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Welcome to In-Orbit, the fortnightly podcast exploring how technology from space is empowering a better world.
[00:00:00] 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 in today's episode, we are discussing a critical topic, it's the skills gap. I'm joined remotely by Kathie Bowden, Skills Manager at the Satellite Applications Catapult. Zaria Serfontein, Product Strategy Engineer at Astroscale and Ellie Sleightholm, Head of Software Developer Relations at Marqo. Now, as technology advances at a rapid pace, the demand for highly skilled professionals in the space sector has never been greater. From engineers and technicians, to data scientists and project managers, the industry is facing a pressing need for a new generation of talent, equipped with the latest knowledge and skills. But, bridging this gap is no small feat. Welcome to the show, Kathie, Zaria and Ellie, it's lovely to have you with us today. Why don't we just go around and explain a little bit about what it is that we do. Kathie.
[00:01:15] Kathie Bowden: So I'm responsible for looking at skills issues that are affecting the sector outside the catapult, as well as influencing what we're doing inside the catapult, which is really interesting because it gives me an opportunity to talk to just about anybody I feel like talking to, like you. And...
[00:01:32] Dallas Campbell: Yes!
[00:01:34] Kathie Bowden: ...but I guess one of the things that excites me is that I came to space from exploration geology, working in the mining sector, who would have thought of that?
[00:01:45] Dallas Campbell: A lot of people seem to come in from kind of weird places into the space sector, I don't think I've met anyone who kind of just started off in the space sector and...
[00:01:51] Kathie Bowden: I think some of the engineers come through and if you want to be in rockets, you're probably. But the rest of us, we could go anywhere and more importantly, we can come from anywhere.
[00:02:02] Dallas Campbell: And so, Kathie, I'm just interested, just quickly, what skills you brought over from the world, the wacky world of geology into space, like, how did you get involved in
[00:02:09] Kathie Bowden: that?
Well, the nice thing was I was able to travel a lot and work outside, which was one of the things I wanted to do right at the beginning. But almost immediately my, the company I was working for went, well, there's this new thing called Earth Observation and we'd like to know more about it. So they sent me off to the U. S. to learn all about it and then I came back and I understood about rocks, I understood about landscape, I could use satellite imagery, which is a step up from using simple air photography in all sorts of ways that have just gone on and on in so many different ways now. We can interpret the data in so many more ways than we once could. I know you've had my colleague Maral on the podcast before and she takes things to the next level. I wish I'd been able to do that back in the day, but it's all good fun.
[00:03:04] Dallas Campbell: Thank you, Kathie and we've got Zaria.
[00:03:06] Zaria Serfontein: Yeah, no, so I'm an engineer at Astroscale, but I sit in the business team and a lot of my work actually has to do with policy. So I'm one of those, started off at engineering, loved engineering, got into the space sector because it was, like you said, just everything is just kind of a bit mind boggling. Like, I still find that a lot, and I think we still need to keep that and keep, you know, reiterating that message of we are actually doing all these awesome things and yeah, so it's, I'm an engineer, but I sit in the business team, so I help a lot with finding different opportunities for us, doing different bids, putting together, you know, what our future products are going to look like, what we're developing and then tying into that everything that has to do with policy, regulation, how we work with other countries, how we work internationally, all of those kinds of things. So it's almost, it's like it's amalgamation of all the different departments.
[00:03:57] Dallas Campbell: For folks who haven't heard of the name Astroscale, just in a sentence, what does Astroscale do?
[00:04:02] Zaria Serfontein: So I can't remember what I say in French anymore, but there used to be a phrase saying, I am a garbage woman in space. so we call ourselves space sweepers, you know, we clean up junk in space. But yeah, basically that is the simplest explanation of it and that's kind of what we're founded on is, you know, trying to cleanup space, trying to preserve some of these orbits for future generations. But we're starting to go a little bit beyond that into a lot of these, like, interesting topics, like In Orbit Servicing and how can we make sustainability part of business?
