Author: Ewan Lawrenson

Earth Observation data has countless applications, from disaster management to weather prediction. While governments have heavily invested in some of these applications, smaller players are also making big changes in the satellite sector. On Episode 44 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, we spoke with Michael Hurowitz, the Founder and CEO of Weather Stream, about how his company navigates the commercial complexities of making earth observation data accessible to everyone. 

What are some of the biggest issues around being a data-driven space payer, where sometimes access to this information is critical to life?

If you look at traditional infrastructures such as government satellites, government data systems, and government built weather models, there’s an enormous economic benefit to them. There have been a lot of attempts to study that in as much detail as possible. From a company perspective, however, trying to play a role in that world is difficult because of the sheer complexity and costs of doing these things. The weather and climate space in particular is dominated by predominantly government infrastructure, so most of the skilled people we need are happily employed in research and operational environments. 

However, without that investment from the public sector, there wouldn’t be an opportunity for companies like ours to exist, because if you try to build it all from scratch, the costs would be off the charts. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants and looking for those niche, high-value pieces of the problem that we can affect through a commercial business model. 

Ultimately, if our data sits in a database, and it’s only pay-to-play, we’re not gonna be able to have the impact we want. But, at the same time, if we don’t bring enough revenue in to keep our investors happy and fund the satellite program, we’re not going to be able to meet our users’ needs. It’s strange to strike the balance between wanting to give away as much as you possibly can while supporting our fundamental business model. We still have to defend our use of resources to our investors. 

Ultimately, the public sector is a little more stable, but also a little more risk-averse. The role that small businesses can play is to help take those risks that the public sector either shouldn’t take or doesn’t know how to take. Small teams of people can minimise the bureaucracy, try things, build as fast as we can, and be okay with working with a different mindset. If the public sector spends a billion dollars on a satellite program out of taxpayer money, it has to work and it needs to fulfil the mission requirements. Anything less, we would consider a failure. 

At a startup, we have to take a different approach, but ultimately, we’re going to be measured on the quality of the product. If you can build a quality data product that is sufficient in its accuracy and timeliness to meet users’ needs, that’s the ultimate test. The problem to solve is, can you get there with a smaller budget? That’s a very difficult problem to solve.

Is satellite data or weather data accessible to all currently, and how does that fit into creating a viable business model?

There has been some really amazing progress internationally with the WMO 40 in particular. The WMO has been working with many countries for years now to establish one of the most efficient sectors on the planet in terms of sharing information, and we have removed barriers to sharing, import, and export data access. There are still infrastructure elements in the way, but even for an individual who’s interested in weather, you can go download the software if you have a suitable computer, and you can run these models yourself. Not that many people try to do that, but it’s all there. The core code is open source. It’s all freely available. All you really have to do is sign a few licence agreements and accept some of the terms that come with it, but there’s a lot to start with. 

Every commercial enterprise in the weather sector has leveraged these capabilities. We all rely on government satellites, including their infrastructure, to start with. We connect that to our core technology, which is in-house and microbial radiometry that characterises the environment. We then connect that to end applications and try to figure out where in the value chain we can move the needle in a way that the government won’t try to do. For example, the government isn’t going to try to build bespoke solutions for specific industries, so that’s where our niche is. 

What are some of the areas that the government hasn’t gotten into that Weather Stream is able to provide information for?

There’s data and then there’s applications. The data we’re talking about is the fundamental environmental conditions, the atmosphere, the surface of the Earth, the oceans, the sea, ice, snow, soil moisture, etc. Those are the datasets that the satellite programs are designed to acquire, but it’s about how you leverage that data. That’s where the industry comes in. 

One of the barriers is actually just the technical know-how required to get started, which is a training issue. In terms of the applications that we focus on, there are so many interesting sectors like the insurance world where this data can move the needle for their businesses. When you talk to end users, you find all kinds of use cases where if we just had a little bit better resolution we could use it in new ways, and that moves the needle for us as a business. So that’s what we try to find – these day to day operations that have niche use cases for data that can enable new ways of doing business or new products and services.

