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In recent weeks, I've been able to inspect the building work in progress on Europe's , or Automated Transfer Vehicle ().

The service module - propulsion and avionics - is being assembled in Bremen, Germany. The is being prepared in Turin, Italy.

For its upcoming flight, the 20-tonne robotic truck-cum-tugboat will carry the name Johannes Kepler. It's expected to deliver more than six tonnes of supplies - air, water, fuel, food and spare equipment - to the space station late next year.

To say Europe is chuffed with its freighter would be an understatement. The first vehicle came as close to the as was possible.

This clever robot knows where it is in the sky, takes itself to a designated location - - and then executes an automatic docking. Controllers will monitor what it does but it is the parallel computers onboard that are in charge.

By the time the ATV-1 had done its various practice manoeuvres on the maiden voyage, it arrived at the space station having already covered some 20 million km. It then locked into a docking ring some 10cm across.

Just think about that for a second: the vehicle travelled under its own guidance for 20 million km to hit a target just a few cm across. Oh, and the target was moving... at 27,000km/h. That's how fast the space station whizzes overhead.

Esa thinks the ATV is so clever it could turn it into a capable of being launched on an Ariane 5.

So why do I sigh every time I visit a cleanroom in which an ATV is being prepared? It's simple: the UK is not involved in this impressive European Space Agency programme.

I've got rather used to the map below which Esa officials and industrial contractors like to show in their Powerpoints when talking about the ATV. It details the workshare across Europe; and Britain, as you can see, has been completely erased from the map. (I've re-rendered it here to make it easier to read, but the style is exactly the same in every presentation).

The vehicle cost 1.3bn euros to develop and each subsequent mission costs 400m euros to build and fly.

That money is being spent in the industries of the countries which contribute to Esa's human spaceflight programme. The UK doesn't contribute and therefore, under Esa's rules, British industry is locked out of the big contracts that are on offer.

But what people might not know is that the ATV contains some rather critical UK technology. The light sensors in the laser system the vehicle uses to align itself for docking are sourced from in Chelmsford.

That's right: key components of the "eyes" of the ATV are British.

But this is technology which is bought "off the shelf", so to speak. The working on the vehicle's guidance approach system needed top-class sensors and acquired them from a leading (UK) supplier.

It makes you wonder, though: how many other British companies would like to be part of this project given the chance? Clearly, the capability exists in this country. e2v is one of a number of go-ahead British space companies which manages to mix it with the best.

So here's the can of space worms: for UK companies to be a major part of projects like the ATV, the British government would have to start paying into Esa's human spaceflight programme.

And, again, under Esa's rules, the size of the British economy means we would have to join the programme at a fairly significant level - costing many tens of millions of euros.

It's at that point that you have to make a judgement about "value" - is the programme (and everything that goes with the space station) worth it?

The policy from successive UK governments is that the value isn't there - or, at least, there is better value to be found elsewhere when you spend limited sums on space.

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