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United Kingdom Space

UK Now Seen As 'Toxic' For Satellite Launches, MPs Told (theguardian.com) 72

Posted by BeauHD from the change-of-plans dept.
Britain's failed attempt to send satellites into orbit was a "disaster" and MPs are being urged to redirect funding to hospitals, with the country now seen as "toxic" for future launches. The Guardian reports: Senior figures at the Welsh company Space Forge, which lost a satellite when Virgin Orbit's Start Me Up mission failed to reach orbit, said a "seismic change" was needed for the UK to be appealing for space missions. Lengthy delays by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), as well as the launch failure, had left Space Forge six months behind its competition in the race to be the first company to bring a satellite back down to Earth, when it had been six months ahead, the science and technology committee heard.

Patrick McCall, a non-executive director at Space Forge, said: "The CAA is taking a different approach to risk, and a bit to process and timing as well. But I think unless there is, without wanting to be too dramatic, a seismic change in that approach, the UK is not going to be competitive from a launch perspective. I think the conclusion I've reached is right now it's not a good use of money, because our regulatory framework is not competitive." He added that the UK ought to consider spending the money it was investing in launch capability on other areas, such as hospitals.

Greg Clark, the chair of the committee, said it was a "disaster" that an attempt to show what the UK was capable of had turned "toxic for a privately funded launch." "We had the first attempted launch but the result is that you as an investor in space are saying there is no chance of investors supporting another launch from the UK with the current regulator conditions." Dan Hart, the CEO of Virgin Orbit, told MPs he had expected the CAA to work more similarly to the Federal Aviation Authority in the US but he had found the UK regulator more conservative. The company has since ended its contract with Spaceport Cornwall at Newquay airport but said it was still hoping to launch from the site in the future. Sir Stephen Hillier, the chair of the CAA, said: "Our primary duty is to ensure that the space activity in the UK is conducted safely. The CAA licensed in advance of technical readiness."
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UK Now Seen As 'Toxic' For Satellite Launches, MPs Told More

UK Now Seen As 'Toxic' For Satellite Launches, MPs Told

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  • Musk got it right on the 3rd try (Score:5, Informative)

    by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 ) on Friday March 03, 2023 @03:08AM (#63338171)

    And most of this money is private money.
    It's not like giving Boeing $40 billion USD tax money in order to launch their first rocket into space.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by real_nickname ( 6922224 )
      Melon musk never tried to launch a rocket from a plane at this kind of latitude.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Indeed, and if they can get it to work reliably then this technique could save quite a lot of money for small satellites. The aircraft replaces the first stage of the rocket, and of course it is reusable with even quicker turn-around and less maintenance than SpaceX's boosters.

        The downside is that the mass it can take to orbit is lower, but there are many useful payloads in that class.

        • Remind me how much of the velocity the plane provides compared to a first stage? IIRC it is about 5%

          • Re:Musk got it right on the 3rd try (Score:4, Informative)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday March 03, 2023 @10:13AM (#63338693) Homepage Journal

            It's more to do with needing engines that perform well at lower altitudes, where the air is thicker. If you can avoid needing those engines, that entire stage of your rocket, you can just have the bits needed for upper atmosphere and space, along with less fuel.

            • I'm no rocket scientist, but at the level they drop the rocket the plane is going about the same speed as a Falcon 9 and on a fairly straight velocity/altitude curve through MECO. I don't know what altitude the Raptor is optimized for, but the sea level and vacuum thrusts only vary by about 10%. It seems hard to believe that a plane-launched rocket has a significant efficiency improvement to justify its use, beyond very specific mission objectives (like hiding the launch from lurking eyes/satellites).

  • Word of the day (Score:5, Informative)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday March 03, 2023 @03:31AM (#63338197)

    Toxic is now a word that's so diluted it has lost its meaning. Nowadays it's a word so cheaply thrown around that if somebody handed me a glass of glowing radioactive waste and said it was toxic, I'd think it fine and drink it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The meaning of toxic is pretty clear. Something that damages your health, or damages your equipment. The UK's regulatory environment for launches is unfavourable and likely to be damaging for business, hence it is toxic.

      • Re:Word of the day (Score:5, Interesting)

        by andrewbaldwin ( 442273 ) on Friday March 03, 2023 @06:27AM (#63338335)
        The UK's regulatory environment for anything that doesn't directly benefit the conservative party is unfavourable and likely to be damaging for business, hence it is toxic.

        FTFY

        Actually that's a bit unfair...since BREXIT the additional regulatory burdens combined with cutbacks in those employed to process and expedite them and general obstruction to trade is toxic to virtually everyone.

        Saddens me to say it as a UK citizen, but the continuing damage our politicians and newspapers are doing to this once pioneering and innovative country could soon be terminal

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Brexit is making Tories and their donors richer. Despite the reduction in trade and 4% off GDP, in the longer run it decreases competition for workers and pushes down wages.

          What are we up to now, 6 Tory governments since 2010? Or maybe 7 depending on how you count it.

          The 6-7 Tory governments since 2010 have done very well at decreasing wages, which benefits their friends who employ people. Trashing the NHS has pushed more people towards private healthcare, especially dentistry. Peerages have never been chea

          • I don't follow British politics so no comment on those parts but how does having fewer people available to work (from the rest of the EU) the same number of jobs decrease wages?

            Fewer workers for same number of jobs will increase wages.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Yet wages in the UK have been consistently falling in real terms since 2010, and brexit didn't change that.

              The effect of brexit is mainly on skilled workers, for whom it is now much harder to just move to the EU to take advantage of higher wages. I actually did that before brexit.