[00:04:32] Dallas Campbell: And that policy thing that you talk about, I think the UK, with the British, we're good at coming up with rules and regulations. It's kind of what we do better, like queuing, you know, we're just sort of, it's kind of in our DNA a little bit. I mean, do you think the sort of legal aspects of space is something that the UK can and is taking a lead in?
[00:04:49] Zaria Serfontein: A hundred percent, yeah, I actually, one of the reasons why Astroscale has a UK base is because when we were doing our first initial In Orbit demonstration mission, Elsa D, we couldn't find anywhere to license it. No country would license it, no country would take on this liability and this responsibility for such a, at the time, quite high risk, quite novel mission. but the UK said yes and because the UK said yes, we're now based here. There's so many things happening where there's kind of this intersection between different guidelines, different policies, different initiatives, regulation, the whole world, but yeah, definitely something that the UK is leading and that the UK is pushing quite heavily.
[00:05:28] Dallas Campbell: Great, well welcome to the podcast and finally, last but not least, we've got Ellie, who's the head of software development relations at Marqo. Just tell us who Marqo is, what Marqo do, what they're all about?
[00:05:39] Ellie Sleightholm: So Marqo is actually a company in the tech and AI industry, so a little bit different to the space industry, but we are essentially an end to end vector search engine, so it essentially means that we handle a lot of the complicated stuff that goes behind embedding models, which are essentially models that look at understanding certain things like words and images in a way that, so computers can understand them essentially and so what we are is a search engine, which allows for retrieval of kind of relevant results, really. So an example would be, we work with customers who have a lot of data and they want to retrieve, you know, specific things from that data. So a typical example would be in e commerce. So, you know, websites have a lot of items, catalogs and we want to ensure that when a user goes to that website, they can retrieve the relevant search that they want. So a top or, you know, something like that. But in the, in terms of the space industry, we can do things with satellite imaging and essentially look at datasets full of all of these images and use models to learn visual concepts behind those images, and yeah, overall improve search results in the industry. So yeah, there's a lot to it, it kind of extends into so many different domains as well.
[00:06:58] Dallas Campbell: We're here to talk a little bit about this idea of the skills gap, particularly within the space industry. Kathie, what do we mean by the skills gap? Is it just what it says on the tin? We have missing skills, we have gaps that need filling, how would you define it?
[00:07:11] Kathie Bowden: That's a very interesting question because lots of people talk about the skills gap and what they mean is that they're having difficulty recruiting people in particular areas and undoubtedly there are some areas that are very hard to recruit for, you know, and they tend to be identified that, you know, might be systems engineers, but it's also that to a large extent, what Ellie's talking about is the confluence between being able to use software as well as understand the data that you're looking at and, you know, how do you put those two together? Therefore, there are places that it's really hard to recruit people. In general, it isn't necessarily at graduate level because we have a sector that has a bit of magic stardust around it and people are really intrigued to work in the space sector. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they've got the experience, particularly in the workplace, to go alongside their academic studies and experience and therefore, coming back to SPIN, space Placements in Industry was set up in the first place because we identified that business was busy saying, well, these graduates, they have no work experience, how can we take them on? And in the next breath, the students were going, we can't find work placements and hang on a minute, let's throw a bit of grease into the mix, a little bit of grant funding, which has helped a lot from government and otherwise, which has meant that we've got now over 500 SPIN alumni working across the sector from C suite down who are doing amazing things and have been able to build their own skills, build their own experience and come into the sector on the whole. Ellie's been there, she's moved on a bit, but we hope we'll get her back at some stage!
[00:09:01] Dallas Campbell: So, Kathie, can I just interrupt? Can I just ask, so the idea of spin, just so I know it's companies like Astroscale or whoever, but companies in the space industry offering work placements to graduates, to students, to paid, I should point out they are paid, these are proper...
