Dallas Campbell: Hello and welcome to In-Orbit, the podcast exploring how
technology from space is empowering a better world, brought to you by
the Satellite Applications Catapult.
I'm your host, Dallas Campbell, and today in our series finale, I'm sitting
down one to one with the CEO of the Satellite Applications Catapult.
It's John Abbott, and we're going to be reflecting on John's career
journey, what brought him into the space industry to lead the Catapult,
and the vision he has for the future.
Plus, we'll discuss the importance of building a learning culture in business,
the power of collaboration, whether with governments, non space companies, or
academia, and explore the technologies shaping the next generation of the sector.
Hello, John.
John Abbott: Hi Dallas, nice to meet you.
Dallas Campbell: Very nice to meet you.
Well, listen, thank you very much for coming on the podcast for
our grand finale actually, this is our last one of the series.
I was thinking about this, I was talking to my mum, and she was saying,
oh, I was, I'm doing a thing for the Satellite Applications Catapult and
she was like, what on earth is that?
And it's actually quite a strange name, I suppose.
I mean, we're kind of used to it, so we don't even think about it, but Satellite
Applications Catapult and I was wondering, perhaps you could, for my mum's benefit,
How would you sort of sum it up?
Like if you're talking to somebody who's never heard that term before?
John Abbott: For me, I would go to our purpose.
So our purpose is to grow the UK economy.
So that's why we're here.
Dallas Campbell: Love that.
John Abbott: Yeah, good idea!
Aligns with the new government's missions, which is always It's an
independent company, but we are funded by Innovate UK, so we're one
of nine catapults across the country.
Ours focused on satellite applications in space, others focused in other
areas, typically high growth opportunities for the UK, so high
value manufacturing, medicines, discovery, cell and gene therapy,
offshore renewable energy, and so on.
So we as a group are all set up to help grow the UK economy.
For us, it's grow the UK economy, purpose through working with the best
companies to accelerate the invention.
So help people invent new space technology and adoption of space data and technology.
So we have this dual role to, in service of growing the economy, help people
invent more quickly, help them take risks that they might not otherwise be able
to take, provide them with facilities to do that, support to do that and then
help drive the adoption of space data and technology for the benefit of the economy.
So we're really here in the service of the space sector and in the service
of the UK economy in terms of growing adoption of space data and tech.
Dallas Campbell: And maybe you could just give us a couple of sentences, I suppose
on, I mean, it's something we talk about a lot, But just how important is the
space sector in terms of the UK economy?
Or in terms of the global economy?
John Abbott: So almost every industry is reliant in some way on the space sector.
So whether that's for navigation, so delivery and so on, whether That's timing
that supports our, energy systems, our banking, finance, insurance sectors.
Overall, the space sector underpins about 360 billion pounds worth
of economic activity in the UK.
So if you lose space, you're talking about damage to the UK economy,
about a billion pounds a day.
Dallas Campbell: A billion pounds.
I always say this, I mean I'm not overstating it when I say
that modern civilisation is built on the space industry.
Without the space industry, modern civilisation, as we know, it
would not be able to function.
John Abbott: Yeah.
So, you can absolutely reasonably describe space as critical national infrastructure.
So, I've worked in other organisations where we are critical national
infrastructure and space is, no different.
We underpin the economy basically.
Dallas Campbell: Well, let's, let's talk about your background then
because you weren't a space person.
what were you doing before you joined, the Satellite Applications Catapult?
John Abbott: So, my background's more on digital transformation.
So I began my early part of my career, strangely enough, modeling infectious
diseases with the Department of Health.
So working with, folks to figure out what would happen if there was a
pandemic.
Dallas Campbell: kind of pandemic something.
John Abbott: Yeah, exactly.
so through that, got into geospatial information systems, spent some time
at Ordnance Survey, working in their research labs, and then eventually
becoming a product manager for them.