Have you found it difficult to relay your value to particular sectors that may not think that using data from space would be beneficial to their industry? 

There’s definitely an educational challenge/opportunity. It’s something that’s truly new and different, so it takes time to educate people on how to use it. One of the biggest challenges for what we do is that most of the environmental satellites are being consumed by other complicated modelling systems and data systems, so by the time it gets to an end user, it’s gone through multiple levels of abstraction. When you’re looking at a weather forecast, people don’t really understand what data simulation is. In reality, people are looking at how we deal with things like rainfall, how we think of storms, etc. How do you take a real-world storm and then assign a 5, 10 or 25-kilometre grid and say, ‘Within this one cell, there’s all this physics going on, but we have to treat it as one cell’? We need advancements in all of those areas to improve our understanding.

To find out more about the weather and Earth Observation sectors, tune into Episode 44 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

On Episode 42 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast we sat down with Kevin Lausten, the President of Morpheus Space, to talk about the new manufacturing plant that the company has opened in Germany. He gave us an inside-look at the factory’s mission, as well as the talent strategy behind the new team there. Read on to find out more. 

Your new factory opened on the 23rd of July, in Dresden. Can you tell us what to expect from the facility, and what do you hope it will achieve more broadly for the space sector? 

We’ve seen substantial demand for space propulsion, and this is a hard problem. Space propulsion requires very complex technology and a large volume of systems and products to be available to the market. That means there is a lack of availability for propulsion systems, so we have designed and developed an electric propulsion system called Go-2 which can be used individually for relatively small spacecraft. It can also be clustered to address the propulsion needs for somewhat larger spacecraft, but we were very much focused on the CubeSat and SmallSat, where we’re seeing a dramatic increase in constellations that fall into that category. 

Economics 101 says you’ve got to make sure that supply matches demand. If demand is high, then you need to increase supply, so that’s really what we’re focused on when it comes our production factory. The intent there is to ensure that we are sufficiently scaling production to match demand, and as I referenced earlier, the demand has been quite high, both within the European and US markets. 

We feel that scaling the production for Go-2 is an important step for our company and the industry, as at times there have been spacecraft initiatives that have been stalled due to the lack of available propulsion, and that’s a problem. A big part of the reason we’re starting up the new factory is to make sure that that is no longer a problem in the industry. We want to make sure that when innovators and spacecraft operators have new ideas or new business opportunities, and they want to launch a satellite or constellation, we’re there to support them. We’re there to provide the necessary propulsion capabilities to make that vision become a reality.

Why did you choose Dresden as the location to build that team?

There’s a couple of reasons. First, our founding team met at the Technical University of Dresden, and the company was founded there too. That’s where we do our Go-2 research and development work, so we already have a footprint of about 30 staff in the Dresden area. Adding to that just made sense, because you want to have development and production within close proximity to each other. So, Dresden became an anchor point for us. From there, we’ve been able to recruit a lot of great staff members who have either come up through university, moved laterally from other industries, or relocated to Dresden. Now we’ve got a centre of excellence when it comes to electric propulsion in the Dresden area. 

We found a great facility that was really well suited for the type of work that we need to do to scale up production for Go-2, and it’s only 10 minutes from our development facility, which makes it quite easy to move staff members back and forth and facilitate that collaboration between development and production. 

A second factor is the availability of talent. We’ve seen a lot of great folks come up through the university in Dresden. Dresden is also becoming established as a startup hub of sorts in Germany, where the local government is very supportive of startups. They help startups get going and make connections with folks that can help with recruiting and bringing new people in.

You touched on bringing in people from different industries and transferable spaces. What areas do you see people coming from and then being able to fit comfortably in space?

Precision manufacturing is a big part of the talent that we’re looking to source for the production facility. That can tie into a wide range of industries. We recently hired someone who was a professional watchmaker, for example. Now they are helping with the design, development and manufacturing of our electric propulsion systems. Our propulsion system is 10 centimetres cubed. There are 40 zones of thrust that are created, and each emitter has its own individual fuel tank. So you’ve got 40 fuel tanks, and 40 emitter points, all contained within a 10 centimetre cube form. That’s a lot of technology packed into a small space that can only weigh 2.75 kilograms. That requires quite a bit of precision. 

