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Welcome to In-Orbit, the fortnightly podcast exploring how technology from space is empowering a better world.
Dallas Campbell
Hello and welcome once again to another episode of 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 this series we'll be in conversation with some of the finest minds in the country exploring the ways that the UK is using space to make huge differences to our everyday lives, as well as gaining a better understanding of its role in shaping and sustaining our planet for the future. In today's episode, we will be discussing in-space manufacturing and talking to some of the companies who are at the forefront of this new space race. I'm joined in the studio by David Pile, who's the Regional Director at Northrop Grumman Space Systems, Portia Bowman, Director at Grobotics Space, and Alex Goodhand, Manufacturing Engineer at the Satellite Applications Catapult. Now, the future of commercial space is increasingly dependent on our ability to build and to assemble large structures entirely outside of the Earth's atmosphere, from emission-free solar power stations to spacecraft capable of travelling beyond our solar system. All of this and more will be directly affected by how we manufacture in space. The commercial space race is well underway, but in the next few years, things are going to get a lot more exciting. Welcome David, welcome Portia, welcome Alex. Thanks for coming into the studio.
Portia Bowman
Nice to be here.
David Pile
Thank you very much.
Alex Goodhand
Yeah, absolutely.
Dallas Campbell
Hey, listen, what are we even talking about today? Is there an acronym for this yet for in-orbit space manufacturing? What do you guys like to call it?
Portia Bowman
There's a couple of different acronyms. There's In-orbit Servicing and Manufacturing, IOSM. There's OSAM, which is On-orbit Servicing Assembly and Manufacturing.
Dallas Campbell
I wanted to clear this up from the beginning.
Portia Bowman
Any others?
Alex Goodhand
I think with it being in the UK, we'll stick to IOSM.
Dallas Campbell
Maybe we should just officially call it that now forever, IOSM. IOSM it is. So let's break that down. So IO in orbit, that makes sense, servicing and manufacturing. Well I mean I think about servicing, I think about fixing the Hubble Space Telescope for example or doing stuff on the International Space Station, but presumably the areas that you're all involved on, it's going to take this a lot further. So actually let's talk with David first from Northrop Grumman. From your point of view, what do you mean by IOSM?
David Pile
So we've taken a sort of a route that servicing is about. So traditionally you'd launch a satellite in space, you would never see it again. It would do its job. At some point, it would run out of fuel. So our take on servicing certainly to start with is how can we make those satellites last longer, be more sustainable to have them lasting longer because the electronics tend to work longer, but the fuel runs out. So servicing to us at this stage is adding more fuel.
Dallas Campbell
Basically putting a petrol station in, in orbit. We've gone almost one step before that we've we're doing jet packs.
David Pile
So our mission extension vehicle is a jet pack for satellites.
Dallas Campbell
I knew Northrop Grumman always did cool stuff. When I think of Northrop Grumman, I always think of all the kind of a cool Apollo hardware that you built way back when. Absolutely. So you're doing funky jet packs. What is it? What is it? A servicing jet pack look like? Probably not what I'm thinking.
David Pile
So, effectively, it's another satellite. It's a satellite with a bunch of fuel on it.
Dallas Campbell
Right.
David Pile
And it's got a fancy docking mechanism. So it goes up to another satellite. We've got a bunch of different sensors which figure out how it can join onto the back of that satellite. It then docks onto the engine, which is... Every satellite's got one, to get them into orbit. And it locks on and becomes that jetpack.
Dallas Campbell
Okay.
David Pile
So we've got two of those already on orbit, already working.
Dallas Campbell
So, oh, God, this isn't far away in the future. This is actually happening.
David Pile
Yep.
Dallas Campbell
Portia, just tell us a little bit about your company. Northrock Grumman, a lot of people will have heard of, obviously, they're a major player in this industry. But Growbotics, crikey, what is Growbotics, because this is a new company. Yeah, we've been around about three months, so I'm surprised if anyone's heard of us. Jetpacks? Have you done a jetpack yet?
Portia Bowman
No, not looking at jetpacks. We're looking at what's the next step to more of a circular economy in space. So, as David said, satellites are limited currently by fuel. And at the moment, satellites are very single-use items, basically. So we're looking at what's next. Once you've extended the life with fuel, how is it limited? And then how can you maybe reuse or repair these satellites to get the most out of them?
Dallas Campbell
Right. That's interesting. It does seem like a complete step change from how we do space. I mean, I guess at the moment, we are limited by the size of a fairing that goes on a rocket and what you can put in it. And that's it. I mean, something like fixing Hubble back in the 1980s was, I mean, the fact that that was such a massive deal in fixing Hubble shows that it is quite an important thing to be able to somehow simplify that and prolong the life of our space hardware.