Then moved to a company named Mimecaster, a UK tech company, that works on
email security and archiving, and then, moved into the land registry
in the UK to run a big digital transformation programme for them.
So, got involved in blockchain and innovation and working with startups
and so on and then from there, what I've been doing for the last few years
before joining the catapult was working in Saudi Arabia for the Sovereign
Wealth Fund, building a land registry.
So, land rights in Saudi Arabia are reasonably complicated, and
there are 200 different deeds registry offices across the country.
The majority of those deeds are in paper form, and there are lots of
complications around kind of really understanding who owns this piece of land.
So we created a company and then started a programme of what's called First
Registration, where we're establishing land rights for the whole of the kingdom.
Doing that involved doing all sorts of interesting work with satellite data.
So, Earth Observation Data and using AI to automatically identify features,
things like that, as well as, you know, drone and aerial imagery.
But I did that for three years and then came back to the UK and then
took this job in the Catapult.
So although I'm not from the space sector, I've done a lot of work on
innovation, a lot of work working with venture capitalists, a lot of work
working with startups, a lot of work to try and help, technologies, particularly
geospatial technologies, get adopted.
So I think that's one of the things that I bring to the Catapult,
this sort of fresh pair of eyes...
Dallas Campbell: And good humour and general bonhomme.
John Abbott: Absolutely.
Yeah, I like to think so.
Dallas Campbell: Every time I interview anyone on this programme, my mind is
well and truly boggled by just the extent to which the space industry is,
kind of responsible now for everything.
What do you, I mean, we've done a few examples of, that from Earth
observation and, Navigation and things.
what's your kind of opinion of the current space industry globally at the moment?
Like where are we?
Where are we heading?
Where have we come from?
You know, are we at some kind of peak now?
Or we at the beginning of an entire new world of amazing things?
John Abbott: Yeah, so maybe it's worth just starting in the UK, and then talking
about the opportunity that we have.
So for me, again, as somebody new to the sector, we have some
amazing companies in the UK.
So, folks like Orbex up in Scotland, building a net zero launch platform,
and folks like BioOrbit, thinking about how we can develop drugs in space, folks
like OpenCosmos, launching satellites but also with a new business model
around how we capture data from space and then also more established companies
like, Talispatio and Airbus working, with us and many other partners to make
things like Earth Observation Data more accessible to people through projects
like our Earth Observation Data Hub.
So there's a lot to like, there's a lot of really exciting companies doing
really exciting things in the UK.
But at the same time, we've got some challenges in the UK and we
probably don't talk about this enough.
We've been thinking about this as we develop our thinking on what we
might be doing over the next 10 years.
The sector in the UK is sort of about 1, 500 people, 1,500-1,800 companies,
depending you sort of calculate them and the vast majority of them are small
companies that are failing to grow what we used to call when I was at business
school, at least lifestyle businesses with an average revenue of, something like less
than, I think 600 of those got an average revenue of less than, 80, 000 pounds
and the thousand of them got average revenue of less than 250, 000 pounds.
So there's a buoyant sector or space sector in the UK is this sort of headline,
but really when you dig into the numbers, you realise that, there's an awful lot of
the space sector in the UK that are not high growth, high potential businesses.
Dallas Campbell: That's interesting.
So let me just understand that.
So lots and lots of small companies with lots of grand ideas and visions and
all kinds of things, but they're not...
John Abbott: They're not breaking out, yeah, exactly.
Dallas Campbell: And why, so why I'm interested in why that is, is it because
of Britain what are those reasons?
John Abbott: So something like 70 percent of the income is going to 1 percent
of those 1500 to 1800 companies and 80 percent of the investment is going to 2
percent of those 1500 to 1800 companies.
So we are concentrating our income and our investment around a relatively
small space sector in the UK.
But we are distributing our grant funding across 40 percent
of those 1, 800 companies.