Of course, aerospace engineering is the logical place for us to source talent. We will go into that talent pool and bring people in, but there’s transferable skills from a wide range of other industries that could be applied to this work too. When I was made aware that we had identified a candidate who had a background in precision watchmaking, it opened my mind to the other industries that it would be possible to source talent from. As a young startup, we have to get scrappy and creative when it comes to hiring. It’s about finding people that are collaborative, who have the skills and are willing to work hard. We can train the specifics around aerospace if those three core criteria are met.

To find out more about Morpheus Space’s plans for future expansion and meeting wider industry needs, tune into Episode 42 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

As companies start establishing operations in space, a space economy is developing above us. To explain this phenomenon, and help us understand its implications for everybody on Earth, we spoke with Robert Carlisle, the Co-Founder of Argo Space, on Episode 39 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast. Robert previously had a five-year tenure at SpaceX, including a stint as their Director of Commercial Launch Sales, before founding Argo Space with his two brothers, both of whom also worked at SpaceX before venturing out on their own. Read on for Robert’s insights into the growing space economy. 

When we talk about a new space economy, why is that important for humanity?

An in-space economy sounds very exciting, but most of what it means today is things like communication satellites for Earth observation. We use the Internet from a ViaSat or an Intelsat satellite, or nowadays from Starlink. Governments use Earth observation satellites for images, synthetic aperture radar, and all kinds of other observation methods to monitor specific things that are happening. There are a lot of different national security and civil space uses as well. 

Most of what we call the space economy today is just serving those things by putting satellites into orbit. Those satellites are creating jobs, whether they are consumer-facing or business-facing. There are further out parts, such as the robotic exploration of the Moon, Mars, and other parts of the solar system, but those are mostly the provenance of governments. 

However, over the last few years, we’ve started to see more of these private space missions, like what Axiom and SpaceX are doing by sending people who aren’t government astronauts up in Dragon capsules, and even to the space station. People are trying to create commercial space stations and commercial manufacturing in space. We’re just starting to see the potential for these new applications that aren’t a part of what we would call this base economy today.

You were featured in a great article in the Wall Street Journal, where you said we should use a rocket as the cargo ship regularly comes to port and then have a semi-truck that lives in space and takes the cargo elsewhere. Can you tell us more about that? 

I love talking about the logistics side of a space economy and the differences between how space logistics work and how we view logistics on Earth. SpaceX is starting to make launches a regular thing and at a very reliable, high cadence. Now, people like me still get very excited watching a rocket launch, but we’re looking at a future where it’s commonplace, where a rocket launch is like watching a ship coming in and out of court. 

With the specific metaphor you mentioned, essentially, rockets are the only way that we can get to orbital velocity. But in order to do that most of the rocket mass is propellant, so to maximise efficiency, what we should do is use all the rockets’ payload mass capability to get into low earth orbit, which is the minimum place where you can reach orbital velocity and deploy some payloads. Then you want to have a space segment, which is a transport vehicle that is optimised to move things in orbit, which is different from what a rocket engine looks like on Earth. We view that as the best situation if you have a heavy-lift rocket. 

It’s equivalent to the cargo ship coming across the Pacific Ocean, dropping off goods at the Port of Los Angeles. That cargo ship is maximising its payload efficiency and freight velocity by having standardised cargo containers that can be loaded onto 18-wheelers at the port. They’re designed to move things across the land, to pick up these cargo containers at the port and take them to their final destination. That’s sort of how we view kind of the future state of space transportation, where you’ve got a starship, with lower-cost reusable lifters bringing a bunch of cargo to low Earth orbit on a standardised route, and then in-space transportation vehicles like ours taking those payloads and satellites out to their operational orbits where they do their work.

What are some of the other areas of the lunar economy that really excite you?

The most exciting thing to us is the applications, and that’s what we’re trying to work on. We think that the first application for lunar resources is to use water as a propellant. There are other potential applications out there, too, and a lot of people are talking about infrastructure, which is pretty exciting. There are NASA contracts like the human landing system programme, and SpaceX and Blue Origin have been contracted to land humans on the moon, which will be awesome to see. 