David Pile
Yeah, absolutely. But as you say, we've done it before, we've done it with Hubble, and we've done things from the space shuttle, but it's always been with people.
Dallas Campbell
I've been worrying about things like the James Webb telescope, like how the heck do we fix that?
Portia Bowman
Well, exactly. It's not been designed to be fixed. The next generation of whatever comes next after JWST, James Webb Space Telescope, will be designed to be fixed. We've seen failures quite early on in JWST where it's been hit and damaged by micrometeorites. If you could go and replace that component, then you would get a lot more out of the satellite. And there were so many issues with designing the huge structure of JWST to be able to fit in the fairing, as you mentioned. I don't think future space telescopes are gonna be designed in the same way. There's a lot, I think over 300 single points of failure that could have gone wrong in the deployment. And that's really unnecessary if you can go up there and fix it.
Dallas Campbell
Yeah, there was a really good picture of just before it got launched and they were putting the fuel into the JWST and they had these guys in like really crazy-looking spaces. I thought, yes, they're gonna send people up there with it, just in case. Alex, you're an engineer. The other bit of this acronym is manufacturing. What is the other thing? I mean, you hear about astronauts on the ISS, sort of 3D printing and that kind of stuff. As an engineer, what else can we be doing in orbit that we're not doing at the moment in terms of actually making things? Where are we now with what we're planning and where do you think it's going to end up? I don't think we need a big step change.
Alex Goodhand
I think the majority of things that we can do is more of a modification rather than a reinvention So you would take the additive manufacturing technology we currently have down here on Earth, you can then replicate that on orbit. But the difficulty is, as you were saying before, is how do you maintain this? How do you actually go about manufacturing? We're used to tactile nuts and bolts.
Dallas Campbell
Yeah.
Alex Goodhand
Yeah, we're going to be building with robots, not astronauts. And that's the part where we need to develop to bring this manufacturing in.
Dallas Campbell
Space robots, jet packs.
Alex Goodhand
Thunderball.
Dallas Campbell
But on what kind of platforms? Like, where are the robots? What's all this going to look like?
David Pile
So our next generation after the jet pack is our mission robotic vehicle, which effectively is a satellite with some big robot arms on the front. And as Alex says, you know, it's a robot that can do various things on orbit. The first thing we'd be doing is fitting mini jet packs. So we've gone from big jet packs to mini jet packs onto satellites, but then it can start doing repairs. But it's a very different thing than having human hands to having robot hands.
Alex Goodhand
We're used to building up from a 2D space. And this point, it is our imagination, which is the limitation because we go on what we already know. So you could use the size of a capsule already as your build platform. Whereas now what we typically use is a 2D plane and we build from there, or it just could be a 3D structure and we can build upon this.
Dallas Campbell
This might sound like an odd question, but why do we want to make things in orbit? Like just that's as a kind of a baseline, like what's the point of doing this? Like what kind of things are we going to be making and why, why don't we just make stuff on earth?
Alex Goodhand
So in terms of structure, you can take the raw materials up and build structures that we would not be able to launch. So in just terms of geometry rather than mass, I think that is a big saver in what we can manufacture.
Portia Bowman
So we can launch stuff that's much bigger. Well, we can build stuff that's much bigger than we can launch, but also is not constrained by gravity.
Dallas Campbell
And I suppose, okay, well, something like the International Space Station, for example, that was built in orbit, I suppose. It was, but it was, you're limited, still limited by the, in terms of your module size, by the size of your rocket fairing.
David Pile
So, yeah. Yeah. And also we can, we can start building things on orbit, which they don't have to survive the launch environment in the same way. So for manufacture things already on orbit, you know, at the moment we design things that have to go through quite a challenging environment as they're launched and they're rattled and the noise and all of those things which we can get away from.
Portia Bowman
It's a bit like an Ikea flat pack. So they are optimised for transportation and storage. It's a bit like that we would launch a subset of components and then assemble it in space.
Dallas Campbell
Crikey. That's one thing in terms of launching things like platforms and building stuff. But what about stuff that's going to affect people here on Earth? Why are we going to be manufacturing? I think of things like we hear, things like medicines and new kinds of materials and that kind of stuff. What is the benefit of being in orbit, free of gravity?
David Pile
So a lot of this, these are the things that we're really trying, I think, all to figure out. But yeah, when you're in microgravity or no gravity, you can start building things in a different way. Instead of, we did something recently with one of the universities and we're looking at potentially 3D printing things. Well, if you 3D print on Earth, every time you get a little piece of that plastic comes out, it falls to the ground, whereas it doesn't on orbit. So you can print things in a very different way. You don't need to support them as they're being built because they just float.
Dallas Campbell
That's interesting. And also the other thing that people talk about are things like new materials as well, actually new alloys and such. I've always been a little bit confused about why alloys made in space or made in orbit are going to be sort of better than on Earth.
