A project to deliver a small launch orbiting vehicle as part of the UK Space Agency’s UK Space Program is approaching delivery in mid-year 2024 from a partnership between Aurora, NY-based Moog Space and Defense and Lockheed Martin, one example of the United Kingdom’s support of the space sector.
However, “all those U.K. jobs and usage of U.K. technologies ends sometime this summer 2024,” Chester Crone, business development director at Moog Space and Defense, told CBN.
“There hasn’t been a lot of government investing in programs and technologies to make the industry more robust and conducive to more commercial growth. It feels like these efforts are percolating and need to do more. More government leadership, and more funding. Right now it’s on the edge.”
The government needs to build the roads and bridges, he said. Economies form naturally between that infrastructure.
When asked if space companies in the United States may have been spoiled on generous subsidies unheard of elsewhere, with SpaceX alone seeing $5.6 billion in taxpayer money, Crone replied, “the proof is in the pudding. America has a tremendous foothold in space because of its model.”
Is there enough investment in the industry?
Jodie Bartin, chief executive at Citicourt, a financial advisory group specializing in the space market, warned at the Space-Comm event in Farnborough, England, last week that some U.K. space companies are headed for bankruptcy.
The UK Space Industry recapped all it had done for the country’s industry during its Space-Comm keynote presentation, drawing attention to the 47 million pounds ($60 million) deployed as part of its Space Clusters Infrastructures Fund, which is expected to be matched by industry, making for $120 million in total, alongside many other smaller funds deployed in 2023 which amount to a total of $142.84 million.
“They worry they’re going to invest in the wrong thing,” Piers Ohlson, founder of Ohlson Actuators, who have been contracted for work on lunar robotics for the University of Manchester, told Connectivity Business News. “I’ve been hearing consensus around the need for multi-year contracts. These projects let companies plan and scale operations and retain talent for longer.”
Citicourt’s Bartin also recommended the U.K. make use of more longditudinal contract-based awards to deliver valuable services to the government to unlock new capabilities while stimulating industry.
“NASA has a great commercial model in funding commercial companies to provide a service,” Moog’s Crone told CBN. “Using the commercial lunar landers as an example, the government was able to buy access to the lunar surface at a fraction of what it used to cost to get to the moon. It inspires small companies to create this new ecosystem and create affordable as sustainable new markets.”
These days, companies are having to be creative with their funding strategies, Bartin said at a panel she moderated this week at Paris Space Week, “including the ability to change teams, strategies and focus to secure financing. … Citicourt spends a lot of time bridging the gap between public and private financing.”
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