Tonight’s “Start Me Up” mission from Spaceport Cornwall is a big deal for the UK.
UKSpace says that the launch signals a major milestone for the UK space sector, “furthering its reputation as a world leader in small satellite manufacturing and innovation to address a range of challenges and objectives that impact people’s day-to-day lives”.
UKspace President, Dr Alice Bunn, was quoted as saying:
“Tonight’s planned first orbital space launch from the UK is a historic moment. Over the past 20 years, the UK space sector has built one of the most innovative and highly skilled sectors in our economy, valued at around £14.8 billion a year. And with continued investment, this could double to £30 billion by 2030. The sector already provides 42,000 jobs, and our analysis shows it could create a further 30,000 in the next decade, many of which are ‘green jobs’ in areas like climate change monitoring, smart transport routing and flood prevention. These jobs are spread across the UK including Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, the Midlands and the South West.
The industry is at a critical stage of development as we are on the cusp of an industrial revolution in space. Small satellites provide essential services for every single one of us; they are the invisible enabler of our modern lives, and the UK already has a global lead in their manufacture. This trend is increasing, which is why having a launch capability in the UK is so strategically significant.”
The ‘Start Me Up’ mission is a collaborative effort between the United Kingdom Space Agency, Cornwall Council, the Royal Air Force and Virgin Orbit.
Launch proceedings are set to start between 21:45 and 22:45 tonight, when the Cosmic Girl 747 will take off from Spaceport Cornwall. Between 22:54 and 23:54, the LauncherOne rocket will be released, with Cosmic Girl returning to Cornwall between midnight at 01:00.
An amazing chance for the UK to develop an end to end capability for military satellites here with domestic production and launch. HMG has done a decent job in shepherding this so far but for a few more quid we could do so much more. Equatorial launch capability for GSO satellites from ascension and a constellation of EO and SAR satellites producing military and commercial imagery could join our existing communications satellite arrays and even next generation navigation constellations. That could also be supplemented with an anti satellite capability based on the space junk removal work we are doing currently… Read more »
agreed – we need to supercharge our One Web investment instead of selling it off.
No strategic plan for UK industry. get one web right and it could generate much needed income for years to come that will help pay for other “stuff” that people want… like the NHS
Don’t be silly, the government’s job is not to generate national/nationwide wealth through strategic development and careful support of industries. It is there to generate targeted wealth for their financial supporters (foreign and domestic) through careful deregulation and strategic neglect of undustry. I couldn’t agree more with you- I was very supportive of the purchase of OneWeb, makes me seethe that they can only maintain that level of vision and forethought for 6-12 months… I hope that I’m just being overly pessimistic though, the UK has real opportunities in high-tech design and manufacturing, and the government should get behind that… Read more »
I agree – and do not buy into this long term demise nonesens…the UK has so much more to offer if only we had the vision and government support. Politicians need to realise our country seems to be the only one that does not support its industries and allowing other governments to buy up our best bits is counter productive. All utilities should be government owned and I would go farther and make Royal Mail a monopoly (albeit one that needs sorting out) we need a way to generate income instead of increasing debt. Letting people work on new military… Read more »
Well, I certainly don’t think long term demise is a foregone conclusion- it all comes down to leadership as you say. Given our historic position as a global financial centre, we could probably continue the status quo and we wouldn’t live to see any major degradation in the UK’s position in the world. But that is depressingly lacking in any ambition or vision for what the UK could be, and what we could deliver for our children and to the rest of the world, frankly. For some reason both colours of government have, in the last 40 years or so,… Read more »
couldn’t agree more – golden shares in key companies and structured help would be good.
need to stop handing out money with no/little return and find a way to increase revenues to pay for stuff people want.
its doable but some home truths may need to be told first..
My greatest concern for the present strategy (if that is even relevant in our leaders) is that it is totally tied up in the prominence of the City and financial services. Much of this is foreign owned anyway but more importantly since Brexit (indeed even before) the City’s competitiveness has been seeping away as Paris and especially Frankfurt become stronger. I really don’t see the City necessarily retaining its predominant position in the next decades. If it declines significantly then this Country will have little to fall back on. Will Thatcher still be the local Tory hero in those circumstances,… Read more »
Spot on Joe, makes you realise now how when North Sea Oil was booming we should have used the profits for a Nation Investment Agency like the Norwegians did and the Saudis and almost every damn oil producer of note instead of letting the vagaries of fate and Bankers short termism dictating our economic and technological future and thus National wealth. If we had the wealth generating from say Green energy would now be in our hands rather than foreign owners and suppliers who if we are lucky give us nut and bolt fabricators onshore to fool the masses as… Read more »
I think the only reason our governments have been able to get away with it is probably that not enough people know how well other countries do stuff like wealth funds and industrial development… I work for a company in the green sector, and there is considerable opportunity for the UK as a whole to increase market share and bring major value- at the IP end as you say. But, the problem we’ve found is that manufacturing capacity is terrible over here, as is construction in general. The amount of times we have to look internationally for items because British… Read more »
I know all about it. Even been to Norfolk a few times as they are getting some quiet backing from HMG. They need protection from bring scooped up (a certainty in the near future if you ask me).
