Royal Aeronautical Society Annual Banquet
Thursday 11 May 2017
Guest of Honour:
Sir Martin Sweeting OBE FRS FREng FIET HonFRAeS
Executive Group Chairman, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd
AFTER-DINNER SPEECH BY SIR MARTIN SWEETING
The role that Space has in our lives is now taken for granted: we have become reliant on it every
day – whether it be for weather forecasting, satellite TV, banking, communications or navigating
in our cars. Indeed, it is now part of our national critical infrastructure underpinning our
economy, security and well-being.
Space also provides unique opportunities for collaboration between nations – on climate, the
environment, food & water security, science and exploration beyond our Earthly limits. Of
course, space also can be ‘dual-use’, offering both security and military advantage – indeed it
has become increasingly difficult to envisage military engagements without the use of space
assets… this, by the way, generates both strength and potential vulnerability due to overreliance.
The first 4 decades of the space era were dominated by a few super-powers who alone
possessed the knowledge and budgets to undertake the enormous technical and programmatic
challenges posed. This small club became used to having the advantages of space all to
themselves, where access to and the exploitation of space was driven primarily by military and
national priorities as well as prestige and scientific exploration – although these were often
difficult to separate.
The commercial applications of space grew slowly, because of the large investments needed
and the relatively high risk associated with the technology. The first commercial applications
were in satellite communications services. Earth observation, on the other hand, remained
almost entirely driven by military and government initiatives. Thus space was considered exotic,
expensive and risky – and satellites were designed, procured and managed according to familiar
government/military processes. A typical space project might take a decade (or two!) to go from
concept to orbital operation and costs of £100’M/Bn were not uncommon.
The UK is generally not given to revolutions, however in the early 1980’s the UK pioneered a
radically new species of satellite. As in the Jurassic period, where agile and adaptable mammals
challenged the powerful but ponderous dinosaurs, these small ‘micro’-satellites costing under
£10M rather than £100Ms evolved steadily in their capabilities and most importantly their
utility to challenge the behemoths. The turning point occurred around the year 2000, when
small satellites moved from being an ‘interesting curiosity but of no practical value’ to being
able to provide significant operational and commercial utility. They demonstrated both lower
cost and more responsive solutions to meet existing applications, but also began to stimulate
completely new business models – fundamentally changing the economics of space … and not
just for commercial entrepreneurs but also the security/defence sector. Developing or emerging
economy nations were the first to recognise that this new approach would enable them to get
first-hand access to space and its benefits on a sensibly affordable budget. The trickle of a dozen
or so developing countries that learned from the UK to build and launched their own satellites
in the 1990’s has since become a flood and, to date, over 65 countries have taken their first
steps into space via small satellite projects. Indeed, through even smaller ‘nano-satellites’, space
is now within the reach of small companies, universities and even high-schools: a recent launch
from India carried over 100 small satellites on a single rocket! Interestingly, the civil institutional
sector has been the slowest to take up small satellites – perhaps because the
cost/benefit/urgency/risk equation does not well match such organisations.
The underlying technologies that have enabled this ‘peaceful revolution’ have come from the
enormous investments made by the industrial and domestic consumer sectors in developments
that have created mass markets for their products based upon microelectronics, such as
laptops, mobile phones, digital cameras, satnavs and so on. These everyday products possess
capabilities and performance at a price unimaginable two decades ago. The reduction in the
unit production costs by orders of magnitude whilst at the same time achieving high yield and
extreme reliability through a parallel revolution in manufacturing & production techniques,
provided the platform for small satellites to take advantage ‘parasitically’ of ‘COTS’
microelectronics to create small, low-cost yet capable and reliable satellites – with a design
innovation cycle typically of around a year from mission to mission..
But, whilst the low cost of a small satellite enabled new players to gain a foothold in space, the
real impact came with their use in constellations in orbit of multiple small satellites. In the same
manner that individual PCs are networked locally and linked to the wwweb to provide
something that is greater than the sum of the parts, so small satellite constellations have
increased capability, coverage and responsiveness in an economically practical manner. In Earth
observation, for example, these constellations have already greatly reduced the time taken to
image and revisit a ground target on a daily rather than weekly basis – and soon this will become
hourly, stimulating completely new business models.