Right now there is the Eclipse programme, where NASA has contracted smaller commercial landers to put robotic payloads and rovers on the moon. We saw Intuitive Machines soft-land recently, which was great. It’s super exciting to see all that activity. The commercial risk approach that NASA has taken there is quite interesting, and we’re excited to see how it develops.

To hear more from Robert, tune into The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

On Episode 37 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, Pieter van Duijn, the CTO of Loft Orbital, joined us to talk about the company’s mission of making space accessible. Read on to find out how their innovative launch solutions are making a difference for smaller players in the field. 

“What we’re doing is the technical angle to this. To be responsible, do what we do, and make it accessible, we have to be different in our technical approach. We’re enabling customers access to space by shifting the typical CapEx to OpEx. That means that you don’t pay all the money before you launch, which is how the space industry has always been. Instead, you only pay a portion before you launch. Loft operates as a service company which enables you to get your payload in orbit in a very flexible manner, where you basically pay as we are able to provide the surface, or as long as your payload is operational. That can be in a duty cycle, a geographical area, sunlight or an eclipse etc. 

It was very difficult to figure out how to create a space service that doesn’t exist in a way that benefits the customer while allowing us to operate commercially. We’re taking a huge risk to some degree by saying, ‘We don’t know if the launch is going to be okay or if your payload will work as long as it should,’ but fronting the cost anyway. 

Then you get all these technical things. How do you make certain that it does work? We have a principle that we call ‘do no harm’, and that goes everywhere in the technical sphere. If something’s wrong with your payload, it should not damage our spacecraft. We should not be propagating a failure to another payload, subsystem, and so on. 

The technical solution for making that work is both complex and elegant. Our internal saying is that we have to make space simple for our customers, but our headaches are five times bigger. What people see from the outside is only the tip of the iceberg. But that’s part of the challenge of being innovative and doing something differently. 

We also have a responsibility to make sure that certain assets last for a while in orbit. It’s very easy to say, ‘Oh, look, an iPhone works in space’, but that was shown by a mission where an iPhone switched on once and it worked for two weeks. That is awesome, and I applaud you, but when it comes to Loft’s business, having to survive five to seven years in space is a very, very different thing. We have a responsibility to provide a lifetime of reliability and accessibility. We can’t afford to make dumb systems or big satellites with a high redundancy like in the old days. 

Another part of our responsibility is making certain that we don’t add to space debris. We are equipping our next generation of spacecraft with propulsion, and we make certain that we even comply with the five-year deorbiting rules in all our mission analyses and budgets. We make certain that even if a subsystem fails, we have access to backup communication. We also try to be responsible in the execution of a mission in orbit.

To hear more from Pieter, tune into Episode 37 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

On Episode 35 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, Constellr‘s co-founders, CEO Max Gulde and COO Cassi Welling, joined us to discuss the industry’s changing perceptions of our planet’s health. Constellr is developing earth observation applications that monitor the heat on Earth’s surface, with the aim of helping companies and people create more responsible solutions. With such a powerful mission, we were keen to hear their thoughts on perceptions of planetary health in the satellite industry. Here are the highlights: 

Max: “In principle, we see a shift in perception. There have been, and still are, a lot of promises about what Earth observation would eventually do to solve these problems around the globe, and a lot of those promises didn’t come to pass. We have to fight that legacy. It turns out that you can correlate certain things, but the correlation is not that good. This has misplaced a lot of trust, so it’s a challenge. 

We try to be extremely realistic about what we can do and also clearly state what we cannot do. On the one hand side, we are the first generation who can directly see the impact of climate change, and that is scary, but it’s also obviously helping bring across our message. We are also probably the last generation that has the leverage to change things, so we should use that opportunity. On the other hand, people are more acutely aware that this is happening, and they’re uncertain. There’s no discussion anymore about if this is happening or not. We are in deep trouble. 

