UK space firms forced to adjust their models of how the universe works as they lose out on Copernicus contracts From the department of "chickens coming home to roost" is news that the European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded prime contracts for the next six Copernicus missions, and the UK has missed out. The Copernicus Sentinels pump Earth observation data into ground-based services and, coupled with input from air and ground stations, …
If we are still pumping cash into it then it isn't eu funded! , as I said, no play no pay, remove all funding, and just to avoid being shafted again stop funding or buying anything from abroad. Get back to developing and making it ourselves, when we have recreated the expertise we can export it or at least not give money away
If you can persuade everybody in the country not to buy phones, tablets, TVs, most cars, drink decent wine or eat anything but potatoes, etc, etc, then you might be able to not import anything.
If people would still like things like phones and TVs, then you could build up the manufacturing capacity but it will take years (if not decades). Of course, your products will be orders of magnitude more expensive and you will still need to import sub assemblies or raw materials. Oh, and you will need to train staff as well. For a great case study of what happens when people with no manufacturing skill try to build something, read about the DeLorean saga.
Apart from cheeses, frogs legs and wine, the other main french inventions are striking and rioting, and not to mention some of the rudest hotel and bar staff i have ever met. A friend of mine who investigated setting up business in Paris gave up, the reason being, he said, was that once you employ a french man, not only do you somehow acquire automatic responsibility for the rest of his family, its also becomes impossible, under any circumstances, to sack him.
You also need somewhere to launch your satellites. Preferably near the equator to have earth's spin assisting you.Maybe Diego Garcia (if the Americans don't mind)
I imagine ESA are happy with their Centre Spatial Guyanais launch site in French Guiana. For one thing, it is closer to the equator than Diego Garcia.
TBH that's a bit of a myth.
When you break down ascent losses you find the difference between the Ariane 4 launch site (which was also Guiyana) and the Space Shuttle Florida) site is a whopping 18m/s.
OTOH by having a better ascent trajectory (which Shuttle had) it lowered its "gravity losses" compared to A4 by 344 m/s
The big with with a rotating earth comes when its compared against a non-rotating earth.
Which would be a bad thing for all sorts of other easons anyway.
Bigger issue is the inclination change required from the various sites - which is why the ISS is at the inclination it is, to make it reasonable to get to from Khazakstan (without dropping stages on people) and florida (without dropping stages up the east coast)
"Get back to developing and making it ourselves"
Like the UK's orbital rocket capabilities? Or the jet airliners that fell out of the sky because Manglement wouldn't let the designers talk to and _train_ the assembly line workers about the differences between pressurised/unpressurised construction (and worse, changed key construction parameters without telling anyone what they'd done)?
If we are still pumping cash into it then it isn't eu funded! , as I said, no play no pay, remove all funding, and just to avoid being shafted again stop funding or buying anything from abroad. Get back to developing and making it ourselves, when we have recreated the expertise we can export it or at least not give money away
Maybe you can make a start by working out how to employ British factory workers at £2.27 per hour.
Give it a rest. Were sick of the constant sour grapes from boring idiot remainers like you who cant accept you lost FOUR democratic votes on the subject. Stop whining and bitching, its in your interest the UK does well, or YOU are out of a job (Im retired, so im all right, Jack). So stop knocking your fellow countrymen, accept democracy and get behind your country. or just STFU. OK ?
Funny how the EU kept saying 'nothing can be the same after brexit' yet most of its red line FTA demand require everything to be exactly the same, especially the 'right' to continue robbing fish out our waters. Did you know the French took approx 80% of the total quota for cod, hake and haddock and we only got 6%, and then had to buy some of the rest back off them ?. Never mind, once they blow it and we leave no deal, the French fishing fleet will be but a distant memory in a couple of years. And we'll have all the fish, and they'll be buying it of us.
"Did you know the French took approx 80% of the total quota for cod, hake and haddock and we only got 6%, and then had to buy some of the rest back off them ?"
Every fishing boat has to buy a quota licence. Who was it who decided to sell so much to the French? Or was it just the the British boat owners decided they didn't want to pay as much as the French were prepared to pay? And if not, why not? Were the French boats subsidised or more efficient or something?
Not a single mention of the ESA's £100m investment in a new Business Incubation Centre in Leicester?
Copernicus is an EU project like Galileo. So we will no longer get to participate (pending the new UK-EU Treaty).
But the ESA is a what-you-put-in-you-get-out agency. We contribute money, and the ESA will continue to award a proportionate work-share to the UK. There's no "winning" or "losing out" - we are guaranteed our share of ESA projects.
But we won't get a share of EU projects awarded to the ESA for delivery because we're not part of the EU (unless we successfully get a Swiss-type deal which permits participation, which is why the Swiss are able to work on Galileo).
Of course not.
