And so it begins the UK government public relations machine whirrs into action and canny science and innovation (and space!) minister Lord Drayson dangles the space agency carrot by not denying it could be announced next week
On 22 July in London there is to be a press conference about the new European Space Agency facility that is to be located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Centre, also home to the now privatised UK Atomic Energy Authority. The facility, for robotics, is supposed to herald a new level of investment by the UK in the European agency’s activitiesSince its unveiling in February 2008 the full detail of the 2008-2012 and beyond (allegedly) UK civil space strategy has been hidden behind talk of ongoing negotiations for the ESA’s 2008 ministerial meeting spending round decisions and review after review about the UK’s possible role in an international exploration effort
Public and media alike have been tantalised with the prospect of a more engaged UK, with possibly greater space spending, and the UK’s latest contribution to the ESA budget seems to suggest that may be true
Although the science community has probably been terrified at the prospect of its space science funding being sacrificed on the altar of robotic and spacecraft engineering that might support participation in a human spaceflight programme
Last year UK space insiders told Hyperbola about the prospects for an industry, government innovation and growth team and back then this blog asked the space minister about that. Half a year later that growth team has been launched and those same insiders also told this blog that a UK space agency might be in the offing. And then ESA announced that one of its six astronauts is a UK citizen. For a Briton you had to wonder if this was another dimension
Of course in good UK government tradition a rose by any other name might still not be a rose. Just because its labelled UK space agency does not make it true. One has to ask, can the grip that the UK science community has on space spending really be broken and a new formula for government spaceflight expenditure come about? Is this video of an exultation of reusable launchers’ benefits by Lord Drayson showing a minister who is already demob happy or an indication of greater change?
And to make the prospects for change even more remote the current UK government is heading to most certain defeat at the general election that has to take place by June 2010 – the blue in this opinion poll graph is the Conservative party, the governing Labour party is the red line
With so much anticipation over the last 18-months, so many reviews, so many surprises, one wonders what on Earth we will get on 22 July
Sadly I can’t be there to witness this, I’ll be in deepest, darkest Wales (that’s one of the four country’s in our historic union of nations that is the United Kingdom by the way) talking unmanned air vehicles (the other part of my job)
