Scottish space sector calls for dedicated minister to deliver defence plans

Scottish space experts have warned a Commons committee that failing to appoint a UK space minister may put national defence plans at risk.

Speaking at the Scottish Affairs Committee, representatives of the space industry called for more “central coordination” and clear political leadership to ensure the long-term sustainability of the sector.

Malcolm Macdonald, director of the Centre for Signal and Image Processing at the University of Strathclyde said: “We appear to be moving back in a direction of space being across lots of different departments…How do we better organise, particularly as space becomes more and more strategically important for the MoD (Ministry of Defence) - we’ve seen policy move out of the space agency into DSIT (Department of Science, Innovation and Technology) -  that overall coordination is going to be vital if government is going to be a well-informed customer to the sector and it needs to be.”

Earlier this year, a document published by the UK Parliament on the future of war pointed to space as a key sector to ensure the MoD maintains its “strategic advantage”. And a satellite system, currently under development in England, is expected to deliver space-based imagery to help military operations.

Dr Christie Maddock, senior lecturer on mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Strathclyde, added: “One thing would be a clearer vision of what you want the UK Space Agency to be responsible for. For example, whether they are policy driven, whether they enable research programmes and manage them, whether they actually then have technical advisers that run them…especially when you’re looking at investment from early TRL (technology readiness level) projects. That’s where it’s a bit messy because everyone tends to compete a little bit.”

This doesn’t mark the first time the sector has called for a senior politician to be responsible for the industry. Last year, deputy chief executive of the SaxaVord spaceport – which expects to do its first launch in July - Scott Hammond, warned there were “too many cooks involved” when it came to the licences required, citing it as a significant barrier for the industry.

Witness also sounded a note of caution that failing to devise a long-term strategy could see Scotland miss out on the economic benefits the industry is expected to offer.  

Maddock said: “If we want to be competitive, we don’t have to be competitive at everything. You have to take the resources you have and find what niches you want to invest in in order to contribute and lead in those areas in the global space market."

She added: “We need to also set a very clear long-term investment goal… so you can have short-term returns like vertical launches. But if we want to stay in a long-term competitive [market], we have to have a long-term.”

Professor Patrick Harness, professor of exploration technology at the University of Glasgow added: “We need to make sure this is a sustainable industry that is happening organically in the ground here and it’s not something that is imported [and] that happens to be executed here. The economic and skills pipeline doesn’t really touch the sides in the UK; it has to be a whole sector that exists in the UK”.