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Welcome to In-Orbit, the fortnightly podcast exploring how technology from space is empowering a better world.
[00:00:04] Dallas Campbell: Welcome to Outer Orbit. I'm here with Mark Saxon, who is the Chief of External Affairs.
[00:00:09] Mark Saxon: That's right.
[00:00:10] Dallas Campbell: What are the External affairs? That sounds suitably vague.
[00:00:13] Mark Saxon: It is!
[00:00:14] Dallas Campbell: External affairs.
[00:00:16] Mark Saxon: Yeah, it gives me a wide remit. Yeah. I wish. No, so I suppose it means that all of the, team that work in marketing and communications reporting to me. It's Sam and Alice that are with us today putting the show on. So shout out to them. Our, what we call our National Capabilities and Clusters team reporting to me. Now you've met Simone, I think before, who leads that. They do a lot of our engagement with people working in the space sector, so in the space clusters around the country, but also with politicians and local as well as national politicians. So that's the second team that reports in to me, and I'm now also responsible for our business growth function. So these are different people trying to support companies. So working directly with companies to help them as they start up, build their companies and try to attract customers and turn...
[00:01:06] Dallas Campbell: Turn them space unicorn.
[00:01:07] Mark Saxon: Turn them into a space unicorn, yeah.
[00:01:09] Dallas Campbell: That's what we want.
So, industrial strategy. Which is something we mentioned in our main bit, but I thought we might just drill into the space and the industrial strategy. Yes. What is it? Why do we care? Why is it important? So let's talk about what is it? What am I talking about when I say industrial strategy?
[00:01:27] Mark Saxon: Yeah, so this is the government's mission to get the economy growing again because by getting the economy growing, we can spend more on our public services and improve people's quality of life and it was a centerpiece of the election campaign and they said they would produce this after being elected. They ran a consultation on it, asked loads of questions, and then produced the strategy earlier this year and it focuses on what they call the IS-8 Sectors, the Industrial Strategy Eight Sectors. But they're not descriptions of industries in the way that we might talk about them in the street or down the pub. So one of them is advanced manufacturing that covers lots of industries, spaces in that one.
[00:02:04] Dallas Campbell: Oh, I see. So space isn't like a isn't kinda one of the eight.
[00:02:06] Mark Saxon: No, so advanced manufacturing is one of the eight. Under that there are six, what they call frontier industries, space is one of those.
So it's a little bit like Russian dolls nesting inside one another. But space is on a par with automotive and aerospace as one of the key industries sitting in this advanced manufacturing sector that the government wants to help and wants to see growing and being successful.
[00:02:31] Dallas Campbell: Okay.
Why do we, why should we care? So that's what it is. Why do we care about it?
[00:02:36] Mark Saxon: If you are a company that's in one of those eight sectors or one of those frontier industries, and space is one of those, you should care because it contains a lot of information about what government wants to achieve, its objectives, how it's gonna help you as a business.
[00:02:50] Dallas Campbell: And how is it gonna help?
[00:02:51] Mark Saxon: And part of that is through funding.
[00:02:52] Dallas Campbell: Give you money.
[00:02:53] Mark Saxon: It's where the money is, yeah, yeah. Follow the money. So, it lays out lots of ideas and opportunities within that and then we'll start to see those policies and those funding pots be rolled out now over the coming months and years.
[00:03:05] Dallas Campbell: Where do those pots get distributed?
[00:03:07] Mark Saxon: Yeah, they're in different places. So the government for space,that's what we're here to talk about, it's maintaining its funding for programs that have been administered by the Space Agency traditionally, so about 135 million pounds worth of funding being made available through programs at the Space Agency Fund and these are programs to support infrastructure development and business growth in companies. It's also increased innovation procurement funds for the defense sector. So being run bya new organization within the Ministry of Defense. So there's more money there if you've got space technology that's applicable to defense and security. There's some local innovation funding that's available for space clusters and space companies to tap into that's being administered, ultimately by a part of DSIT called UK RI UK Research and Innovation. But it's being made available through mayoral authorities and the devolved nations.
And I suppose the final thing to say is that two organizations that most people probably won't have heard of called the British Business Bank and the National Wealth Fund. They're being told to focus on the industrial strategy and they're being told to invest in those frontier industries. So that now means that we've got a kind of government source of investment available to space companies and companies in other sectors.
That's really important because those two government backed investment organizations provide what's known as patient capital. They don't need or expect to get a return quickly. So if you and I were to set up a space business tomorrow and we had some people investing in us, they might be asking us how quickly they're gonna get their money back
[00:04:44] Dallas Campbell: I'd have to tell them very slowly.