So for me, what we as a country ought to be doing is really thinking about which
of those 1, 800 companies aspire to be a high growth, high potential business
and crowding our funding, whether that's grant funding or investment around them.
So I think that's the challenge.
We're spreading our grant money too thinly across too broad a section of the market.
But the private money, if you like, the income and the investment is
going towards the best, if you like, companies in the sector, and we
ought to be a bit more focused around where spending our grant money.
So, that's sort of the UK.
There's also some other challenges.
There's talk around consolidation, some of the larger companies.
So, on the one hand, we have some fantastic British companies doing
some really interesting things.
But we also have these challenges around our sector as a whole and, and making
sure the companies with the highest potential get the support they need
to grow as effectively as possible.
Dallas Campbell: Yeah.
Can I just ask while we're on that, you mentioned grants, how does the sort of
funding structure work at the Catapult?
John Abbott: Yeah, so we are one of nine under Innovate UK.
We're lucky enough to receive a grant from Innovate UK that we're able to use
to invest in sort of high risk projects as well as to build facilities and to take
care of some of the back office expenses.
In addition to that grant, we will also go out and win government grants
from people like the Department for Science, Innovation, Technology, UK Space
Agency, and also commercial contracts.
So, people will pay us for advice or to develop some, technology
with them, things like that.
so we're funded in three ways.
Every time a core grant is designed to be used to support us in supporting
the sector as a whole, the grants that we go off and win, we win
those as parts of consortiums.
So, we are winning that money sort of on behalf of the team to pull a consortium
together of different companies, some of whom we've probably already
mentioned, then we'll distribute those funds around that consortium, so that
we all kind of get a benefit from doing this collaborative project and moving
it forward and then the commercial money, again, oftentimes we will be
working with other partners to deliver those contracts, or indeed helping
non space sector companies get access to some of the companies that we're
mentioning in the UK space sector.
So that's us in the UK.
I do, however, think that, as you well know, as we've covered in the
podcast, I think previously with things like, Starship dropping the
cost of launch or about to drop the cost of launch really significantly.
We are on the cusp of a, an explosion of growth, in the space sector.
So, there's an opportunity for the UK to really maximise our share
of that, that ever growing pie.
so the thing that excites me most of all about the opportunity for us as a
sector in the UK is, In Orbit Servicing and Manufacturing, some fantastic
companies do work in that area and a real opportunity for us to play a
leading role in the In Orbit Economy.
Dallas Campbell: yeah, I'll come on to that in a minute.
I just want to mention Starship because as we're recording this, The booster
came back down to Earth and didn't just land on legs like the Falcon 9, I mean,
crikey, that was only a few years ago.
I remember when I saw the Falcon come back.
I thought, this is magic.
They played the video backwards.
was so revolutionary.
Anyway, the Starship, came back and was caught by the chopstick
arms of the launch tower.
I was watching with my mom talking about all this kind of stuff, and actually
her reaction was really interesting.
Was like, well, why?
Like, what is the point?
And actually, well, the point is that you don't need landing legs, which
makes the rocket lighter, which means you can put more mass into orbit, which
means things become cheaper, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah and actually that that.
innovation, crazy as it seems, is completely necessary if we, certainly
from an economic point of view, if we want space to be economic and we
want it to help the economy, that kind of innovation is really, radical
innovation is really, really important and it kind of gets forgotten.
It gets a bit lost in the story.
Like no one's talked about why the arms of the launch tower have to catch the rocket.
But I think it's pretty fundamental.
John Abbott: Yeah, agree, agree entirely.
I think I wasn't quite as smart as your mum because I was
just watching the video agog.
watching the video agog.
it changes the game for all sorts of parts of the sort of emerging In Orbit, sector.
Dallas Campbell: I wanted to talk to you a little bit about innovation because we
talked about funding and the importance of funding, good companies, interesting
companies, but I I suppose SpaceX, they're a bit kind of Marmite SpaceX.
