Space. The final frontier, or an extraordinary opportunity? The stuff of science fiction, or the way to drive productivity in our economy?
Space today is both unique and ubiquitous. Who knows that when you tap your credit card on the tube ticket gate, that this transaction is being time authenticated by a satellite flying at 17,600 mph, 2,000 kilometres about our heads?
The space industry, here in the UK, is valued at around £19 billion, and employs around 52,000 people within nearly 2,000 businesses. But the opportunity is immense.
By 2035, the global space industry is expected be worth $1.8 trillion. Space will enable huge changes in our way of life.
We already know that space satellite navigation enables us to find the local pub, to plan the best route to a destination. But it will enable driverless Ubers, Amazon delivery drones, and a plethora of as yet unimagined ideas of how to enrich our society.
But space also delivers data. As technology develops, it will enable communications in hard to reach areas, with problematic mobile signals.
Space has, for years, been helping us predict weather. But it will also help us predict and monitor climate change. And earth observation will help us from humanitarian relief in a natural disaster, through to predicting military strikes at the dead of night.
It can help specialists, from economists to farmers, looking at the heat signatures of economically significant assets, through to heat distress in fields.
The UK is about to join that specialist club of countries that delivers launch. The image of a rocket thrusting skywards from UK soil is about to become a fact. In the far north of the Shetlands, the Saxa Vord Spaceport is getting ready for its first launch later this year. The team there have fought off planning restrictions, and Scottish Heritage complaints, to deliver something that epitomises the spirit of space. And it is entirely possible that the first launch may be a UK rocket, Orbex.
To the purist, launch is not space. For sure, it enables space, but it is the white van, the delivery agent, the DHL driver who delivers the asset that is the real deal. But when we see that launch, the UK will be, in every respect, a space fairing nation.
So, it all looks good. But we need to know where we are going with this, and how it is led. My debate in Westminster Hall on the 11th June looked at three key points.
The UK government has the lead space minister within the department of Science and Technology. I can see why is used to be there, but the reality is that space is not a science project – it is a hard-nosed business with important defence advantages.
The Strategic Defence review, published recently, highlighted space as an area that gives the UK both military advantage, and a need to defend our assets in the space domain. Indeed, the government as a customer of space is driven mainly through the MoD.
But with a significant amount of business investment and profitability in this area, should space be in DBIT?
The sector knows that DSIT is the wrong department, and that we should move it to, probably, the cabinet office. It’s an important point.
Secondly, how do we spread the economic impact of the space sector across our other rich assets?
The City of London and our financial services sector is a hugely important part of our economy. We have been really good at finance for a few hundred years, and we have done this by being innovative in modern sectors.
So is now the time that the Treasury offers tax breaks for space sector finance?
Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, offered tax breaks for film finance and drove massive investment into the sector. A similar tax break for space could attracts the globe’s space financers to the City. Now is the time to cat.
Finaly, the future.
Energy is key to humanity’s progress over the millennia. And for the future, space will be the cornerstone of cheap, deliverable, baseload, dispatchable green energy.
The UK is leading the race to space based solar power, with satellites at geostationary orbit beaming gigawatt levels of electricity at the same price as terrestrial solar. But for us to win this race, the government needs to step up and support private investment.
Space based solar power is, for sure, an engineering challenge. But nuclear fusion, that has just received £2.5 billion in the spending review, is a physics challenge. So why not a large investment into space energy?
Space is a deliverer for a whole range of problems, right now, right here, in the UK. We are doing well. But we can do better, and government support for a tricky area will reap huge benefits in the future.
Government must turbo charge the UK’s space sector with tax breaks and better support