Alex Goodhand
Yeah, if you think back to GCSE science, you have your…
Dallas Campbell
It's a long time…
Alex Goodhand
So you put your molten iron ore into this crucible and you get your different sedimentation. With this, that's due to gravity, whereas you don't have this. So you can put your materials together and you can have essentially a perfect suspension and then you create your alloy that way.
Dallas Campbell
Wow. That's interesting. And so the idea is you can build these alloys and these materials and then bring them back down to Earth if you want.
David Pile
Yeah, I think one of the things that's been really successful is fibre optics on the International Space Station that has been proved that you can get much purer fibre optic cable building on the space station. Obviously cost a little bit more than building on Earth.
Dallas Campbell
Well that's the thing, yeah, I mean, so where are we with the cost of all this?
Dallas Campbell
I mean, you know, there seem to be all these new companies starting up, like your company Portia Like what's, you know, you've only been going for a few months. Where is the sort of scope of your vision at the moment where, in terms of what you want to be doing and...
Portia Bowman
Yeah, great question. So a lot of what we've just been talking about is manufacturing for use on Earth. But there's making everything we do in space much more sustainable. So space really impacts our daily lives. We've got Earth observation satellites that help us locate forest fires. We've got GPS satellites telling us exactly where we are at all times. All of these applications rely on space hardware, and it's about how can we do that more sustainably. So we reduce the need for a number of launches, we can reuse components and platforms, and we can make sure that space is safe for future generations to continue getting as much use of it out of it as we are by preventing basically us creating more space debris by launching these satellites and then kind of leaving them there.
Dallas Campbell
Space debris, that's one of those topics that just keeps coming up all the time and does this sort of factor into this particular conversation, the idea of sort of cleaning up space and making it safer, making more sustainable?
Portia Bowman
Yeah, massively. What we're trying to do is prevent more space debris from being made and part of it is cleaning up after ourselves. So can we go and dock with a spacecraft that's been, you know, not functioning for a number of years and salvage those components as you might in a scrapyard and make it into something better? In terms of a kind of business model, it has that kind of gold rush kind of feel about it?
Dallas Campbell
Is this the next big thing, the idea of manufacturing and building in space, do you think? Or is it still a little bit far away?
David Pile
I think it depends on how you measure timelines. So it's not going to happen next week, but equally, you know, people are already doing it. So yeah, it is starting and I think when there are some big breakthroughs then suddenly it may accelerate. But it's not next week. But we're very close.
Portia Bowman
I think this technology is fundamental to everything we do in space. IOSM is servicing assets. It's the infrastructure that we have on Earth. It's the petrol stations that you go to or the garage that you've got to fix your car. It's making that in space. And so space is not going to be a separate industry to everything we do on Earth. All of the industries will expand to include space elements. So I think we're really at the beginning of a space gold rush.
Dallas Campbell
It does seem like we do have to completely rethink the way we do things. I mean, we mentioned Apollo earlier on, the idea of going somewhere in a rocket and then just burning up your rocket at the end of it. There's that analogy. It's a bit like flying to New York and you're 777 and then setting fire to the 777 at the end. It seems a bit how we need to be rethinking how we do things. We do, but as a society, do we?
Alex Goodhand
But that's definitely something that we is trying to be pushed in this sector. I think if we go down the route of it, if we can make it cheaper to do it that way, there's definitely an incentive there for companies to go down that route. If you can recapture and recycle the materials and components that are already up there.
Dallas Campbell
Yeah, I think that way we can presumably show it all comes down to cost. This is a way of bringing, bringing costs down in order, in order to be able to do things.
Portia Bowman
Yeah. Instead of launching a new satellite to geostationary orbit, which costs millions, might then only need to launch a new payload or a new component which would be you know a fraction of the price.
David Pile
And the reason so we've been doing jetpacks to start with because there hasn't been that Porsche mentioned sort of the fuel station Model yeah, every car has a standard interface to put your fuel in That's not what we've done on satellite so far, but we need to do that So every satellite that goes up has a standard fueling interface Maybe a USB where you can do the electronic updates
Dallas Campbell
And is that going to be a standard thing? Is there going to be kind of legislation in place where it's like, well, if you're going to build a satellite, you have to build in stuff like that, but where it can be fixed, and it's not just going to be a one-off or...
Portia Bowman
Yeah, it is definitely a political question. It's really hard to develop standards because every company wants their own standard to win.
Dallas Campbell
Yeah. So who is going to win? How's that going to solve itself, do you think?
David Pile
Well, I think, I mean, we've been pushing from Northrop Grumman for open standards.
Dallas Campbell
Yeah.