I really applauded Boris’s OneWeb investment despite all the typical short sighted criticism from all and sundry. Couldn’t last could it, sold it off to the French last month who having been blind sided and missed out on this side of satellite business have just taken it away from us to solve their problem. This is modern British short sightedness (indeed longstanding) at work yet again, yes we retain a golden share but not heard anybody state it will give us much leeway really.
I’m still confused as to why the government bought out One Web in the first place. It seems rather random. It was at about the same time that there was a lot of noise in the media about the government investing in its own GNSS after being shut out of Galileo, which leaves me with the horrible suspicion that someone in a position to authorise the purchase thought we could magically leverage it to provide nav signals despite the lack of suitable onboard clocks.
You can bet behind the scenes the gov are really interested in a domestic starlink style system for the military. This will become a priority in the near future with the impending space race between China and the USA.
The challenges and risk for a system are not that great within our current UK space industry (cost and know-how), also an area ripe for export with the current campaign in Ukraine showing its effectiveness for lesser nations to equal the playing field.
We had a domestic starlink that was government owned and they just approved selling it to China and France.
Indeed as a Country we speak like we are a near tier one power (militarily and economically) but instances like this reveal that in reality with our leaders total lack of insight we are actually headed more towards the third World in importance and impact as others expand. It so depresses me that France has so much more long term thinking than us and are willing to commit to it now while we seem to think that adding to City Bankers tax breaks will magically develop new innovative and strategic industries here. Give him his due Johnson at least had… Read more »
Believe you have entered the correct church and are zeroing in on the correct pew. 🤔😉 Uncertain re extent to which plans will be publicly released, but reasonably certain NEO and GSO R&D and space operations will be emphasized, post AUKUS plan release (3/23). Sensitivity may be equal to/greater than submarine operations; ergo, few specific details will be released, more in the realm of bland generalities. The Australians will also have an expanded role, uncertain re their required learning curve. The full employment act for STEM (popular acronym in US–Science, Technology Engineering and Math) trained workforce will soon be unveiled.
HMGs support is about a third of what France gives its industry (though I suspect some of that is wasted on compensating Ariane that non flying heavy rocket). On the other hand for every £ (from whatever source) of investment in the uk space business we make rather more than the US does from its saturated input. We really do need to promote our successes in both investment and public awareness and perhaps most importantly our legislators mindset, we wait far too long before committing to our successes by which time often we are no longer leaders. We are lucky… Read more »
UK space development needs to join forces with Japan, Canada, Oz and NZ.
I could see a CANZUK space agency being a fairly easy agreement that would give something tangible for the four countries to share. Can open up Australia as equatorial launch site and NZ with electron as a second polar orbit lunch site. Fully agree we should cooperate more with Japan as well. ESA is too much of a Franco German jobs program.
Would be great to see them help develop the ion engine upper stage that can be sued for higher orbits or small sat interplanetary missions and asteroid scouting. Could be a real niche that we could add value to instead of larger probes NASA launches.
I always keep an eye on Reaction Engines: they are slowly going forward, but for them the problem is: will the Chinese crack horizontal launch before they do.
Yes.
Which bit of Virgin Orbit is British?
Just asking.
The art work 😀
Richard Branson’s horrible knitwear.
And in good old Branson/Virgin tradition, the bugger didn’t work this morning. Thats around £11.5m up the swanny.
Not quite the final frontier this time but close.
Tremendous effort nonetheless.
Unfortunately the massive publicity makes this look like a UK failure. It was not.
The Company is listed in New York and the rocket built in the US.
It was a US rocket that has failed in 2 of 5 launches based on a quick check.
👍
So it is now a British success but an American failure…
Anything to do with Branson and Virgin is a non starter.
Scott Manley explains the launch (link)