THE SPACE INDUSTRY


FOCUS FEATURE


What is there to aim for when you’ve reached for the moon and stuck a flag on it? In short, everything. Walking on the moon was a huge


achievement in July 1969. Since then man has built and lived in more than one space station, driven a buggy on the surface of Mars, littered near orbits with global positioning, broadcast and


communications satellites, landed a probe on a speeding comet and sent another to beyond the reaches of our galaxy. And yet, we still haven’t begun to scratch the surface of space exploration.


Deputy Editor Andy Hibberd has been looking at the space journey.


In the 1960s the race was on to win space. Two big players were determined to be the first to conquer the infinite void in which the Earth spins. Russia won the battle to put a man in space when


cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin circled the world in a Vostok spacecraft on 12 April 1961. The USSR, as it was then, was also the first to put an unmanned probe on the Moon. But it was the USA which won the ultimate bragging rights when it landed a manned lunar module on the Moon on 20 July 1969. Astronaut Neil Armstrong was the first man to step on to


the surface of the Moon six hours later on 21 July. As he stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder he made his monumental speech: “It’s one small step for man, one… giant leap for mankind.” In total, 12 men have walked on the Moon, the most


recent being in December 1972. Russia, America, China, Japan, India and the European


Space Agency have all carried out Moon missions, America being the most recent with a deliberate crash landing on the other side of the Moon of its Ladee probe. China is currently planning to put a rover on the surface


of the Moon in 2018 to gather even more data. Today, 55 years since Gagarin’s epic journey and 47 years


since Armstrong’s “giant leap”, it appears that things have gone quiet on the intergalactic front. The ‘predictions’ of sci-fi programmes such as Space


1999 – which had man colonising the Moon before the end of the previous millennium – failed to materialise. And there seems to be little progress being made in the


quest for warp-speed travel that would allow us flit between stars and galaxies faster than the speed of light to “seek out brave new worlds” or “boldly go where no man has gone before”, as per the Star Trek franchise which debuted in 1966, at the height of the space race. But it would be wrong to think that interest in space is declining.


ROCKET On the contrary, the space industry was worth a galactic £11.3bn to the UK economy in 2013, according to the latest figures available, and the Government has plans to rocket that to £40bn (ten per cent of the global value) by 2030. The UK Space Agency, a division of the Department for


Business, Innovation and Skills, has just begun collating data for its biennial report, due out later this year. For its 2014 report, 1,000 organisations were invited to


contribute. Included for the first time were supply chain firms, such as those working in microelectronics. With the expanded list of invitees, the definition of the


space economy differed significantly from that used in previous editions of the study. However, London Economics, which carried out the


research for the UK Space Agency, calculated that 464 invited organisations across the UK were working directly in the space industry. The UK space industry ranges from international market


leaders with subsidiaries all over the world, to UK subsidiaries of international companies, start-ups and small enterprises. Space industry turnover in 2012/13 was found to have increased by 15% in real terms in the two years since 2010/11 (an annual average of 7.3%), to £11.3 billion.


The Apollo 17 Lunar Rover Vehicle Consolidated revenue grew slightly slower than overall


space industry revenue, indicating that the space organisations were sourcing more and more inputs from other organisations within the industry. Though still well above the growth rate of the wider


economy, space industry growth had slowed slightly in 2012/13 when compared to the 7.5% growth observed annually between 2008/09 and 2010/11.


REPRESENTATION East Midlands businesses do not have particularly good representation in the sector. According to the UK Space Agency, London, the East of


England and the South East regions dominate, accounting for 95% of total turnover. The dominance is the same in downstream (assembly) turnover, where the three regions, again, make up 95% of the total. Upstream (manufacturing) exhibits a little more geographic dispersion, with London, the East of England and the South East accounting for 88% of turnover. In simple terms, the rest of the country, including the East


Midlands, is sharing only five per cent of the downstream market and 12% of the upstream (manufacturing) market. Financially, it means something around £600m of the


£11.3bn annual value of the industry is being shared between all regions outside London, the South East and East of England. It is estimated that about 35,000 people are employed in


the space sector in the UK with perhaps a further 75,000 in roles supported by the sector. But yet again, the East Midlands is failing to make a


significant contribution in this area. It is ranked by London Economics as part of the smallest


three per cent of the sector, where the individual regional contribution was too small to count. The breakdown of national employment by upstream


business sector is led by satellite/payload manufacturing at 36%. However, key differences arise for the ground segment and space transportation subsectors. Whereas the ground segment market accounts for 17% of upstream industry turnover, the respective share of employment amounts to 31%. In the other direction, though the space transportation


subsector accrues 24% of upstream turnover, only 5% of upstream jobs are supported by space transportation.


business network June 2016 33


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