We can actually do a measurement now which is far more reliable and directly quantifiable than previous modeling approaches. People seem to understand more, and they’re crying out for us to measure things because the model is not granular enough. Making more data-driven decisions is helpful, especially as we’re pushed towards a more compliance-based market that’s about fulfilling certain requirements. Measurements are at the very centre. 

The point is that we’re moving. I’m very happy as a scientist, but maybe there’s a bias there. It’s gratifying to be pushed in this direction and to provide these measurements to help people make better decisions. We see the market moving, despite the early mistrust from overclaiming what satellites can do. Now with a new generation, we’re getting a lot closer to actually fulfilling these promises.

Cassie: “Just to add to that, I think the benefit of science becoming more of a mainstream topic is that it’s completely cross-cutting not just one part of the industry, but it’s pushing us to collaborate, generate partnerships and so on. It’s creating a drive towards NewSpace and more opportunities through being quicker, lighter, more sustainable, more efficient, etc. It goes hand in hand with the evolution of the sector. 

The industry is able to address some of these more specific topics now. Space debris is a massive topic at the moment, so heaps of companies are popping up in that area. That’s just one example of this broader view of ‘Oh, we’re not just sending satellites into space, we’re contributing to planetary debris that’s also impacting the Earth.’ There’s also something called space sustainability ratings that’s growing at the moment, so there’s a lot of drive in the right direction. 

Space offers massive scalability. It allows us to look at the whole planet and assess change over time and be consistent in how we’re measuring things. But at the same time, it doesn’t always allow for the granularity of decision-making on the ground. It’s about having a balance and making sure that space complements other datasets or methodologies that we’re using on the ground so that you get the best possible picture at any one point.”

To hear more from Max and Cassie, tune into Episode 35 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Thanks to modern technology, global teams are more connected than ever. But does that mean they operate in a shared culture? On Episode 31 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, we were joined by Dr. Clemens Kaiser, the Chief Program Officer at Rivada Space Networks to talk about his experience of building global teams. Here’s what he said: 

What has your experience of mentoring been like? 

I’ve benefited from mentoring, and now I’m acting as a mentor myself. I’ve hired some former colleagues, some of whom had already retired, and I told them to join us on a part-time basis as mentors. Now they’re giving back what they know from doing it over the last 30-year lifecycle. 

Something I’m doing as a lecturer at the university in Munich is sitting down with students who are at the beginning of their 20s to talk about what’s going on in our world. I’m coming from a world which was purely instituted institutional space business, where there were only the big space agencies. Now, we are in an age of NewSpace and commercial space, which are completely new areas. 

There are a lot of opportunities, especially for youngsters. They can choose to go to big established companies where they get a lot of good training, or join startups which are tough and a completely different way of working. Both paths have the same to the same objective of launching admission into space.

How do you create a culture that welcomes new people, and how do you identify the people who will help you take that culture forward?

What is the key to success? People acting as a team. When we do an interview, we ask, ‘Does he fit into the team? Does he fit into our culture?’ We recently did an internal workshop, and people gave us feedback that this is the most tremendous and fascinating team they’ve ever worked with. We looked at each other and said, ‘Yeah, but what have we done?’ Well, you do it automatically. Our way of thinking, the values that drive us, and the culture we are building all come together to help the team work together. 

Everyone has a skill set. We are always together as a team, and no one is left behind. That comes from a leadership team of 10 original people, who then hired a combination of really experienced people who fit into the team. Now we can benefit from really good people coming from other large operators and constellations as well. 

It’s about doing the right things. Having a clear direction helps the younger generation come in and keep the team glued together. Then you can plug in new people who feel immediately at home and accepted while taking on a high level of responsibility. Everyone is also asked to look around their own fence while thinking about the entire system.

How do you instil a team spirit in a global team? 

When I started, it was before COVID-19, and we suddenly completely changed how we worked. We need to find the right balance now. It’s important to get people in one room in front of a whiteboard to brainstorm, work together and collaborate. We have a hybrid working model where we say that even people who are working abroad come in from time to time to spend time with the team. 