[00:09:18] Kathie Bowden: Absolutely. Space placements in industry is absolutely paid. We do not endorse any kind of unpaid placement. You have to be an undergraduate student or a student at university in order to be able to apply, but it's a short eight week placement. It's entirely up to the employers from across the sector if they want to hang on to you for longer, but they do have to pay you and we are really lucky to have so many wonderful companies who are ready to stand up and take on interns and give them the best experiences. I mean, Astroscale are fantastic, I think you've got four or five this year?
[00:09:57] Zaria Serfontein: Yeah and we even had a non engineering role as well for the first time, which was really exciting. Like we had someone in the business team, for example. So it's just been such a range.
[00:10:06] Dallas Campbell: That's really interesting, that range I'm interested because obviously when perhaps people who aren't in the space industry they hear about well, what kind of jobs do I need to be in the space industry? Okay, I need to be a rocket scientist or something like that, what kind of range of jobs are astroscale interested in?
[00:10:20] Zaria Serfontein: Yeah, so I think the reason you hear a lot about STEM is because we still do need those engineers. We still, like a core part of our team, I'd say at least about 60, 70 percent of us are just, you know, purely in engineering, but I think the commercial teams are growing. So like I sit within the business development team, we're trying to figure out. You know, how do we go from these random research missions that we're doing towards something that's a bit more of a business and you know, become profitable, things like that, there's a lot in that. There's a lot in market analysis, that team is actually incredibly exciting, business analysis, so trying to figure out, you know, where's the sector going? Cause that's something that's really key, especially when we're talking about the skills gap, you know, trying to figure out where are we going? What are we going to need in five years? What do we need to start pushing now? And what do we need to start telling people to study now and to get experience in now to kind of fit that sector?
[00:11:13] Dallas Campbell: So you're kind of thinking about the future, it's not just kind of what skills gap now. It's like, okay, well, what's the space sector going to look like in a decade or so and who are we going to hire to make it look like that?
[00:11:24] Zaria Serfontein: That's the biggest part, yeah, because at the moment, you know, like I said, Astroscale is kind of known as the space sweepers, so we're cleaning up space. That's just step one, you know, after that it's you know, what do we do then with the technology that we've built? But yeah, the whole idea is that we're developing so many different technologies now that are going to be really useful to so many different areas in the future, but it's, you know, which one's coming first, which one are we heading to next, what do we need to prepare for in the next, like, I'd say like medium term, like the next five to 10 years because getting that right is going to be key.
[00:11:57] Dallas Campbell: And Ellie, can I ask you, when you sort of embarked on this SPIN, the Space Placement and Industry Scheme that was set up, what were you studying? What skill did you have that kind of got you into your placement?
[00:12:10] Ellie Sleightholm: Yeah, so, I was actually studying mathematics and at the time, I kind of had an idea in my head that because I
I
studied maths and I wasn't studying aerospace engineering or physics, I was like, there's no way I can get into the space industry and so I hadn't actually like, looked into it much. I knew I kind of always wanted to, you work in the space industry and I, funnily enough, actually had an internship lined up that was just in software engineering before it. And it was the year of COVID and COVID cancelled that placement and I was just looking for placements and I came across the, space placements and industry scheme. And honestly, I'm so glad my other internship got cancelled because the stuff that's come out of doing the spin scheme has just been incredible and so, yeah, I was studying mathematics. I didn't think that I could get into the space industry, having just done maths and yeah, I was fortunate enough to get placed on the spin scheme and my kind of trajectory of my career since then has just been, yeah, incredible. So I'm very grateful to people like Kathie who have set up the scheme and yeah, getting more people into the space industry is, it's just great.
[00:13:11] Dallas Campbell: In these sorts of discussions, I always think that whatever it is that you do on Earth, you could probably do in the space sector. It's, that broad in terms of people's skills. I'm interested in your own personal experience and viewpoints about how skills, how things have changed in your own particular careers in terms of the types of skills and how the space sector is moving and how skills have fitted in around it.
[00:13:35] Kathie Bowden: When I graduated, you know, space, to be honest, wasn't the thing. Men had been to the moon, we didn't even have satellite images on the telly.