David Pile
Because, you know, to us, although we've done some satellite servicing, we want to open up the market. So we've developed a standard which we've freely published. But I think there's room in the market for several standards, I'm sure. But it's not about being proprietary. We've seen things like, yeah, USB is not a proprietary standard. And it's developed a whole market. Everybody's got USB on. That's what we need to do for space.
Dallas Campbell
I want to talk a little bit about, okay, so obviously there are benefits for high-tech things, materials, medicines is the other manufacturing thing we talk about, semiconductors, all kinds of things, and you mentioned fibre optic cables. What about exploration? If we want to go back to the moon, we are going back to the moon apparently, or onto Mars, is in-space manufacturing the way that we're going to be able to solve the numerous problems that lie in wait for us?
Portia Bowman
Yes, absolutely. Whether or not we have humans as well as robots, there's always going to be these problems of building structures that you can't necessarily launch. It takes an awful lot to get humans to the moon or to Mars, some of the biggest rockets ever that we'll be using to do that. It's really, really important that we provide them with everything that they need and manufacturing and assembly is part of that. One of the things that I think is interesting to look at is how you can change these tools that we send with the robots or with the humans. How do you mean change the tools? It's kind of like an adventure. So if you were going to the polls, you know, before there was high-tech equipment to do that, you want to take stuff with you, but it has to be light, you have to be able to carry it. You know, anything extra that you take is going to weigh you down. It's pretty much the same with space. So it has to be flexible and interchangeable and have as many uses as possible. But also everything that you're using the tools with have to be designed to be used with the tools. It's like having a screwdriver, you can go down to a screw fix or wherever and you can buy screws that fit in your one or two of your screwdrivers. It's standardized, you can get it from anywhere. That's what it's important for us to be looking at.
Dallas Campbell
And as an engineer, you mentioned this a little bit earlier on, but in terms of the skills, the way that we do engineering, how is engineering going to have to change if we are going to be doing it in orbit or can we just wholesale take what we know about engineering on earth and just stick it in space? I think mostly we can go down that route.
Alex Goodhand
I think one of the worst scenarios we can go down is this is the way it's always been done therefore this is the way we carry on. I think that's how engineers work as far as that has to change. So as Portia was saying, end effectors on robotic arms, so the tools that you have on the end, you can swap this out for cameras, grippers, printing heads. So you can take this one tool, which can be our arm and hand, wherever this may be and then you can use the material which you have at hand to manufacture, whether that's what you take with you or Regolith, for example, on the moon.
Dallas Campbell
Some of the stuff they do with Regolith is amazing. I noticed, I saw it was Blue Origin, I think last, this week or last week, they're like, oh yeah, we've made a solar panel out of lunar regolith. I'm like, that's really did they do that? Or did I dream that? No, well, that's, I mean, that to me is just like mind boggling.
David Pile
Absolutely. And that's, you know, when we go to the moon and eventually to Mars, you know, we've got to use the resources that are there. Yeah. So we've got to practice that and figure out how we're going to do it. Because we certainly can't launch it all from Earth. So it's, I mean, that's a, it's a huge emerging area.
Dallas Campbell
It seems like a really odd thing. It's like, you know, lunar regolith is just, well, it's just some dirt. And And it's like the fact that you can actually make a solar panel out of it. Like I know that, you know, you can use things like centering in order to make building blocks out of lunar regolith, but actually it's like, oh my God, we could make solar panels.
Alex Goodhand
It's very impressive. It is very impressive. Yeah. But another thing that you can use your moon for is the fuel station we were talking about earlier. You can take this material and take it onto Mars if this is what you wish to do, because it's just easier to launch from, from the moon than it is from here.
Dallas Campbell
Let's talk about going back to the moon. I know Northrop Grumman, when I think of your company, your company, David, belongs to you, I think of the moon. Are you guys involved in Artemis in terms of building things and within the idea of in-space manufacturing, what are you doing at the moment that's part of that?
David Pile
Yeah, so absolutely. So at the moment we're building the HALO module, the habitat and logistics module for the space station around the moon.
Dallas Campbell
Right.
David Pile
And we're involved in the competitive process of NASA for the lunar lander and for the lunar rover. So yeah, I mean, we've got a big team working on the lunar economy. With our satellite servicing, everything we do for the Moon, as Pusch was saying, we need to design it to be serviceable and to be flexible and to be sustainable.
Dallas Campbell
Yeah.
David Pile
So, yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, we've been doing Moon stuff for quite a while, and we continue to do that, which is great.
Dallas Campbell
I suppose that's the thing when we think about Apollo, it's just there was nothing built into it to be sustainable at all. And people always say, "Well, why did Apollo end?" It's like, well, that's kind of why. So I guess when we talk about, you know, the new space economy, this is really fundamental, isn't it? That we can make things that can be fixed and built and...