We’ve built the kind of culture where people invite their colleagues to meet Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the office, come to meetings together, and do sales and non-technical stuff collaboratively. They get together for lunch or dinner, which is so important in these times. Some experts may have more reasons or justifications to work from abroad or in a remote setting, but mostly the stuff we are doing is really common. We are quite productive, and it works. Even when people need some time off, they stay connected, and they always love to come back because of the personal relationships they have. 

To hear more from Clemens, tune into Episode 31 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Earth Observation has been a hot topic in the NewSpace industry for several months now. On Episode 23 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast we were joined by Kammy Brun, an expert in strategy and business development in aerospace and AI based analytics applications, to discuss the forces driving the growth of Earth Observation. Kammy has held several roles in the space industry, including Airbus and SkyFi. She has also completed multiple degrees, and is currently finalising her MBA. Read on for her insights. 

What are the main applications of the NewSpace industry, and what’s really driving demand for them? 

Defence security has always been the first market for geospatial solutions. Today, we can work together with remote sensing geospatial with the IoT and AIS. That is definitely one of the markets where I can see lots of synergy between different technologies. I believe that we should have some applications which merge geospatial and navigational capabilities and make them more integrated, because the end users don’t really care which technology it is. 

Maritime is another one of the markets that is going quite well. There’s a future there. I’m pretty sure that with the growing numbers of AI-based analytics companies globally, we will be able to offer some solutions which are more tailor made for the end user. We’ll be able to  give end users a solution, but we currently can’t, because they did not know what geospatial was. We can have a bigger market, the reason we don’t is because we do not yet have a perfect solution for the end user. 

For our users, it’s relative. They want to have something easy to use – they don’t care about what it does or image resolution or the AI behind it. It’s very difficult to offer a service that is simple and easy to use and gives you the answer that you need, but those private markets will be able to grow in the next few years as the technology develops. For today, those geospatial companies are offering better and better solutions that will draw people into the industry. 

How is the industry currently leveraging these technologies to enhance data analysis and decision making processes?

AI and machine learning has always been used in geospatial markets. We use it for object or change detection. It’s also been used to classify different objects in a set of images. Today we are using it even more than we did five years ago. It is a good market driver for companies who manage more data, because today’s AI and machine learning will be able to help them manipulate or ingest more data. 

In the remote sensing markets, we’re expecting a baby boom of hyperspectral constellations. Hyperspectral is not new, but we have not always used it from space – it was originally used from planes or drones. With NewSpace hyperspectral images and geospatial expertise, I’m pretty sure that a lot of applications will open up as we increase the data supply. We will have a better usage of AI and new applications. Currently we know some of the use cases with hyperspectral, but we are not yet fully exploiting the potential. I expect significant growth in the next few years.

To learn more about Kammy’s work and experiences in the NewSpace industry, tune into The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

The younger generations are facing a range of challenges on a global scale. On Episode 22 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast we were joined by Jim Keravala, the Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Architect at OffWorld, to talk about the innovative solutions that the space industry is creating to tackle these issues. Jim has extensive experience in a range of space sectors, and currently sits on several advisory boards such as the National Space Society, International Moonbased Alliance and the Moon Village Association. He co-founded OffWorld to extract critical minerals, minerals and materials on Earth and in space using swarms of smart industrial robots. Read on to how space is set to save the world.

“The challenges that we’re facing today are, in part, born out of our own successes as a species. The other part is our systemic, steady state of ongoing risks that are always in the background – and to some extent, the intersection of the two is another challenge in itself. I think the manifestation of all of these challenges is not the uncertainties of big environmental cataclysms or other single impact changes. The more concerning risks are those that are subject to cascading sequencing. 

There’s always the asteroid impact issue. Stars could go supernova and create an untenable environment for life on this planet. There’s always the big issues like that, and those issues are real, but the probability of those occurring in the next 100s or 1000s of years are very, very small. The things that seem small and innocuous, such as the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, are cascading triggers. Greenhouse gases lead to atmospheric temperature rises, leading to loss of biodiversity, leading to changes in weather patterns, climate, ocean current path patterns, which can then lead to reduction of polar ice caps, which can add to the lack of reflectance of Sun’s energy, which can then start increasing those cycles. I’m more concerned by these dynamic instabilities which start running towards catastrophe. 