You know, I'll talk to aeronautical engineers who get crossed about SpaceX and
they don't like Elon Musk and all those sorts of political things, but ultimately,
innovation's kind of at the heart.
they genuinely have revolutionised the getting stuff into orbit sector by
making it cheaper and I'm interested from our point of view, like how important
fostering innovation, that kind of radical thinking, new thinking is.
John Abbott: Yeah, so for us as an organisation, I think
we think about two things.
So innovation can be the development of a new technology.
But likewise, innovation can be applying an existing technology to a new problem.
So, we've done some really interesting work in Northern Ireland, around Loch Ney.
So, Loch Ney provides something like, 60 percent of the drinking water for
Belfast and 40 percent of the drinking water for the rest of Northern Ireland.
There's an algae bloom that comes every summer into Loch Ney because of
the phosphates that have run into the loch and that causes real problems
for the water, for the aquaculture, for folks going on to the loch.
Bits of the bloom snap off and then go and sort of interfere with the beaches,
so they have to shut beaches and we've been working with them to think about
how you can use earth observation, data to track this algae bloom.
So you're able to kind of advise people not to fish over there or not to swim
over there, sort of in good time and they built a solution around that and
the next step is then to model where the algae bloom's going to go next,
so using weather data and so on to say well it's off towards this beach
and we'll therefore close this beach.
So for us when we think about innovation we think about, okay, for sure there's
a role of a Catapult to get some new technology to market, to get it
developed, to take it from the workbench and turn it into the first version of
a product, but there's also a role to drive adoption of existing technology
into these new areas and both are equally valid bits of innovation if you like.
Dallas Campbell: One thing you mentioned I'd like to talk about is, an area we
covered on the podcast, which is In Orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacture.
You mentioned that and it seems to be something that we are certainly in the
UK really sort of pushing as a thing.
Maybe you could talk a little bit about that and where we are with it
and why it's exciting and interesting.
John Abbott: Yeah so for me personally, it's exciting because
of, well, it's, not dissimilar to the Starship and the Chopsticks.
It's almost like we are living in the future.
So there is an opportunity for us to start to build, large structures in space and
to develop, things in space that either aren't possible to develop on Earth.
So new medicines, perhaps or to move parts of industry from Earth into space.
So we spun a company out of the Catapult that's looking to build
a solar power station, in orbit.
So, it will be able to capture 365 days of the year, 24 hours a day, solar energy,
and then direct it back down to Earth to
Dallas Campbell: You collect the solar panels, and then you beam
it down via microwave, which I know worries lots of people.
John Abbott: Yeah, that's how the tech works.
the microwaves might sound worrying, but actually they're, if you were
hit by them, there's something like, there's no different from having a warm
day in the sun without the sunburn.
So, sounds perhaps more worrying than it actually is.
for me, the idea that have this kind of endless source of power that can
be directed to whatever on earth is required, is a fantastic idea.
So space offers some hope to us, to solve some of our grandest challenges
I think, and space solar would be a really good example of that.
But more broadly, this In Orbit Servicing Manufacturing, sector is, it's just
hugely exciting, the opportunity to move, engineering, factories, data
centers, industry from Earth up into space, is becoming a reality thanks
to advances in, the Starship stuff we talked about, but advances in robotics,
close proximity operations, AI, etc.
We can get satellites to go up and refuel, other satellites to work together to
construct new structures and so on and we at Catapult, we have a fantastic team
in Westcott and a facility in Westcott, really leading the charge for the UK,
working with some of our best companies in this sector to help them, test and
figure out, verify their technology on earth in a facility that we operate and
before they then start to launch some of these technologies to do do new things.
Dallas Campbell: Again, it's one of those things that people generally
don't really think about the fact that we are very limited by what we can
put up into space by the fairing size of a rocket, you know and I think of
something like the James Web telescope which is a huge, great thing and they
had to sort of fold it up, origami style to fit it in, in order to send it out
and then it sort of unfolded itself.