[00:04:46] Mark Saxon: Very slowly, and that would be an, that would be an okay answer for the British Business Bank and National Wealth Fund.
[00:04:52] Dallas Campbell: What about education and skills development?
[00:04:53] Mark Saxon: There's a lot of money going on skills development, so over a billion pounds in investment going on skills development in AI and digital technologies and quantum and things like that. A lot of the skills work now ultimately goes up to an organization called Skills England, and they have the remit to be able to work with schools on their curriculum and their subjects and degree courses.
[00:05:15] Dallas Campbell: Oh, this is the first time we've mentioned ai.
AI has captured everyone's imagination. That's become one of these things that we're all talking
[00:05:21] Mark Saxon: I think cause you can touch it, right?
[00:05:22] Dallas Campbell: It's so utterly transformative or it has the potential to be. But sort of space quantum and AI I sort of feel are all transformative.
[00:05:30] Mark Saxon: Yeah. Space is funny it's a user of,or a potential user of AI and quantum, and it's also a kind of supplier to it, if you like, as well, in a way. So it has a dual relationship with those. But yeah, they're all part of the same picture, I think.
[00:05:41] Dallas Campbell: So, industrial strategy. We know what it is. We know what it does. Is it good?
[00:05:47] Mark Saxon: Th
e two main ambitions the government has for space is to make the UK a leading exporter of space technology and data and to grow more UK or UK based space companies that are generating 10 million pounds of revenue or more.
If you look across industry as a whole, not just space, all industries, a company generating 10 million revenue actually isn't that big. So it's really a statement of where we are in the space sector at the moment. We're still quite young. We're still commercializing. We're learning how to be commercial.
[00:06:20] Dallas Campbell: I do think we need to get on with it though.
[00:06:21] Mark Saxon: This is the opportunity. We've got lots of small companies. If we can help a few of them get big,and by big we mean more revenue, higher valuation. What does that mean?
It means they'll employ more people. It means they'll be able to export more overseas and then the kind of money they generate through sales gets reinvested because they start to do more of their own R&D. They produce better products. They employ even more people. You know, and maybe one day we have an Apple or a Microsoft, but for space and they're in the uk.
[00:06:47] Dallas Campbell: As soon as you get governments involved, things generally end up to be more complicated than they need to be.
[00:06:52] Mark Saxon: Yeah, the development of departments and the development of policy is one of, to use a slightly scientific word, is one of accretion, right. It's layering on more. So we don't get rid of something completely. We just layer a bit more to make it a bit different, take it in a slightly different direction. You end up with this incredibly, like an oil painting, just paint going on top of paint on top of paint. That's kind of how we get to the, the kind of policy that we have at any given time, and there'll be more to come tomorrow.Imagine being, you know, an incredible engineer. You know, you've gone to an incredible university, you've come up with some great technology. You've decided to set up a business. Maybe gone into it with your best friend, you're really passionate about it, and then you want help and you've got to navigate the complexity of local government support that might be available to you. Support from organizations like ourselves or Innovate. What's the department doing in saying? Oh, now there's a new bank that will lend me money, apparently, but on what terms? How do I, who are they? How do I get to know them? You know, it's a really, really difficult environment to navigate if what you're actually passionate about is building great technology and building great products. Hopefully, we can provide some help with that because I do understand the difficulty of it.
[00:08:02] Dallas Campbell: Hey, it's the end of our chat. It's the end of our series. I suddenly thought, is there anything that, that we haven't said that you want to say?
No, I don't think so. I think we mentioned in the longer form, longer episode that it's nice to try and finish on an optimistic note. Yeah. I'm hopeful. I'm really optimistic actually. When I, you know, doing this series and actually meeting people who are on the front line, as it were, and seeing that passion and that knowledge and that enthusiasm and that willingness to talk about it makes me happy.
[00:08:32] Mark Saxon: Yeah. I agree. I think there's lots of reasons to be optimistic and let's see if we can make them a reality.
[00:08:38] Dallas Campbell: Yes. There we go. We'll come back when we do our next series.
[00:08:40] Mark Saxon: Yeah, I'd love to. Yeah.
[00:08:41] Dallas Campbell: Thank you very much. Thank you.
[00:08:42] Mark Saxon: Thanks Dallas.
[00:08:44] Dallas Campbell: To hear future episodes of In Orbit, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast app and head over to YouTube to watch the video versions of all of our discussions. And if you'd like to find out more about how Space is empowering your industry, visit the Catapult website or join them on social media.