Space sector gets lift-off
07 June 2010
The incoming government has pledged its support for the UK space industry, having identified it as a ‘sector with potential’.
David Willetts, the new Science Minister, named the members of the new Space Leadership Council last week and took the opportunity to reiterate his, and his government’s support, for the UK space programme.
Just to recap on a few stand-out facts. Britain currently has 6% of the global space industry, which is forecast to grow to a global figure of $400bn by 2030. Growth in the sector over the last decade has been in the region of 9% per annum. The sector contributes approximately £6bn to the UK coffers and is responsible for employing 64,000 people, 19,000 directly. On top of that the UK is second only to the US in ‘space science’, although I am curious to know how this can be defined in terms of exact measurements.
It is, therefore, big news and good news and it is not surprising that the previous UK government saw much promise and started setting up a framework so that the sector could prosper in the UK. This work was recognised by Willetts and he added his enthusiasm and commitment and so hopefully it will continue.
Like many people with an engineering bent, I still retain a schoolboy fascination for all things space, although not to the degree of my 12 year-old son. He informed me last week that Venus, counter-intuitively, is hotter than Mercury most of the time due to the formers extreme greenhouse gases and the latter’s slow rotation – it can get relatively chilly during the long nights on Mercury apparently.
But the fascination comes from the travel, the differing environments on each planet (and the more interesting moons of some of them), black holes and super novas – and none of that is going to pay the wages of 64,000 people or put any money back into a £6bn industry. In fact the extracts of Willetts’ speech concentrated on us providing an environment for the industry to thrive. It wasn’t about ‘why’ – what we are going to do with space. It was about the stats I quoted above and the growth potential.
It reminded my of the dot.com crash of nearly a decade ago. People threw money at the sector just because it was growing so fast that it was a great investment. They only started to look at the bigger picture when it was too late, and the bigger picture cannot be seen if you only look at growth charts.
In fairness the 27 members of the Space Leadership Council does include a balance of individuals representing academia, government and quangos, about a third from major aerospace companies who will have a direct commercial reason for being there, Virgin Galactic being a prime example. So there are big businesses out there who can see that there is money to be made, but I would have thought it would need to be these businesses who stump up the finance for technological development - I notice that David Willetts made no reference to central funding during his announcement!
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