It’s my personal opinion that it’s a combination of natural cycles and small catalytic inputs into that environmental system that is the biggest threat. There’s a lot of debate around climate change and the origin of it; ‘Is it human generated or is it natural?’ That’s a less important question than ‘What are we going to do about it?’ For everything else we do we tend to take out insurance, whether it’s our car, our home, our pets – whatever is important to us, we insure it. We should take out some form of insurance for our planet as well. That form of insurance is not about creating an escape valve, it’s about opening up a closed system. 

If we can open up the system and use the resources of space, we can genuinely help solve some of these challenges. I believe we are in the midst of these changes already. I personally don’t believe that as a species we’re really that well equipped to deal collectively and sensibly and proactively with challenges that we rationally are aware of. As a species, we tend to wait for things to happen and then deal with the consequences afterwards, despite being able to afford what’s needed to address it now. We just don’t act proactively. To some extent, that’s the nature of our global economic structures as well. The economic structures respond to value in real time, and those same rules for creating long term visions of entrepreneurial change are unfortunately the same rules that applied to long term visions of environmental mitigation. So understanding that, what can we do to break down the problem and solve it once and for all?

I personally believe there are several different classes of mitigation work that can be done. The first is assuming that the consequences of the changes we’re undergoing now are going to happen. If we were going to address climate change, we should have started acting 50 years ago when it became obvious, because it’s too big of a needle to move now. The question that needs more urgent attention is what happens to coastal regions in deprived areas? What do we do for those communities? What are the risks of micro weather pattern changes that are emerging? Whether it’s more hurricanes, greater heat domes, etc, what does that do for agriculture? What does that do for the availability of fresh water? 

The most vulnerable will be the most affected, so coastal regions in emerging nations whose economies and infrastructure are less organised will suffer the most. So what can we do to get ahead of solving that problem? With a focussed enough set of challenges, there can be economic solutions to address them. They have to be economically viable solutions in order for us to help our fellow human beings. The end to end system will not mobilise unless people are making money off it, which sounds a little brutal, but evidence has shown that it tends to be the norm. We can provide humanitarian aid on a momentary basis for extreme isolated events because it’s part of our nature to try and help, but that nature becomes increasingly subject to economic pressure, and that’s the reality of humanity. 

That first class of problems is focussed on how we can help those who are affected by the changes that are emerging. The second class is how to mitigate the effects of it on this generation. The third class is, assuming those changes are coming, what can we do to truly turn that around by the 22nd century? The solution is to build space infrastructure which allows us to access the energy and material resources of the inner solar system. We can harvest it by building heavy industrial energy generating infrastructure in space, outside of Earth’s atmosphere. If we can do that in space and bring it down to Earth, we can provide clean, safe energy for our planet without generating heat. It’ll take at least two generations to mature that into an operating infrastructure, but I do believe that by staging economically viable revenue generating milestones from today to the end of the century, we have everything going for us to build these architectures in space. 

Transitioning many of our polluting technologies and industrial processes off the surface of the Earth will protect our local environments. If we build a beautiful cottage in a meadow, the last thing you want to do is put a chemical plant next to it. That’s what we’re doing on our planet though. We have an oasis in the universe, this perfect ball that has allowed life to flourish. Earth is the centre of the Anthropocene universe, and we need to do everything we can to care for it and look after it. 

The challenge is that we need a firm sense of reality on what is happening today. What can we really do about it? What are the changes we’re prepared to accept and tolerate? And what’s the big picture that we really have to focus on? Whilst those changes happen? There are going to be trillions of dollars of economic disruption in the next decades. There will be a lot of suffering, but there will also be a lot of opportunities to help and solve those problems. If we think ahead on those smaller scale problems like ‘how we can help the local communities that are going to be affected?’ There are addressable solutions for that class of problem. Questions like ‘how do we help the next generation or two of families and communities that are going to be in trouble?’ is where we should place our focus, as well as trying to solve the big picture terrestrially and addressing the big solution system. 

To hear more about Jim’s work in the space sector, tune into The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

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