But to be able to build huge structures in space, is going to be so revolutionary,
you know, it will change everything.
Like you say, giant solar panels.
I mean, crikey, before we went on air, you know, you and I were talking about AI
and the amount of energy that AI is going to require will require, I think, you
know small modular nuclear reactors, but giant Solar farms in space seems to be a
a pretty idea!
John Abbott: Yeah.
I mean, Sam Altman from OpenAI, he's raising a trillion
dollar fund for data centers.
So that's a thousand billion anyone who's not come across a trillion before.
That's a fairly big number and if you were to think about the power cost of
that's going to be really significant.
You could perhaps, either draw your power from space or you could, perhaps even
build some of those data centers in space.
So yeah, really, really interesting opportunity for us and we've got
some fantastic companies in the mix.
and some fantastic facilities and engineering skills in the UK that
allow us to aspire to capture a large part of that market.
Dallas Campbell: Do we have a bit of a timeline for this sort of stuff?
I mean, things like In Orbit Manufacturing and Servicing, you
know, you mentioned refueling satellites, all that kind of thing.
When's it going to happen, do you think?
I mean, are we talking sort of next week or next decade.
John Abbott: Yeah, so, when we talk about this internally, we sort of varying views.
So, we're absolutely at the point where folks are beginning
to test in orbit things like the development of semiconductors,
the development drugs in space.
I mean, there's been trials on the ISS for a while, but people
are starting to do that already.
Certainly we'll move significantly forward over the next 10 years and you'll start to
see people doing early prototypes and so on, literally in the next 12 months or so.
So, company like Spaceforge, they'll be doing some interesting stuff
over the next 12 months or so.
Dallas Campbell: Do we need to speed up?
John Abbott: I think we perhaps need to be more focused.
So we, again, to the earlier point around, you know, where are we
as a country placing our bets?
When we look at something called the Space Industrial Plan to document out
earlier in the year from government, they're really clear that we're in
the mix when it comes to In Orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing.
So, we need to go as quickly as we possibly can and we need
everybody kind of lined up behind that, and so that space industrial
plan points us in that direction, which I think is really helpful.
Dallas Campbell: I want to talk about collaboration and partnership and
one of the big mantras that I hear in government space, UK Space Agency and
government talks is all about this idea of academia, industry and government
working together and I just want to get your sort of thoughts on how those
sort of areas can come together from where you're sitting from and how
John Abbott: Um, Essential.
The short version is, yeah, it's essential.
I thought you were going to say space is a team sport, because it absolutely
is, so for me, so a good example would be some work that we've been doing with
local government, academia, and the space sector itself in the northeast of England,
so a de-industrialised area where we've helped create something called Space
Northeast England, so a cluster in the northeast, Northumbria University have
A, Faculty in Newcastle and they've been successful in attracting Lockheed Martin
to the area and Lockheed Martin can put 50 million quid into a new R& D facility.
So there's a real opportunity to bring together academia, industry like Lockheed
and government, you know, local government in and around the northeast to start
to regenerate parts of the country that are sort of de industrialised.
You'll also find, if you were to hop in the car, drive about half
an hour down the road, you would find a company called Filtronic.
Who are, again, one of my, favorite companies.
I've spent a lot of time going around the country, bumping into and spending
time with folks in the space sector.
So Filtronica currently supplying components to Starlink, growing really
significantly as a result and are able to provide really good jobs in an area of the
country that really needs those good jobs.
So, there are some real opportunities to create use space, not only to, you
know, find free power through free solar energy from in orbit or develop
new drugs and so on, but also on earth to create some really high value jobs
in and across the whole of the UK.
So yeah, and we will do that by pulling together academia,
industry and government.
Dallas Campbell: How is this sort of catapult fostering that, are you
kind of involved in, fostering that and trying to make it as nimble as
John Abbott: Yeah, so with the Space Agency, we help support
15 space clusters across the UK.