              Now most people are limited to what is on offer in the UK, and employers simply aren't offering more. If they can't get someone they need they just lean on everyone else to make up the gap, or use contractors. The contractor thing

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by catprog ( 849688 )

            From what I have heard due to inflation even the rich are going backwards. (can't find any stats though to confirm it)

      • The meaning of toxic is pretty clear. Something that damages your health, or damages your equipment. The UK's regulatory environment for launches is unfavourable and likely to be damaging for business, hence it is toxic.

        The meaning of "toxic" in public discourse is something like:

        "I don't have any actual concrete charges I can prove against you, so I'll say vaguely that you are somehow bad ... "

      • Something that damages your health, or damages your equipment.

        Flu virus is not toxic.

        Night shift is not toxic.

        An earth quake is not toxic.

        Power surge isn't toxic.

        Care to try again?

      • No it's not pretty clear. There are levels of damaging. When things that are only mildly annoying are labeled toxic such that the label toxic causes more damage than that conferred by the annoying thing, that's a problem.

    • I am sure it would be safe if you added some pomegranate juice to it.

    • Not sure what you're trying to say. Are you just complaining off topic about language use, or are you implying that the UK's launch process isn't actually dire? It absolutely is. "Toxic" has an clear definition that implies it is something to avoid. And people are avoiding the UK when it comes to space right now, even if you do feel yourself anti-establishment enough to do something just because other people don't.

  • They named it the "Cosmic Girl"
    Should have named it the "Princess Markle"

  • FAA vs Boeing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Friday March 03, 2023 @06:36AM (#63338349)

    After how the FAA behaved regarding the 737MAX issue (including their reluctance to ground the aircraft until other countries did so first), I'm not sure that the UK public would like the CAA to be less risk adverse like their American counterparts.

    But with regards to the launch, this sounds like the standard PR move to get more government handouts. Actually, I don't have a problem with that, as many nascent industries are started through substantial govt subsidy (Tesla, SpaceX). In this case I think that Space Forge did really well to get as far as they did, and it would be a shame if they had to wind up so soon.

    Also, it's a weird peculiarity of the UK bean counter mentality, that they think that defunding a bunch of engineers in Cornwall is going to magic up more doctors in the North of England. It doesn't work like that. At best the engineers will go work on some other tech project in the UK, but more than likely they'll all move overseas and become taxpayers for someone else. So all you've done is lose some skilled workers with this sort of short-term strategy. If they had wanted more workers for the NHS (which they have known would be a problem or decades) then they needed to have a funding, training and retention strategy to deal with this decades ago. Throwing more money at the problem will likely just create doctor salary inflation as the real issue right now is a total lack of workers.

    • Re:FAA vs Boeing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday March 03, 2023 @08:55AM (#63338471) Homepage Journal

      The UK has always been a bit lacklustre when it comes to space. We are the only country in the world that developed independent satellite launch capability, and then abandoned it. We only launched one ourselves, from Australia.

      It's part of a general trend of not properly investing in new technology. Private investors are more risk averse than those in the US, and governments have trouble sticking to things long term. It's a miracle that Concorde ever got built, and perhaps the partnership with the French was why it too was not cancelled.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Part of the problem is that the UK is a poor country with a lot of rich people. If you take the home computer market as an example, the focus was very much on cheap and cheerful because that's all people could afford. The machines that succeeded were the ones that sold internationally, and so were able to get economies of scale that allowed them to use better hardware while not costing too much. The reaction in the UK was not to innovate, it was to push costs down even more.

          The rich just buy imported stuff,

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • Going to have to disagree with you there. Sugar saw that HiFi was fashionable, so built crappy HiFi and sold it to people who didn't know any better, then saw that computers were fashionable and sold obsolete computer hardware to people who didn't know any better. If Amstrad start making electric cars tomorrow, expect repurposed lead-acid car batteries on a cast iron chassis.
              Also disagree that the engineers were complacent, I blame the beancounters who never realise that the beans they count are simplified

          • I also think a lot of the problem with the UK (and most/all of Europe) is that there is a real culture of wealth preservation among the elite that you don't have as much in the USA. I mean, most of Europe was built on conserving wealth and power through many generations (King of England I'm looking at you).

            The trouble is that this makes them extremely risk adverse. In German/France etc it seems this is dealt with by having a much more long-term business culture. You get lots of mature businesses that will r

    • Saying "let's spend money on the NHS instead" is Standard Operating Procedure for successive governments, departments and political parties. It never actually results in anything ever getting spent on the NHS (or schools - they're a second place favourite).

      HMRC started all this - they are trying to stop tax avoidance (yes, the legal sort), and use emotive arguments such as "if only people wouldn't avoid tax so much, we could spend that money on schools and hospitals instead". The mathematics or even vague a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 )

      But with regards to the launch, this sounds like the standard PR move to get more government handouts.

      From the summary, what they seem to be complaining about here is paperwork and delays in regulatory approvals, not lack of government money.

  • You should see the rivers, lakes and oceans, they pump in raw sewage over 1000 times per day, 400.000 times a year.

  • What a bunch of babies. We can only do easy things like dump more money into the health system. But haaaaard things like space? We will leave space for other people who have balls and brains and willing to take risks to be successful.

  • Impractical, if not toxic (Score:3)

    by RUs1729 ( 10049396 ) on Friday March 03, 2023 @09:32AM (#63338551)
    At 50+ degrees North latitude, attaining most of the interesting orbits will be quite expensive.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 )

      At 50+ degrees North latitude, attaining most of the interesting orbits will be quite expensive.

      At 50+ degrees North, attaining the high inclination orbits that are most desired by smallsat constellations will be easier than at lower latitudes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jd ( 1658 )

        At 50+ degrees F, the engineers will all complain about the cold, coffee, Cornish pasties... I don't expect the problem to be fixed.

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