[00:13:43] Dallas Campbell: What sort of year, I mean, you're very young, but what kind of...
[00:13:47] Kathie Bowden: So I graduated in 1980, which is almost when the dinosaurs were alive. But within six months of graduation, I was working in a NASA facility. I was beginning to understand, you know, certainly exploration of the planets because we were looking at imagery that was coming back from Venus and Mars and applying that expertise and that experience to what we were interpreting on our own planet and vice versa and that was just incredible and then to be able to use satellite imagery and SIR A, which was a shuttle radar, to use these different mediums to interpret the different landforms and data that we had in all sorts of different ways. So I could never have predicted that I would be working in space and since then, I have just seen the expansion of so much in very much the same way that Elie talks about. I never thought geology, space, why would that work? But actually it does and there are so many of us, and I certainly look at the So, people around me in the catapult and the Satellite Applications Catapult, we've got people from all sorts of different disciplines who are looking at space related data in some ways, but are also using their expertise, for example, around user centered design to listen to the people that we work with, the entrepreneurs who are setting up new businesses and helping them understand who their customers are going to be and what they're going to be delivering to those customers in the future. I would never have even embarked on thinking of that as a job 20 years ago and you know, I met a guy from Airbus, it's probably a couple of years ago, but he was a Planetary Protection Officer. Not our planet, other planets!
[00:15:43] Dallas Campbell: That's a job I want! Ellie, tell me about your experiences.
[00:15:46] Ellie Sleightholm: I guess, I think the thing that I've seen a lot, especially with the SPIN scheme is just the variety of different jobs that are available now in the space industry and I think people are starting to realize that as well and yeah, it's been nice to see that when I did the spin cohort, there was a big portion of engineers there, but now looking, you know, I see on LinkedIn all the time, people going through the SPIN scheme kind of seems to be all over my LinkedIn, especially at the moment, because obviously, you know, the spin scheme's running this summer and it's just been nice to see the variety of different roles that are becoming available and as well, I think people are often shocked when they realise that they can get into the space industry not having done just the typical route, which is physics and aerospace engineering. I, well, thanks to the spin scheme, I actually set up my own YouTube channel to just teach physics and maths, because I'm a bit of a nerd, really and I had people on there asking how they could do the SPIN scheme and so I kind of made a video about it and I was kind of quite shocked at the amount of people that didn't expect to be able to apply for roles like this and get into the industry that way. So yeah, I think as well the outreach side of things has ramped up massively and it's becoming more aware and, yeah, getting more people in, so it's great!
[00:16:59] Dallas Campbell: Kathie mentioned this idea of stardust of the space industry, having a little bit of sort of magic around it. Do you all feel that? Do you, I mean, is there a supply and demand problem in terms of recruiting or is it, does everyone want to come and work in the space industry because it's sexy?
[00:17:14] Zaria Serfontein: I think it's a bit of a mixed bag because like what Kathie was saying before, we have lots of students graduating saying, you know, I'd love to work in the space sector and then we have recruiters and companies saying, actually, we can't find people and I think the missing bit there is sometimes that we can't find the exact people we're looking for and sometimes because we need, you know, Astroscale is still, I think it's still a bit of a startup. We're a big startup now, but we're growing quick, but we still have that feel sometimes and sometimes we need a bit more of that experience, we need that mid career level people, we have our own graduate schemes as well, we offer early career stuff, but we need that, layer in the middle there.
[00:17:52] Dallas Campbell: Tell us where that problem is. I'm interested in that kind of, so there's lots of sort of young graduates all wanting to work in the space sector, but you're saying there's a kind of, the hourglass narrows and you have a sort of a problem getting mid career. So what skills are you looking for in that instance?
[00:18:07] Zaria Serfontein: Yeah, okay, the engineering is always easier to tackle first. So I think on, the engineering side, things like round segment and operations, seem for us at least particularly hard to hire for in the UK. Funnily enough, our French office have no issue with it and I think that's also one of those geographical things that come up as well, where in the UK, we seem to be really good at certain skills, you know, if you need a GNC engineer, chances are he's going to be Italian, he or she are going to be Italian.
