Home Game- Exploring the UK’S Space Ambitions

By Peter Ivanov

In an era where space rocket launches are becoming commercialised and projected into popular culture, the U.K. is preparing to pick up where it left off some decades ago and is bidding to shoot for the stars like never before.

Backed by an extraordinary history of leading aerospace innovation and engineering, as well as the collaboration from overseas enterprises, we asked the question, is Britain ready to be deploying its own space agenda?

Home Game

This is a yes, and has been for a while. This time, however, the U.K. will be doing something it hadn’t previously, launching a rocket into orbit from home soil.

With a rich history in aerospace, it may seem odd that the U.K. dropped out of orbital rocket launches after one success, but it may have been a decision as a result of prudence, instead of incapability.

In 1971 the U.K. launched its first and only satellite-carrying rocket, Black Arrow, from a launch site in Australia, at a time when home turf was lacking the proper infrastructure to support the effort, not to mention the wildly differing market conditions of the era in comparison to what we have in place today.

But the launch was essentially a display of technology, as opposed to being a grandiose ambition to enter the space race.

Although orbital rocket launches were left behind after Black Arrow, Britain switched its focus to manufacturing satellites, which has proven to be a successful enterprise and if anything, pave the way for enterprises like U.K. companies such as Skyrora, Orbex and Virgin to emerge and establish the U.K. as a spacefaring nation once again.

In recent years, this paradigm has begun to take a radical shift, especially with the likes of commercial space flights being pioneered by Virgin Orbit and Space X, as well as the increasing demand for the U.K.’s satellite manufacturers, who now account for approximately 40 percent of all the world’s small satellites being built today.

What this does is give the U.K. a tangible head start, one supported by legitimate infrastructure and technical prowess.

The U.K. Space Agency annual report for 2019-20 highlights the positive impacts that the Agency’s International Partnership Programme (IPP) has yielded.

Seemingly, these efforts have both economic, societal, and environmental benefits, with the agency noting that for every £1 invested into IPP projects, the U.K. economy receives £2.57. Additionally, the Agency reports that such efforts have saved lives in around a dozen natural disasters, as well as saving fishermen at sea, preventing the deforestation of 383,000 hectares of land, apprehending and containing oil slicks before reaching land, and providing over 300 schools in remote areas with satellite internet access.

With those successes behind it, the U.K. is adequately poised to begin its journey to the stars yet again, and this is reflected in the recent happenings within the U.K. space industry. Although, experts express some concerns regarding the proportion of foreign space aid and domestic support, which may put UK’s ambitions at risk.

Testing Already Underway

Over the years, those efforts appear to have been a prudent step towards where we find ourselves today; 2020 has certainly been a curious one at that, though this hasn’t prevented the U.K. from looking to the stars. With that in mind, the question remains, is the U.K. up to the task?

The U.K. is nothing but ambitious, and at times, quite overlooked in terms of its successes.

In May, Scotland-headquartered rocket firm Skyrora accomplished a feat that hadn’t been achieved in 50 years, a vertical static fire test. The test took place near Alness in the Scottish Highlands in the middle of May, the first of its kind since Black Arrow.

Laying the Foundations

At present, the U.K. is home to a space sector that already employs around 42,000 people, generating an income of roughly £14.8 billion a year, a substantial figure considering the almost 50 years of launch silence.

In recent months, major investment has begun pouring into the creation of four major spaceports on British turf, as well as pledging funds to U.K. branches of U.S. companies who are collaborating to build and launch the rockets at said spaceports.

Behind almost £40 million of the total investment, figure is the U.K. government, signalling some very serious long-term intentions for the British space industry.

These developments began as recently as last November, when the U.K. Space Agency provided a £7.35 million grant to Virgin Orbit (a U.S. launch operator), in order to build a horizontal launch spaceport for small satellites in Newquay, Cornwall, with a view to launch in the first half of this decade.

In June year the U.K. Space Agency committed £23.5 million to Lockheed Martin U.K., a company that is particular which has proven to be contentious amongst the community and media due to particular affiliations.

Nonetheless, this has been considered a milestone in Britain’s spacefaring vision as the partnership between the U.S. and U.K. will allow for American companies to launch from British ground and provide the means for other entities to also do so.

In an official statement released June 17th, 2020, Karen Pierce, U.K. Ambassador to America said:
“This agreement marks an exciting new area for UK-US space collaboration and represents a significant step towards US companies launching from UK spaceports.”

She then went on to discuss how the space sector represents massive amounts of funds in terms of trading between the U.K and the U.S:
“The commercial space sector already represents hundreds of millions of dollars in trade between our two countries each year, as well as thousands of jobs on both sides of the Atlantic. This new agreement will generate further growth and prosperity for both our countries.”

Looking to Europe, a Danish firm by the name of Orbex is also entering the fray, as the U.K. has offered up £2.5 million to the company to join Lockheed Martin in the development and running of the now in-design Sutherland spaceport, which is reported to be capable of between 6 and 20 launches per year, a number which is yet to be finalised.

Private investors are also backing the Sutherland spaceport with Islands Enterprises providing a further £9.8 million, as well as £5 million from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority with the U.K. Space Agency reporting a further £30 million of additional private investment.

Again, the involvement of international companies does create some contention, especially when it is unknown at this stage just how the profits will be distributed amongst contributors, regardless of the grants put forward by the U.K. government.

Furthermore, it can be argued that the U.K. should prioritise funding companies that have the interests of the U.K. at heart. It goes without saying that these external contractors may be acting out of self-interest, and the U.K. is merely a platform for them to do so. With such significant funding coming from the pockets of the U.K. Space Agency, and the government has a responsibility to ensure that these external contractors aren’t just in it for themselves.

That isn’t to say that these efforts aren’t without other woes, as there is most certainly the environmental impacts to take into consideration. Developing the launch sites in the first place requires a massive effort to overhaul. Furthermore, there is the giant expense of fuel required to get materials to the sites, not to mention the amount required to launch or test these rockets.

Unfortunately, the dream to reach the stars comes at the cost of going against the nation’s ongoing battle with climate change and falls out of line with the efforts that are presently underway that are edging toward the ultimate goal of carbon neutrality.

Nevertheless, Orbex, Virgin, Lockheed Martin U.K., Skyrora and other players have a significant amount of skin in the game, with long-term plans slowly coming to fruition. The main question, are those plans stand for our own UK interests in space?

Prepared by Patrick O’Brien
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Peter Ivanov
Fintech and innovations analytic and strategist with background in international companies. Until 2020 worked for UK-based cryptocurrency exchange CEX.IO, and before that – for Amsterdam-based VEON—telecommunications services company with subsidiaries in 10 markets across EMEA region. CIPR (Chartered Institute for Public Relations) certified strategist with over 10 years of experience on multiple markets.

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