The insatiable demand for communications, largely driven by the ubiquitous mobile/smart
phone and tablet, has stimulated innovative commercial space system proposals – particularly
serving those populations that are do not yet have adequate access communications hubs.
Taking advantage of the design agility, low unit cost and rapid manufacturing, constellations of
100’s, even 1000’s, of small satellites become economically practical and could enable new
network structures providing ubiquitous access to high speed digital communications and
unparalleled persistence of global Earth observation. At the same time, the growth of the
various terrestrial communications infrastructures (such as 5G) and advances in data handling,
management and knowledge extraction – often referred to as ‘Big Data’ – now begin to blur the
boundaries between space and terrestrial systems.
Stimulated by the entrepreneurial hotbed in California, there are currently some 160
commercial satellite constellations being proposed worldwide that, all together, would
comprise over 25,000 satellites – 90% of which aim to provide some form of digital
communications, with the remaining 10% (still several thousand!) focusing on various Earth
observation services.
Of course, not all of these proposals will survive investor expectations but it is likely that some
will and the new ‘mega’ constellations will pose additional challenges – regular, affordable
launch on a tempo and price hitherto not achieved; space traffic management and debris
control; the efficient handling of communication of vast amounts of data; safe autonomous
orbital operations – and not forgetting communications spectrum and legal or policy issues.
Like the extraordinary number and diversity of ‘SmartPhone Apps’ that have been created by a
completely new business community, most of which we would not have dreamed of a decade
ago, it is probable that the new smallsats and constellations will stimulate applications that we
currently do not envisage – and these will require a different and more agile regulatory
environment.
However, up to the beginning of this decade, the evolution of small satellites was being driven
primarily by advances in microelectronics – continuing the trend observed in the 1960’s by
Gordon Moore – whilst the structural designs tended to be based on more conventional
techniques.
In the last 5 years there has been a parallel development in new materials that, when combined
with robotics, that have given rise to new small satellite manufacturing techniques that not only
enhance their capabilities but also further reduce cost and timescale. Robotic additive (and
subtractive) manufacturing techniques now make possible product geometries that were
previously physically impossible by human hands – and ‘digital factory’ manufacturing provides
freedom of location and dramatically increases speed and diversity of the cycle of design
evolution and product innovation.
It is interesting to note that space, once the preserve of national governments and under their
tight control, may soon be dominated by non-state players as the likes of Google, Facebook and
Amazon build their own global space systems and services. This raises new policy, legal and
liability challenges that will very different thinking.
I have focused on the trends in civil & commercial space but, of course, there are similar
developments in the military with adaptation of these new techniques to provide agility,
flexibility, persistence and resilience at times when unpredictable threats evolve rapidly and
budgets are under constant pressure. Rapidly customised and launched, small satellites can
provide an affordable national capability to augment more exquisite assets, provide additional
freedom of action, and contribute into allied capabilities.
What of the future: we already on the threshold of reprogrammable ‘software defined
satellites’ and, looking a little further ahead, robotic assembly in orbit will soon allow us to
construct larger structures ‘lego-like’ – for example, building space telescopes with apertures
too big to launch on a single rocket. The current design of satellite structures is largely dictated
by the size of the rocket fairing and the harsh physical environment experienced in just the first
20 minutes of ascent through the atmosphere to orbit before embarking on an otherwise
physically benign multi-year mission: ‘3-D printing’ in orbit offers the potential simply (but not
yet!) to launch bags of sand and metal and then upload instructions to manufacture (or modify)
a gossamer satellite in orbit.
Also ahead of us, the discovery of substantial deposits of water on both Moon and Mars means
that we will have in situ resources that eventually will enable sustained human habitation on
these heavenly bodies. With the experience gained through the International Space Station in
long-duration human spaceflight, the advances in robotics and AI, the techniques that have
been pioneered by small satellites, and the rapid commercialisation of launch services will make
this, in my view, only a matter of time – measured now in decades rather than centuries.
Finally, space in the UK has been rather a well-kept secret; we have a thriving space industry
and a strong academic community and both punch above their weight internationally. Space
contributes over £11Bn and 100,000 jobs to our national economy and is second only to the oil
& gas industry in the value per head of its skilled workers. As demonstrated by the ESA Rosetta
comet lander and the mission of Tim Peake to the ISS, space has the ability to fire the
imagination of the young and not-so-young alike to take an interest in technology, its uses and
our place in the universe.