Alex Goodhand
I still find it bizarre that there's a talk of lunar economy. It's... my head is not past this world yet.
Dallas Campbell
No, exactly. Yeah.
Portia Bowman
Yeah, but it's really important that we build it sustainably. We've already reached a debris threshold in LEO in low Earth orbit, where if we don't launch anything else, the amount of debris will continue to increase, which is terrifying because it could mean that we can't go to space at all.
Dallas Campbell
I don't think people quite realize the problem. It's a bit like climate change. We've kind of got our heads in the sand. We sort of know it exists and people talk about, oh, well, Leo's a bit full of junk, but actually it could really get bad if you don't do stuff about it.
Portia Bowman
It already is. We have to start cleaning it up and preventing it from happening. and no longer can we launch without considering, you know, how do we manage the end of life of satellites.
Dallas Campbell
And there's quite a lot of interesting ideas about cleaning them up. You know, you read about sort of space nets and javelins that fire into bits and huge vacuum cleaners and things. Are any of you involved in those sorts of ideas?
David Pile
Well, certainly with our, some emission robotic vehicle could clean up debris and it's certainly a mission we are considering. But coming back to the business model, That's where it becomes a challenge. When it comes down to who's going to actually do the payment to clear up space.
Dallas Campbell
Yeah.
David Pile
Do we come up with some sort of tax that when you launch one satellite, you've got to bring two pieces of debris down or some sort of model like that and it's how we come up with that as a space-faring world, I guess.
Dallas Campbell
Yeah.
Dallas Campbell
And presumably low earth orbit is just getting increasingly busy with, with stuff. We seem to be launching more and more things. I mean, admittedly, they're getting smaller and smaller and lighter and lighter, but it's getting an increasingly busy place. I mean, I always kind of think of it a little bit like we should think of it as a continent. We should think of it a bit like sort of Antarctica or the oceans, give it that level of status of protection.
Portia Bowman
Yeah, definitely.
Alex Goodhand
I think it's the awareness though, isn't it? It's how do you send a news reporter out to the world with all this "look at this disaster we've got on our hands". showing that we can show the plastic in the ocean but you can't really show the debris. It's difficult. No, if you show someone the representation like a simulation of what's going on on-orbit it's just an image. Yeah. But I think now it is being taken into consideration with the product lifecycle so it is your responsibility to bring that back. But at the moment as you're saying that it's quite a big cluster already so how do you bring a tax in to bring something back is...
Dallas Campbell
Yeah. I want to ask a little bit about collaboration as well and kind of where we are in the UK with this idea of space manufacturing. Where does the UK sit? Are we kind of way behind the US? Is there some kind of space race? Like what does the kind of landscape look like? And with Northrop, for example, and your company, are you working with other companies or is it all sort of separate? How does it all work?
David Pile
I certainly find within the space industry, there's a, there is a lot of collaboration here. We compete against each other on some things, but we, we work together a lot. Yeah, certainly. Yeah. The US is a, is a massive space market. They've They've been doing it for a long time. Yeah, they're very big. But the UK's got some really great specialities. There's a great company, SpaceForge, down in South Wales that are looking to do some manufacturing on orbit. We're doing some work with them and there's so many great ideas in the UK that we could really take a lead if we really want to focus on it.
Dallas Campbell
Yeah. We hear that a lot, taking the lead. And then do we actually take the lead? Or I don't know how much of it is hot air, how much of it is PR, and how much of it is really happening?
Alex Goodhand
So the way I look at it is I kind of come from it not from a space point of view, I look at it as a manufacturing point of view. And you look at the British manufacturing industry and it's in a very good position. And as I was saying before, we don't need a step change. We can bring this in. You look at manufacturers, we've got JCB, Rolls Royce, we've got some very good British manufacturing engineers who can be brought into this industry. You look at this and you go, oh, well, we can't get into the space industry. It's the space industry, it's the hallowed ground.
Dallas Campbell
Yeah. Well, it's interesting actually, because Rolls Royce, I mean, they do some amazing stuff. Certainly in terms of the moon they're built, you know nuclear reactors on the moon and all kinds of exciting things that they're doing.
Alex Goodhand
Yeah, absolutely. It's trying to bring more of these British companies into it JCB I can imagine
Dallas Campbell
Yellow Yeah, what about what about robotics, what about… are you working with other companies as well?
Portia Bowman
I mean, yes. Yes very new.
Dallas Campbell
So yes, who else are you working with?
Portia Bowman
We've got a couple of collaborators so far, so it's only three months old, but lots of support from, you know, a couple of universities and from Catapult, looking at who we can work with more in the future. Space is collaborative, you know, we're always going to be working together. These projects are so ambitious that it's really important that we all collaborate for a better future. But also internationally. UK can lead in areas, for example robotics. We've got a lot of high tech that we can spin in from perhaps the nuclear sector. But it's really important that we continue to collaborate.