So literally from Newquay to Inverness, from Belfast to Ipswich, across the whole
of the UK and in those space clusters are those three groups of folks, so academia,
industry and, local government and those are, the local support groups that help
the sector grow in that part of the world.
So each part of the world will have their own specialties or kind of clusters
of companies that are particularly good at a particular part of space
and whether that's manufacturing or earth observation or whatever.
But we as a Catapult have used that core grant I was mentioning earlier on, plus
some funding from the space agency to help support that network of space clusters
across the whole of the country, connect them all up, make sure they're all working
as effectively together and when you go out and meet them, so I've been to all
15 of them over the last year or so, they are really appreciative of that support,
but the kind of help that we in the space agency have been able to give, they are
up and running and standing on their own two feet, but any kind of additional
help is really, really welcomed and can see the impact that those clusters have
in examples like the one I was just talking about with Lockheed in northeast.
Really, really helpful opportunity on earth.
Dallas Campbell: Yeah, no, definitely.
I know some of the top Leicester space bods immigrated to the
University of North Ombre, so um.
There's some fine folk up here at the moment, I know, doing amazing work.
I'm interested, let's talk a little bit about the future.
Let's talk about you particularly, are planning to stay here
for a while, do you think?
I suppose I'm interested in your leadership style a little
bit, about what you can bring.
And what want to bring to the future of the catapult and what you think you can,
the sort of directions you can it in.
John Abbott: Good question.
So, when I worked at Ordnance Survey, I was there pre and post Google Maps.
And pre Google Maps, we used to go to geospatial conferences and sort of be a
little bit frustrated that nobody really got why geospatial data was important.
It varies similarly to space, yeah, so geospatial data underpins huge parts of
the economy, not least land registry and it feels like, so I'm guessing that was
probably around 2005, 2007 ish and the space sector feels like it's there for me.
So we, we go to lots of space conferences and we hear, folks, with the same slight
frustration, why does nobody realise that?
You know, how important we are, how we underpin such a significant part of
the economy and then Google Maps came along and Google Maps made, geospatial
data available to everybody on every device everywhere in the world and
spawned a whole bundle of new products as a result, you know, not least
Uber or Tinder or whichever one we're talking about and I think the space
sector has the opportunity to do that.
So that pattern, that, push towards mainstream adoption of things like
Earth observation data, um, I think it's a really interesting challenge.
So for me, as someone who's lived through that in the, you know, sort of
adjacent sector, it's really interesting to start to think about how we might,
apply some of the lessons from that geospatial sector to the space sector.
So terms of me and my leadership style, what I think I bring is this sort of
fresh pair of eyes, so I haven't been sort of brought up in the space sector.
So when, when somebody names a project, in a slightly complicated way, I'm
perhaps the first person to say, why are we naming the project in that way?
Dallas Campbell: Honestly, that's, that should be everyone's benchmark.
The problem is if you've been in an industry too long, you start to get
a bit lazy and you start to think in a particular way and actually
that's that's not what you want.
you do want to kind of an outside pair of eyes go hang on, what
does that Why do we do it?
John Abbott: find
Dallas Campbell: do that way?
John Abbott: Because if we can make it relevant to everybody in the country,
then there's, no problem in us, making sure, government funding's directed in it.
No problem in us directing private capital towards the space sector
because we've made it really clear to people how important the sector is.
Dallas Campbell: Do we need to to be more radical?
Do we need to be more...
John Abbott: I think we can probably be more radical in terms of how a pace of
delivery and how we think about delivery.
I think, like I say, at the risk going back to the earlier point, having, real
focus throughout the sector, aligned perhaps to the Space Industrial Plan,
that would be our vote, I think, and then really thinking about how can we execute
at pace on these five priorities, feels like a really sensible thing for us to do.
Dallas Campbell: Yeah, it does.
