A space issue of national importance
Did you make your submission?
Today saw the closure of the
Should Britain set up such a body to manage its civil space activities or should it continue with the present arrangement - the so-called "partnership" facilitated by the British National Space Centre (BNSC)?
For those coming late to this debate, let me just recap what I think are the core issues.
Whereas other European nations like Germany, France and Italy have national space agencies that speak with single voices backed up by single budgets, the UK's approach is to devolve space policy decisions to a club of "users".
These users are the government departments and research councils that have interests in space science or space-borne services.
They each have a slice of the civil space budget (about £270m) and spend it as they see fit - where they will get maximum return for their interests.
The arrangement is supposed to ensure that limited space funding chases "need" and not "vanity". In other words, the UK is not in space to wave flags; it is there to get a real, identifiable payback on its investment.
And making the BNSC partners think hard about where they want their little pot to be spent is meant to guarantee that each pound is stretched as far as it will go.
It is this approach that explains why Britain - for example - tends to put its money into programmes that develop the next generation of telecoms satellites and not into human spaceflight (astronauts).
Things like the space station do not have straightforward, easy-to-understand benefits, whereas everyone makes telephone calls and watches TV pictures beamed from the other side of the globe.
No-one has an argument with efficiency or with making budgets work hard. The question is whether the partnership is now the best architecture for achieving those ends.
Critics of the present arrangement argue that the club has failed the UK on some "big decisions" of late. It has difficultly, so the argument goes, in adopting coherent positions on complex programmes.
The classic example cited is the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme, Europe's flagship programme to build a co-ordinated system for Earth observation and monitoring.
It will combine all the data obtained by environmental satellites, air and ground stations to provide a comprehensive picture of the planet.
It plays to many scientific and policy strengths in the UK but when the European Space Agency (Esa) asked who was interested in taking part, the UK club of partners had immense difficulty in pulling together a budget to participate at a level commensurate with those perceived strengths.
As a consequence, other European nations are now leading much of GMES when the UK might have considered this to be its home turf.
And let's face it, space programmes don't get smaller over time; they get ever bigger and even more complex.
And, as with all scientific endeavours, the boundaries between disciplines become blurred. Innovations in one area are picked up and used in another.
We'll see a beautiful example of this in the next few weeks when Europe launches its Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (Smos) Earth-observation spacecraft.
The mission concept is essentially an astronomical radio telescope turned upside. It uses techniques developed to look at the stars to map key parameters on the Earth's surface.
I spoke with Keith Mason the other night. Professor Mason is chief executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). It looks after the funding of physics and astronomy in the UK.
It is the biggest shareholder in the BNSC partnership and is responsible for what is known as the mandatory subscription to Esa, that is, the basic membership fee Britain must pay to be part of Esa.
The STFC council has given a cautious but positive welcome to the idea of a dedicated British space agency. Professor Mason's view is that the idea is a good one, provided it improves on the current situation:
"The main trick here, I guess, is to have a vehicle that is able to lead as opposed to co-ordinate. BNSC is a co-ordinating body. It is there to bring together partners that may or may not want to work together. It can facilitate; it can't dictate.
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"What we have to do is get more value out of the investment. We need to realise the synergies much more effectively. We need to translate the technical inputs into much broader areas. We need to be much more joined up in the way we exploit space.
I've heard it said that the space agency consultation is a waste of time because the fundamental problem is a lack of government support for space. If you're not going to fund the policy properly, it makes no difference how you make that policy. That's what some are saying.
But others would argue that that argument is back to front. If funding is limited, surely it becomes even more important that the organisational structures are correct?
We await the outcome of the consultation.
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