INTERVIEW
reachstars
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Andy Hibberd: I’ve been looking at Government plans for the future of the space industry in the UK, and it all looks very positive. The stated goal is to build the sector to £40bn a year – ten per cent of the sector’s global value - by 2030. Is that achievable? Sir Martin Sweeting: Overall yes, based on a 2013 study by Oxford Economics the space industry in the UK is growing at an average of 8.8% per annum since 2008/09 (Oxford Economics is currently updating the study to include 2014/15 results). There are, for example, some 65 companies now at the
Harwell Space Hub, Oxfordshire, and in 2015 the UK launched the largest number of sub-500kg satellites after the US and China.
AH: Where do you see that growth being achieved? MS: The main area of growth is most likely to be in the ‘downstream’ data applications area – but there is steady growth too in the small satellite industry that has been pioneered in the UK.
AH: Looking at various information streams, the sector would seem to be worth about £11bn a year to the UK economy today. What aspects of ‘space’ are we currently biggest in, and how big are we in global terms? MS: The UK has strengths across the space spectrum and is very competitive internationally – in space science instruments, telecommunications satellites, navigation/timing payloads (for Galileo) and in Earth observation micro- and mini-satellites.
AH: Are we leading the field in any particular parts of ‘space’, are we doing enough or are we missing opportunities to excel? MS: The UK leads in advanced small satellites, in particular, but has world-class capabilities in other areas, including those already mentioned.
AH: Is there a sector you think we should be focusing on, that you would encourage East Midlands firms to aim for? MS: Downstream applications – working closely with the Space Catapult, based at Harwell.
AH: One set of data I looked at suggested that most of the UK’s space industry is based in London and the southern Home Counties. Is the East Midlands adequately represented in the sector? If not, what tricks are we missing and how do we get more involved?
MS: Actually the space community, covering space science, satellite manufacturing, applications and business, is quite widespread across the UK. There tend to be clusters that form around different fields. Leicester is, of course, a centre for space science and remote sensing and hopefully this will stimulate some related local industries.
AH: Is there much money available to help firms get more involved in the sector? MS: Money from where? There are some local government funding initiatives that space companies could tap into but this is very dependent on regions. Central Government funding is very limited. Many
organisations bid into the European Space Agency for project funding. There are very few venture capital opportunities for space in the UK compared to the USA. Generally, firms need to identify and build a market presence – often organically.
AH: As a boy, I’m showing my age here, I remember the excitement of the space race – dogs and monkeys being fired up in rockets, touching the edge of space miles above the Earth’s surface… and then the Russian coup of beating the Americans to get a man, Yuri Gagarin, into space, followed by America being the first to put a flag on the surface of the Moon… then it all seemed to go a bit quiet. I know we’ve had hundreds of satellites launched, Voyager, the Mars Rover project, various interstellar probes and the landing of a probe on a comet… but what are the goals, what is the excitement at the moment… what should companies be aiming to be part of to boost East Midlands involvement in the future £40bn a year business?
business network June 2016 23
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