building small satellites doing really innovative things
Thiemann name-checked a few British companies that are doing extraordinary things in space, such as “microgravity as a service” firm SpaceForge, which sends mobile factories into Low Earth Orbit to manufacture high-value materials used in semiconductors or pharmaceuticals. The “10 trillion times lower ambient pressure removes contamination issues,” according to the firm’s website, while near absolute zero temperatures mean materials cure quickly, without the need for cryogenics. Then there are more familiar names, such as the Met Office, which of course keeps an eye on the weather from a range of satellites.
However, some observers wonder if the UK should be targeting even bigger names.
Sights on Starlink
One of the House of Lords Space Committee sessions focused on the idea of the UK having its own sovereign launch capability, potentially providing competition for companies such as SpaceX. Opinion was divided on how ambitious the UK’s aims should be in this regard.
“Britain should absolutely have its own sovereign launch capability,” Phil Chambers, CEO of small satellite launch firm Orbex told the committee. “If you want to launch a satellite today, you have to sign up with SpaceX and wait almost two years to get it into space. Launch demand is up 4x since 2017. There are just not enough launchers.”
However, Dr Martin Heywood, director of Newton Launch Systems, was more circumspect. “We are not a good location to launch from,” he said. “We are limited really to polar or sun-synchronous orbit, which is a fraction of the global market. We are limited in size with the spaceports we have at the moment to a small satellite launch, which is up to about a 500kg payload. A lot of the growth is in other areas, such as in satellite constellation.”
He added: “There is a case for a UK launcher commercially, but I do not see us having multiple launches for multiple launch sites. The north coast of Scotland is not going to resemble Florida in ten years; it will be far from it.”
Heywood said the opportunity lies not in trying to create a British Starlink, but specialist, smaller launches that can’t wait for a spot on a SpaceX launcher. “There will be needs – and defence is a very obvious example – where the government want to launch something on a certain date to a certain place and are not going to wait two years for SpaceX.
“There will be others, such as a university with a little research rocket, which is far more attracted by knocking a zero off the price, as would happen if you went to America, than launching from this country. We will not be competing on price; it will be a specialist niche market.”
Skills shortage
A lack of launch sites isn’t the only thing holding the UK space industry back; there’s also a shortage of skilled workers.
“A lot of the work over the last ten-odd years, and probably since the UK Space Agency was formed back in 2010, has been on young people and graduates, getting lots of young people really excited about space and getting them to want to work in space,” said Dr Thiemann. “And that’s actually done a pretty good job. There’s a lot of young people that want to work in space, and a lot of the graduate schemes and early-career space jobs are essentially over-subscribed.”
“I do not see us having multiple launches for multiple launch sites. The north coast of Scotland is not going to resemble Florida in ten years; it will be far from it
The shortage lies in what Dr Thiemann calls the mid-career. “Either we’ve not trained up enough young people to get them through the pipeline, or we are losing people in mid-career that have a family, or they have caring responsibilities, or they go work in another sector, and we’re missing some of that knowledge and experience in the middle,” she said. “Because often you want people to see a mission lifecycle. We want them to have that design, build, launch, operate, decommission [experience] and that could be five to ten years, and that’s the kind of gap of experience that we’re missing.”
Dr Thiemann admits that salaries in the space sector can struggle to keep pace with other parts of the tech industry, but believes that there are big opportunities there for IT professionals who want to be part of it. People who have transferable skills and want to “apply some of my skills to solve problems that space has, where there’s some really interesting challenges”. Even if we’re probably not taking on Starlink in the near future
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