[00:18:34] Dallas Campbell: What kind of engineer, GN?
[00:18:35] Zaria Serfontein: Guidance, navigation, and control. So the person who pretty much figures out how your spacecraft is telling where it is and able to move through space and things like that. So it's a pretty critical role, it's a critical role for us as well, but they all seem to be in Italy. luckily so far they've been happy to relocate. So we have a few of them over here, but there does seem to be kind of these hubs in different countries, because kind of how the way that space was set up, you know, the European space agency, the way it's funded and the way it gives out projects in the past and the way we've done funding in the past, it kind of rewarded you for being, you know, part of this kind of larger supply chain throughout Europe. But now we're starting to do that a bit more in the UK. So we need, you know, there's just these little gaps, you know, for us, like at the moment of, we're going through an interview process for, a bid manager, for example. So someone that applies for new opportunities and just, you know, having a hard time.
[00:19:34] Dallas Campbell: That's interesting!
[00:19:36] Zaria Serfontein: It's not a traditional role, it's something that we could potentially get someone from outside the space sector in, it's a good role to kind of do that, but it's just been difficult to hire for.
[00:19:48] Dallas Campbell: If you, if either of three of you could become Prime Minister today, could happen, how would you sort of solve those problems? How could we plug any skills gaps that need plugging or what, I'm just trying to really understand where the problems are and if you could wave a magic wand, how would you get rid of them?
[00:20:03] Kathie Bowden: We've got quite good map of where the problems are, but we've got to make sure that, and this is going back to the basics, we've got to make sure that the pipeline is being strongly filled from the bottom and making sure that there are enough teachers of physics and maths particularly, who are inspirational and great, would be really helpful and we're not going to solve that one overnight, but it does come back to, sorry, I was referring to needing STEM people, yes, we do need STEM people and I don't want, you know, we also need creative people and sometimes that mix comes down to enabling people to do a broad range of subjects for as long as possible, so they don't cut themselves off from whichever direction they want to go in.
[00:20:51] Ellie Sleightholm: Yeah, I think to echo what you said there, Kathie, I think a lot of it probably lies in, you know, students that just kind of decide on their careers around sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, some of those decide later, but I think if we have, you know, in schools and pre university, have people going in and showing, look, these are the careers that you can get into and here's the kind of skills that you need, I think that is pretty vital, because I think a lot of people get to university, realise they've picked something that they might not necessarily want to do and then they think it's too late to change their career. So I think starting from the very bottom would be, yeah, helpful.
[00:21:25] Zaria Serfontein: And then also, like, I think there's almost like an ownership of companies as well to help highlight what those careers could be, like what Dallas pointed out, you know, nobody in the space sector now is in the space sector because they thought they were going to be in the space sector when they're in school, you know, it's something that you kind of fall into and that's been great, but, you know, we need to move more towards having a little bit more structure, like trying to figure out what your career in space could be like. Looking at a lot of the HR aspects that kind of get pushed to the side when the exciting space things happen, but trying to build on that a bit more and I've seen a lot of projects that are going on to try and like clarify this a little bit more or like how you can move between different careers in space, those kind of things and one thing I actually wanted to highlight as well is the UK Space Agency Training Program Fund that I think that's been awarded by the University of Edingburgh.
[00:22:16] Kathie Bowden: That's one of the courses.
[00:22:17] Zaria Serfontein: Yeah, one of the courses, but the idea is that, you know, a lot of the times when we're talking about the skills gap, we're just, we just need someone with a bit more experience in something, you know, their background is fine, it's just that little missing piece. So this is a training program that's more for upskilling those really particular skills that we're missing. So I think that's going to be great.