We talk a lot about stuff, we need to kind of actually do stuff and do stuff with
less fear as well, less kind of worrying about all this, you know, what will people
think, or this is the way things are done.
I suppose that's what I mean by radical.
Do we need to really start, being bolder and being more visionary and
caring less about, this, that, and the other that all those things that
we care about too much sometimes.
John Abbott: Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.
I mean, I saw Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State at DCIT speaking
and he made a point about talking to officials around innovation and risk
and explaining, look, I'm expecting some failures and that's okay.
that's on me as the Secretary of State.
But I don't want you to not take a step forward for fear of failure
and if that works, you know, kind of in, I've spent time as a civil
servant, I know what it's like.
So, you know, if you can get civil servants, being really, really keen to
innovate, really keen to move quickly, then we can do some great things,
and the sector I think will rise up behind them and really move at a pace.
I also think, at the risk of slightly labouring the earlier point, I
also think we can be radical in how we make space more accessible.
So how we tell the story of space, how we make the technology of space easier
to use for people across the country.
Dallas Campbell: Yeah, we need to get people to buy into the story a bit.
I mean, things like Apollo going to the moon, that's an
easy story, everyone gets it.
We sail across an ocean and we land on an island and stick a flag in it.
That's kind of an easy thing to understand, that spirit of adventure,
that spirit of exploration.
You know, we all get misty eyed about Apollo back.
But that, how do we get the public to sort of buy into this, which is
equally as exciting, more exciting really, more impressive in lots of ways.
I'm not quite sure how, I can get my mum to, appreciate what it is that doing.
John Abbott: Explaining to your mum, how much of her life is reliant upon space
and then giving your mum the opportunity to use space more than she does today.
So for me, one of my, I'd love to do this, being a slight risk of a CEO pet
project here, but if you remember Mr.
Spock's tricorder, actually the tricorder could do two things.
Firstly, Bones would use it to scan somebody and figure out what disease had,
but also when they landed on a new planet, they would open this tricorder and it
would tell them everything they needed to know about a planet, whether the air
was breathable and so on and so forth.
There is an opportunity for us to build that product, to build
a product that everyone can use to understand their environment.
in the set that's as easy to use as ChatGPT is easy to use and I don't
think we think we don't put ourselves enough in the end users shoes.
So again, one of the things that we think about as a Catapult is,
and I find surprising, certainly in comparison with tech sector, is
often we are quite engineering led.
So we have engineering led companies, we use engineering language, we will talk
in terms that perhaps don't make sense to man or woman on the street and there's
an opportunity for us to take a leaf out of ChatGPT or Google Maps, or Google
Photos, or pick your favorite technology that's got mainstream adoption, and to
ourselves in the shoes of the user, understand the pain points, the problems
that they have and then bring space to them, probably without them really
realising they're using space, actually.
Dallas Campbell: I think story is really important as well.
You mentioned that Apollo is obviously a great story and actually again, without
having to labour the SpaceX point, but you know, they have a good story.
You know, Musk sells that innovation by saying, we're going
to make life multi planetary.
It's a simple line, but people, you kind of get it.
John Abbott: When I got the job, I was chatting to my brother, my
brother's a vascular nurse in King's Hospital, London and he asked, I was
really surprised, so kind of, I've got a job as a CEO of the Satellite
Applications Catapult, I thought he said, wow, you know, what an awesome job.
He said, congratulations, but why do you want to go and do that?
Why do you want to go and work in the space sector?
It's sort of Elon Musk and Bezos and, rockets and pollution
and so on and so forth.
And I told him about space solar.
So I said, well, one of the companies that we've spun out is going to build a solar
power station in space, that's their aim and he said, Oh, I completely understand
why you want to go and work for them.
So you want to go and work in the space sector because you care about
climate change, because you can develop new medicines in space, because you
can move data centers into space.