Dallas Campbell
So we've talked a little bit about your satellite infuelling stuff, a little bit about stuff you're doing for Artemis as well. Beyond that, where do you see this particular area of space in the next, I don't know, decade, say?
David Pile
Yeah, well, certainly for our space logistics business. As I mentioned, the mission robotic vehicle, which is the satellite with the robot arms on that. When we start seeing things going wrong on satellites, we can actually design things on Earth, so a bracket or a replacement solar panel, whatever. We can launch that, our mission robotic vehicle then goes and picks it up, and it has a tool belt and where it literally sort of slots things into its tool belt, it then goes off to the satellite and it fixes them. So that, I mean, that's going to become real in 2025, 2026. So it's, it's, it's being built at the moment.
Dallas Campbell
That's amazing. I mean, in terms of things like robotic arms, is it a step change from like the arm that's on the ISS at the moment? Is it, I mean, I think about this, the Canada arm that's on the ISS and what, what that can do. And I think that's pretty cool, but it's still quite limited.
Alex Goodhand
It’s limited in the fact that you won't have an end effector on there that can do 3D printing or as a very fine placement as what you can possibly take up with your tool belt. That'll be quite impressive. But no, I don't think it's a massive step change. It's an iteration. It's enhancement. It's what we can carry on and do. And from there we can build and we can assemble, disassemble and replace.
Dallas Campbell
That's good. We talk a lot about how space is this great industry and certainly in the UK, we're sort of punching above our weight in terms of what we can do. Is there an optimism about in space manufacturing? Do you think in terms of things like driving the economy and making this a big showcase for British industry?
David Pile
I think one of the big, you know, one of the big projects we've sort of been pushing in the UK is solar power from space. Yeah. Which is very much, that's got to be enabled by on orbit, in orbit, assembly, manufacture.
Dallas Campbell
We've touched a little bit on this on this podcast before, but I'm quite keen to sort of pick up on that. Is that something that you think will actually happen or is this, you know, it depends on who you're talking to, that people are like, no, that's never going to happen or yes, it'll happen, but not for 100 years or?
David Pile
To my mind, yeah, I think it will happen very, very soon. I guess the scale is the question. Yeah. You can certainly do it. You can demonstrate it can work. Can we scale it to become the next big energy source for the Earth? Yeah, that's the way the question is.
Dallas Campbell
And that's something that would have to be built in orbit, as it were. You couldn't just...
Portia Bowman
Yeah, it's kilometers wide.
Dallas Campbell
Portia, just for those of you who don't know what we're talking about, explain in-orbit solar panels. So the idea is...
Portia Bowman
It's basically equivalent to solar panels on Earth, except you're not limited by clouds. You can maximize the amount of solar power that you can get. You can build a kilometre-wide solar array, which means you're not an eyesore, you're not going to annoy people when you've put it on their land. We've got green belt areas just around the corner in Oxford where there's this massive solar farm being proposed. If you put it in space, it's not really going to bother anyone.
Dallas Campbell
Well, you never know. I don't know, but the astronomers get very cross about things like Starlink because it spoils the night sky with that. I don't know, kilometre-wide arrays of solar panels
Portia Bowman
Yeah, we definitely have to consider it. So that's the idea.
Dallas Campbell
So new solar panels in space for the obvious reason, how do you then get the energy back down to the Earth?
Alex Goodhand
Unfortunately it's not a space laser. I know. How do we do it? Through microwave so you can, the clouds are no limitation. Whereas if you sent a space laser through, you're going to have some limitations there because it's visible light.
Dallas Campbell
Just as with your engineering hat on, just explain to to us how we microwave the energy down from...
Alex Goodhand
Oh it's very boring with...
Dallas Campbell
No, no, no, just make it entertaining.
Alex Goodhand
Okay, okay. So trying to time people shouting at the perfect timing, so you get this wave at exactly the same point it's happening with the microwaves that are emitted from there. So you can trigger them at the right point, so they can target the rectangles we would have down here on Earth.
Dallas Campbell
Wait, so you collect it in space and then you microwave the energy down.
Alex Goodhand
So there's a collecting point. Absolutely, yes.
Dallas Campbell
And also how, because presumably they're spread, so how big is the... I think we're talking square kilometers.
Alex Goodhand
Of the receiver?
Dallas Campbell
Yeah.
Alex Goodhand
If we are moving on, this is my opinion, if you can replace the power stations that we currently have dotted around which are no longer existence, we have the subsystems already there for the network grid. You remove the power plant that's there, possibly coal fire, which is what we're we're trying to move away from. Yeah. You replace that with a rectenna. We received that energy and it's already there on the grid.