[00:22:37] Kathie Bowden: And I think, of course, the area that Zaria is working in is very much about future missions. We've had one mission, a test mission, that worked really well. We're now looking at future missions that are going to come to fruition and are going to be launched and the skills that we're going to need for active debris removal or In Orbit Servicing and Manufacturing, they aren't necessarily being trained for yet and the piece of work that Zaria mentioned at the beginning around workforce foresighting is about exploring what are the capabilities that we're going to need to have in our workforce in three to five years time. What's the difference, the delta, between what they'll need and what we're delivering through universities and apprenticeships at the moment and that's been a really interesting exercise because it isn't all about a brand new university course. It's about those stepping stones, those little elements of training that are going to be needed in order to share the expertise that experts like Zaria, who are already working in those companies, doing this stuff. But to spread that knowledge and skills more broadly so that other companies can begin to go, okay, we can bring in those people, we can train those people in order to be able to work in this particular piece of the sector.
[00:24:04] Dallas Campbell: So it's really this kind of interplay between the Space Agency, government areas, academia and industry all kind of doing this little dance together.
[00:24:14] Kathie Bowden: You're absolutely right and we have all three pieces of that jigsaw puzzle in the foresighting groups. We've got technical experts involved, we have employers involved, we have regulators involved, but bringing them all together and being able to go, well, we're going to need people who can determine whether or not this is legal, you know, what do we need to know about the satellite that's approaching the one that we own? How does that all fit into the jigsaw puzzle? And you know, when it comes to the maths, maths is so important to understanding situational awareness and where things are in time and space.
[00:24:50] Dallas Campbell: But also, maths is just a good discipline to have, because with the language of mathematics and the way that the brain works, you can then go off, presumably and do anything.
[00:24:59] Ellie Sleightholm: Yeah, I think to be fair, I was quite surprised at, back to the whole thing of not expecting to go into the space industry, typically like math students, I think I was the only one in my cohort that actually went into the space industry and so back to kind of bringing it back to the universities and stuff, it's, if I had a module in the math department that was somewhat related to space, I think there would be so many more people thinking, okay, that's a career I could go into because typically math students go into finance. Yeah.
[00:25:26] Dallas Campbell: Yeah, that's a really interesting point. Is there a problem of just all the bright maths STEM people just vanishing down a finance rabbit hole, are you sort of trying to pull people back? Like, no, don't go into finance, come into, because there is still a bit of a space perception problem. People aren't aware of just how vital the space sector is for all of civilisation and so people aren't perhaps necessarily thinking about careers in space because they want to go off into finance and other things, is that an issue?
[00:25:54] Kathie Bowden: I think it's a really interesting point, Dallas and certainly when you look at the banks and the financial services companies who camp on university campuses in that first term, that October term, they're buying people coffees, you know, we're a small sector in that sense, and we can't go and do that kind of thing. But I know from my own experience that If I get an invitation from a university group to go and talk to their students about careers in space, almost invariably that's a physics department inviting me. It would be really nice to go and talk to some math departments as well, but quite often that's where it comes from. Physics students and math students are highly sought after for financial services and quite often, they are the least ready to expand and see and so it's so wonderful when you do get an invitation to go and talk to those students, because there are so many opportunities for maths and physics.
[00:26:54] Dallas Campbell: Yeah, I wonder, I mean, presumably people go into finance because there's big bucks to be made and I wonder, what incentives do you tell your prospective students about why working in the space sector is, well, presumably there's big bucks to be made in the space sector as well, but do you have your own kind of incentives that you like to talk about?
[00:27:13] Kathie Bowden: From my perspective, the variety and the interest that it gives you, no two days are the same. It's not going to be as highly paid as going into a big bank, but then we hear that big banks aren't paying as much as they were once upon a time either.
[00:27:30] Zaria Serfontein: I think there's also, there's a generational shift. like there's a lot of people in younger generations who are a lot more, invested in, you know, what is the purpose and the mission of the company that they're joining rather than it just being, you know, a job. I think it's still important to kind of tackle those aspects of trying to turn it into a bit more of a just a job. So to have those kind of clear career paths, to have, you know, competitive pay, all of those things are still really important to have. But I think, yeah, I think it comes back to like what you were saying, the PR image of space, you know, we're very good at talking to ourselves. we're not as good as talking to people outside of the space sector. So just, you know, I'm the same, you know, if I get an invite, I will go talk to people. Nine times out of ten, they're interested, they want to, you know, talk more or join the sector, but it's just about getting that invite and then, yeah, we are still a small sector, so it's about getting boots on the ground and getting people in.