Before we'd even mentioned the word astronaut or rocket or telescope,
there's a whole bundle of problems we can solve only through space and
that for me is the story we ought to be telling folks, how space can help
solve some of our biggest challenges on
Dallas Campbell: that's the thing because you know, people see, they watch the
news and they'll see Elon Musk who they won't like, or they'll see Jeff Bezos who
they won't like, and they'll see sort of billionaires mucking about, it just seems
to be mucking about, or you know, space tourism mucking about, and it's polluting.
Well, you know, the kinder argument is the only way, the only reason we know about
climate change is because we send things up into space that monitors the earth.
You know, know, that's the thing that kind of very often doesn't seem to get through.
So better story.
John Abbott: Better story.
Products that genuinely solve a problem for a customer and really
thinking about, the engineering is super important, but you hide it in
the back, don't you really a little bit and we probably lead with engineering
when we ought to lead with marketing.
Dallas Campbell: Yeah.
I just want to just finally sort of end with, okay, Usborne
Book of the Future, 1979.
Let's imagine the Usborne Book of the Future, let's go 2050, shall What's
the world going to look like then?
and how will the catapult help us get there?
That's a bit of a big question, isn't it?
Well, imagine you're doing the, will we have space panels by then?
Space solar farms.
John Abbott: Space solar farms on Mars, mining astronauts, developing medicines,
et cetera, et cetera, moving heavy industry off earth so on, yeah, the
UK playing a leading role in that.
Bundled jobs in the UK, good jobs in the UK, across the whole of
the UK with folks kind of working for and in that, space sector.
How will we do that?
We'll do that by being a supporter of the sector, a connector.
So connecting up academia, governments, this industry, like we were talking
about earlier on, an influencer, so influence government around that,
around kind of priorities and so on.
We as an organisation will only be able to do that if we're credible.
So being credible is about continuing to invest in our engineering talent,
bringing people on board to help us really grow those high potential
businesses, forming the right sorts of alliances and partnerships, and then
having a really transparent approach.
So being really clear on what we're here to do.
We're here to serve the sector, not to grow ourselves or not to kind of, grow
our market share or provide dividends to shareholders, et cetera, et cetera
and it's fair to say at the moment, not everyone's a fan of the Catapult.
I think sometimes because they feel that when we go out and win a piece of work,
albeit with a consortium, that's work that they would prefer to win or that's
would be better directed in another area and I think our answer to that is, number
one, I think we get it right more than we get it wrong, and that when we're winning
some of those grants, we're doing it as part of a team, so that an awful lot of
that money is flowing in the direction of the sector we're here to serve.
But I think we can probably do a better job and we are planning on
doing a better job in terms of how we form those consortiums, being really
clear with the sector around where we want to help, making sure that the
sector values are helping those areas.
So yeah, it goes back to what's our core purpose.
Our core purpose is to support the sector to grow, being clear on how we're going
to do that, being transparent about who we're working with and how we're
pulling those consortiums together.
I think hopefully we'll start to bring those, those folks that perhaps
are not our biggest fans on board.
Dallas Campbell: And bold and...
John Abbott: bold and charismatic leadership, lots of cake, a
lot of tea, a lot of stuff gets done with cake and tea, I think.
Dallas Campbell: These are all topics that we're going to
be doing in our next series.
I've said that now we can't not have a series now I've said that.
So John,
Thank you very much for coming on and talking to us about your role as the CEO
of the Satellite Applications Catapult and teeing our next so beautifully!
John Abbott: nice to meet you and thanks for having me.
Dallas Campbell: Pleasure.
Thank you very much for joining us for this series of In-Orbit.
We've had some really fantastic guests share their expertise and insights with
us on everything from greenhouse gases and space debris to robotics and the
laws of outer space, exploring every facet of the projects, the innovations
that propel our industry forward.
We're going to be taking a short break, but to hear future episodes of
In-Orbit, don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast app, and
for deeper insights, latest news and more real world space applications,
you can visit the Catapult website or join them as ever on social media.