Dallas Campbell
That's amazing. Honestly, that would be that.
David Pile
That's a great solution.
Dallas Campbell
Yeah. David, how far away is this?
David Pile
There are projects which are demonstrating it now. So we're delivering a project in the US for our customers, which is demonstrating, but not at this sort of scale. And the UK government funded a large study last year published. I think it's on the UK government site about the space solar power initiative. But again, it's coming back to the scaling it up. So what we don't want is just a little demonstrator. We want something which is actually going to tapping to the grid and get rid of coal or other dirty fuel sources.
Dallas Campbell
And this is something that the UK is going to be at the forefront, do you think?
Portia Bowman
It seems like it. Yeah. It could be a good solution for our energy crisis. I don't see it happening in 10 years, but in 30 or 40.
Dallas Campbell
It's a bit like nuclear fusion, isn't it?
Portia Bowman
Yeah.
Dallas Campbell
It's always coming. It's always coming. Yeah. It does say, yeah, I mean, you're right though about, you know, solar panels on Earth and they take up a lot of room. They take up a lot of space. Space is relatively big.
David Pile
Yeah, but there's been some discussions around maybe countries that have more open spaces than we do, maybe desert areas where actually there's a whole new economy that if you could take a piece of desert and put a big rectangle on there, And suddenly a country's got a, it's like having oil, but suddenly they've got energy coming down from, from all over on orbit.
Dallas Campbell
In terms of that, where's the money coming from? How can we sort of get it started?
David Pile
That's, that's always the key question, Dallas.
Dallas Campbell
[Laughter] Who's paying for this? You know, when I hear like government reports, I'm always slightly, oh, okay. You know, because I always worry about, you know, when, when lots of government funding goes into projects and then suddenly the government funding stops, then everything else stops. Do you think this is we can get the ball rolling I suppose is my question.
Alex Goodhand
I think it's multiple organisations are going for it rather than just one. If it was just one you'd be kind of skeptical but there are serious conversations being had across continents.
Dallas Campbell
Yeah and where are you going to be in all this Alex with your engineer hat on?
Alex Goodhand
I'll be in a dark room cowering with a calculator. Designing awesome robot arms and things. Yeah It's when people come up, can you just, and we want this, as you're saying, kilometer length beam, you go, oh yeah that's very simple, not a problem at all, but yeah that comes up to the manufacturing on orbit. Yeah. It's no way could you send that up from here in one piece, and like you were saying before, how, even if you could manufacture it here, how do you get it to survive the launch? This is something that needs to be manufactured on orbit.
Dallas Campbell
Yeah, it's funny, it does seem that, you know, when I was watching sci-fi movies in the 1970s, you'd watch something like 2001 and there was this lunar economy there and ships going from the earth to the moon and such and it never really happened and we always wondered like why has this never happened? Why did Apollo just end? Why didn't we do it? It does seem like we're actually getting the momentum to actually do stuff and actually make this space economy happen.
David Pile
Yeah, absolutely. I think there's so many things in the space economy, It's really exciting. But I'm also waiting for my hoverboard.
Portia Bowman
That's true, me too.
Dallas Campbell
Listen, if Northrop Grumman can't make a blimmin' hoverboard...
Portia Bowman
They were too busy with the jetpacks.
Dallas Campbell
You must be able to, you know, crikey. Portia, it's all new and exciting where you are. What's the most exciting thing? What are you most looking forward to in the future? Is it improving life on Earth or is it exploring the cosmos?
Portia Bowman
Definitely improving life on Earth and making sure that we don't just go out and willy-nilly explore and launch cars into space for no reason.
Dallas Campbell
Well, yeah, that's an interesting one. Reusable rockets, hey, that's pretty good. But Tesla's in space, I know, gets people's backs up.
Portia Bowman
Yes, I mean, I think there's a middle ground. It's very inspirational. Exploration is always going to capture people's interest. But there's so many things that we do in space that does benefit life on Earth that isn't necessarily immediately obvious, that I think is perhaps often more important or more, I find that more interesting. And what I really want to do and be part of is making sure that we can continue to do all, use all space in all of the wonderful ways that we do now, not just to go and, okay, let's go and put some people on the moon. I mean, that's great. There's going to be a lot of stuff that comes out of it. But what are the things that we can do that directly impact, you know, people here on earth?
Dallas Campbell
That's a really good point. I mean, actually, you know, we talked about why did Apollo end? Well, because there wasn't enough coming back. You know, if you open up a trade route on earth whenever in the 1600s, there needs to be a flow of trade. And if there's nothing coming back, then it's going to dry up pretty quickly, I suppose. In terms of exciting things, Alex, what about you? What's the kind of...