[00:28:31] Dallas Campbell: That generational thing is so important. I mean, quite, I mean, I spent a lot of time doing schools talks and talking about really the sort of diversity of opportunities that are available in the space sector, that's what kind of the thing, and I don't, nobody was doing that 20 years ago. So hopefully there's going to be a whole new, generation of kids who are going to grow up thinking space is, you know, working in space is normal rather than it being something a little more esoteric.
[00:28:58] Kathie Bowden: It never fails to amaze me how few people though, see how much is in the press, on the telly, about space and how much influence the UK has in the global space community. It seems like you can scream it from the rooftops, but nobody ever hears you.
[00:29:14] Dallas Campbell: I always start by mentioning that Deliveroo would not exist if it wasn't for space. Let's just, because we're running out of time, but I just want to talk a little bit about the future and about, obviously everything is changing so ridiculously quickly, we are on this cusp of this great AI revolution, however you want to call it and I'm interested in the kind of skills of the future, like what it is that we're going to be looking for and needed as we hurtle into the unknown.
[00:29:40] Zaria Serfontein: So I think for companies like ourselves, we started doing space in a very traditional way. So it's very, you know, research and development based, it's trying things for the first time. It's, you know, all of these kinds of things that make space exciting, but to be able to continue and to be able to become a successful business and to be able to keep employing people, you know, there needs to be kind of a shift towards a more commercial way of doing space, that's not an easy change. It's actually, you know, a very difficult thing.
[00:30:10] Dallas Campbell: What does that look like? Just briefly, what does that mean?
[00:30:13] Zaria Serfontein: It means not necessarily having an agency funded mission. So it means, you know, you don't necessarily have ESA or the UK Space Agency tell you, okay, you need to do this, this mission is what you have to do. Here are your very clear set of requirements, you hand that off to the engineers, they spend years building this, testing this and then flying it and then you know, it's a great success. It means that we're now having customers, so now having people rely on us to tell them what they need, then working with them to develop a mission, finding funding for that in various different sources, maybe not designing something that is the absolute best that it can be, but something that's commercially viable, something that's affordable enough that, you know, it can stay in business and that's just a completely different mindset and that's a completely different way of thinking and we're seeing that, you know, even engineers who are working on the technology that we're developing needs to be at least aware of that and needs to be aware of those changes and it kind of changes the way that they work too. So definitely still a lot of the exciting bits that are coming up like, I always find our bread and butter or is Rendezvous Proximity Operations. So that's anything getting close to anything else, so that's still a really exciting topic and that's still something that we're going to be hiring for a lot and that we need to kind of figure that out and figure out how to do that. But I think our CEO Nobu, I think he says it best when he says, you know, we want In Orbit Servicing to be the norm by 2030, you know, we want to work towards this just becoming an everyday service, you know, whether it's the AA truck at the side of the road that's fixing your broken satellite or whether it's gas stations and refueling in space and things like that, whether it's swapping out different modules, it's you know, I want to get to that point, but there's a lot of steps and a lot of skills that we need on the way to get there.
[00:32:01] Dallas Campbell: And Kathie, you're, when I think of navigating the skills gap, I see your hand very firmly on the rudder. Where, just briefly as we sort of go into the future, what are the issues and how are we going to solve them?
[00:32:12] Kathie Bowden: I think we need more people, we need more people coming into the sector at all levels. I think we need more companies who are... who can see what they're going to need in the future and are ready and willing to train up their own perfect staff member because sometimes that will be through an apprenticeship, sometimes that will be through a graduate trainee, but it's highly unlikely that those people are going to come ready formed and then we also need to be more open to bringing in people from other sectors, other parallel sectors and giving them the space delta that may be essential. Zaria mentioned the Edinburgh course, our chief exec mentioned a course that's being run by Leicester, where they are very much looking at, if you like, a space 101 for people who come from parallel sectors and need to know that there are some things that you can't do in space that you could do here on the planet, and why you can't do it like that in space. So I think it's, you know, bringing in people at all levels and particularly, you know, we're seeing a lot of, particularly C suites, people coming into work with major companies and major organisations who don't necessarily come with a space badge on their forehead and that's a really good thing because there's lots of expertise in every other sector as well as our own, but we need to learn from them and they need to learn from us and there is a happy medium to be balanced there and most of it is about being... having a good mindset.
[00:33:52] Dallas Campbell: But just finally, do we need to sort of go down the pyramid to the way that we educate our children at schools in order to fulfill any skills gaps and you know, within the context of this industry, are there sort of more fundamental things? I remember, you know, a year ago, Rishi Sunak talking about, right, we need more math teachers, we need more math teachers. Where are we with that? Are we on top of that or do we have a long way to go? I'm just trying to get a sense of the landscape.
[00:34:19] Ellie Sleightholm: I mean, I'm not entirely sure in terms of the number of teachers that we have, you know, studying mathematics. I think there are kind of campaigns now to try and get more people into teaching and I know the Department of Education are really pushing for that. Yeah, I think it's important, you know, not only to make people aware that, yeah, they can get into the space industry if they want, but also, you know, teaching is a possibility as well and inspiring the younger generations then go on and pursue careers that they might not have considered before.
[00:34:48] Kathie Bowden: And I think that really underlines what's so important, is Zaria is the one person here who had a space trajectory in their sights. Ellie liked it, but wasn't really sure it was going to happen and I certainly didn't even vaguely have it. But the important thing for all of us was that we had those building blocks that came from school upon which we've all been able to build as we've gone on from there and I'm guessing that the same would be true for you, Dallas.
[00:35:18] Dallas Campbell: Crikey, yeah, I mean, I started off in Pizza Hut. Even just being here talking about space would have been utterly absurd and ridiculous if I went back in my DeLorean and met the, I don't know, 30 year old me. But I, the one thing I do think is important from everything you've been saying is just that idea of being flexible and how important flexibility and creative thinking is for our students because the ideas of jobs for life, et cetera, that our parents may have had, it just doesn't exist and the future is just unraveling so quickly and so dynamically and so differently, you need to have that creativity and that flexibility and that ability to change and move and be nimble.
[00:36:02] Kathie Bowden: I think perfect summation, Dallas. I think that is absolutely critical for all of us and I certainly never imagined that I would be where I am today and every day is different, every day I will be talking to different people and indeed, I've just taken on, to help me with SPIN, a wonderful PhD student who did ancient history.
[00:36:23] Dallas Campbell: There you go.
[00:36:24] Zaria Serfontein: that's exactly what we need in the space sector as well. So like what Kathie was saying, is those different voices and people from outside of the sector joining in. I remember when, I first learned about, you know, space debris and things like that, that was like mind blowing and I was like, why are we not just fixing this right now? And then there was loads of conversations around like, how we define sustainability in space, but how the rest of world defines sustainability and how they're completely different and how that's very difficult for us now to tackle the problem because we don't have a common language with people outside the space sector to discuss these kind of things. So yeah, just those flexibility and including as many voices from outside the space sector as well, it's really important.
[00:37:03] Dallas Campbell: Listen, Kathie, Zara, Ellie, it's been an absolute pleasure. I've really, enjoyed our little chat. It's been fascinating and it's been an absolute pleasure and a joy to have you on the show. Thank you.
[00:37:12] Ellie Sleightholm: Thank you.
[00:37:13] Zaria Serfontein: Thank you so much.
[00:37:14] Dallas Campbell: To hear future episodes of In-Orbit, don't forget, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast app and to find out a little bit more about how space is empowering industries in between episodes, the Catapult website is the place to go, or you can join them on social media.