Alex Goodhand
I'm much more shallow. I'm very much so. It's more about the technology that's available and the structures that we can build. For me, that's what's going to open my eyes, is if I can be involved in manufacturing huge structures on orbit, whether it's the next James Webb on the far side of the moon.
Dallas Campbell
Are we already designing the next James Webb? I think we probably are.
Portia Bowman
Yes.
Dallas Campbell
And it's going to be fully serviceable.
Portia Bowman
I believe so.
Dallas Campbell
Amazing.
Alex Goodhand
Yeah, I'd be quite interested to get involved on that, if the UK can get involved.
Dallas Campbell
David, what's your thing that you're most excited about?
David Pile
Coming back to in-orbit service and manufacturing, getting that market really going that, you know, that every satellite does have a set of standards on it, so we can actually, you know, really develop the market and make it more sustainable and make space far more accessible. And I think we're getting there, but we just need to take those steps forward as an industry and, you know, get more people to understand it and why all those benefits from space really are real.
Dallas Campbell
We talked a little bit about collaboration, but obviously when you're dealing with new technologies, new ways of doing things, there has to be a degree of secrecy, I suppose intellectual property. How cautious do we have to be in terms of the way that we work as engineers? I mean, you know, we have to be polite obviously and we have to be collaborative, but also presumably we have to be a little bit cautious.
Portia Bowman
Well, it's like any business, you know, you want to keep your secret so someone can't do it, you know, someone who might have more money than you can't come and do it faster and take your market share.
David Pile
Yeah, it's intellectual property. What you create from your head is you want it to have value. So, and the way you keep value is by looking after it and then sharing it at the appropriate time. You don't share your super ideas with everybody on day one because that's just not the way the world works.
Alex Goodhand
Some very good conversations you have with people who want to tell you about their idea, but we can't tell you exactly what it is, what it does or how much it costs.
Dallas Campbell
I'm terrible about that though, because I'm like, if I have a good idea I want to tell everyone's story where I have this brilliant idea. The other question I keep coming back to in these sorts of discussions is how do we sell this idea because it's you know if you talk to talk to my mum about space she's like what are you talking about how do we get across the idea that actually we can benefit so much you know life on earth in so many different ways by manufacturing in space how can we sell that concept to the general public beyond just you know people who work in the space industry because it's not very people just don't know about it I think.
Portia Bowman
Yeah I agree, I think that there's a lot of things that we can make as we've talked about earlier that will benefit life on earth, for example pharmaceuticals that you can't manufacture on earth, but there's other things you know all of the things that we do in space, mostly they're done for a reason and the point that in orbit servicing and manufacturing gets across is doing these things more sustainably. So at the moment there's a big focus on not having single-use plastics for example. It's pretty equivalent to space. At the moment satellites are designed to be single-use and they are left in effectively the ocean.
Dallas Campbell
They are single-use drinking straws.
Portia Bowman
They are exactly. So how can we design this to be repairable, to be serviceable and that's where the servicing and manufacturing comes in.
Dallas Campbell
But we need to sell it as an idea, we need people to understand actually what we're doing and what's being planned because I just don't think people really kind of...
David Pile
I mean even now, much information comes from space and we don't we're not really aware of it you know weather forecasting how deforestation is happening plastic in the oceans i've even heard you know tracking whale migration patterns it's all done with space assets yeah but we just sort of almost take it as a given you know that we find out these things without saying well actually it's coming from space.
Dallas Campbell
What we need is some kind of like podcast series that discusses but also you know we mentioned politics i think if you get the public behind then the politicians generally tend to follow as a rule.
Alex Goodhand
I think if we take away people's GPS we'll get behind it.
Dallas Campbell
That's a good idea isn't it?
Alex Goodhand
I don't know about you guys but I use my GPS to get my way here.
Portia Bowman
Yeah every day.
Alex Goodhand
So for space technology that we use and taken for granted that is one of the biggest ones. If you take that away I'll back to reading road signs I don't think so.
Dallas Campbell
I love road signs.
Portia Bowman
I'd pull over on the side of the road and get the map out.
Alex Goodhand
Yeah your big map out there that'd be very good. No I'll stick to GPS.
Dallas Campbell
Okay good. We're all excited though, we're all excited about what we can build in space.
Alex Goodhand
Absolutely.
Dallas Campbell
Thank you so much for popping by and sharing your wisdom and sharing your knowledge and sharing your enthusiasm with us. It's been a great pleasure, thank you.
Portia Bowman
Thank you.
David Pile
Thank you very much.
Alex Goodhand
Thank you for your time.
Dallas Campbell
Thank you very much for listening. Thank you for your company. To hear future episodes of In Orbit, be sure to subscribe on your favourite podcast app. And to find out more about how space is empowering industries between episodes, you can visit the Catapult website or join them on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.