And in other News.. well, on the BBC, Politico and City AM, there's a story about organised crime gangs being arrested across Europe (750 arrests, 77 guns, 2 tonnes of drugs), thanks to cracking an encrypted app - hey, that's an IT story, Reg must be covering that.
Oh, no, forgot, no anti-BREXIT slant possible.
Actually there is an anti Brexit slant possible. Post Brexit we won’t be given any such information from the French police, and the U.K. criminals will continue as before. (Unless there happens to be some sort of data sharing agreement. Which means having a GDPR style agreement. Which means an ECHR agreement. So it probably won’t happen)
The whole thing was run as a EuroJust campaign, with help from Europol. Here is the official press release: Dismantling of an encrypted network sends shockwaves through organised crime groups across Europe
The way things are looking now the UK will leave EuroJust and Europol too.
Oh please. We get information from US police, from Australian police, from Swiss police and from Moroccan police.
Why wouldn't we continue to get information from French police?
Perhaps before drawing such silly conclusions you should look into the law enforcement exclusions with GDPR and also the difference between ECHR and ECR.
Hmm, I wonder what this article is? It seems to be by something called 'The Register'. In fact it's the main story on their front page.
Do you feel like an idiot now? because you are an idiot.
I did check the times because I'm not an idiot. It took them 8 hours to write the story (by the way, you can't spell 'story'). As you wrote your comment they were in the process of writing the story, thus entirely invalidating your stupid 'they won't cover it because it has no anti-brexit slant' point: they did, in fact, cover it, because it's an IT story and they're journalists who cover IT stories.
You may not have noticed, but The Register is not a huge 24-hour news organisation employing hundreds of people – they don't (or almost never, I have not checked) publish anything at all at the weekend for instance. It sometimes takes them a while to write things.
I'm sorry that your brain is only small, but I can't help that it is.
We did cover it here.
We'd love to cover every story possible immediately, though bear in mind we've only got 13 full-time writers and editors, a total of 16 regular contributors and editors, across three continents.
We make a lot of noise for quite a small team compared to others.
C.
And I think one of the key points is the continuing uncertainty. This has been the case since this fiasco started with all the endless internal bickering in parliament and the courts. Uncertainty has probably caused (and still is causing) more damage than anything else has and nobody has the foggiest what sort of clusterfuck we are going to be saddled with at the end of it.
1. We know exactly what we wil have at the end. A free soverign nation not ruled by unaccountable forigners.
2. and we know whos fault all the bickering and uncertaintity lies with:
a) Theresa 'BRINO' May and her UE lapdogs Olly Robbins
b) 20 traitorous Tory MP's in the pay of the Eu intent on thwarting the will of the people
c) 16.4 million remainers who cant accept they lost FOUR democratic votes on the subject
d) The Soros Stooge Gina Miller (whos attempts to thwart Brexit backfired and instead got the Leave date fixed in law. Stupid woman)
e) The UK news Media for aiding and abetting the distribution of a three year long campaign of fake news, alarmism, disinformation and plain old lies, and conducting highly partisan and bigoted news coverage and reporting
And lets not forget the Mentioned in Dispatches:
Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, the Alpha Global Elite Stooges
Heseline, Clark, Hammond, Carney et al, for conducting negotiations with a foriegn power with the intent to usurp the British Parliament, democracy and the Crown, and undertaking wrecking missions in parliament.
Fascinating argument you put forward in the name of your 'democracy'.
Ridicule and demonise those who have the temerity to hold a different opinion and exercise their own democratic rights. Attack the press for conveying the opinions of others if they deviate from your own.
Nah... you are going to have to do better than that to convince me. Try starting with a reasoned rational argument, avoid the emotive adjectives and we may get somewhere.
In reality though, I am sure this is not something you are capable of as it takes some actual thought. Its far easier to descend straight into faux nationalism to attempt to take the moral high ground, hey?
You'd have to be pretty ignorant, stupid or gullible, to think otherwise.*
Still at least Blighty is hard at work on the GPS**
*I'm not discounting the possibility of people being all three of course.
**Gammon Positioning System.
I'm reliably informed that it's now to be known as the Little England Satellite System.
The UK was promised that it would get the moon on a stick if it voted for Brexit, but it looks like all it's going to end up with is LESS.
They couldn't take control of their bowel motions.*
*This isn't particularly aimed at the current crop of incompetents - there isn't anyone from any party that I can see would do better. It is unlikely to change any time soon - even Tony Blair has said he's pleased his children aren't interested in going into Westminster because it is such a toxic environment, FFS!
@Intractable Potsherd
"even Tony Blair has said he's pleased his children aren't interested in going into Westminster because it is such a toxic environment, FFS!"
I think that brings relief for more than just Blair. Now if he could just sod off out of UK politics.
They seem to be well in control of withholding safety critical data and declaring community COVID infection rates (Pillar 2) an Official Secret in order to keep bad news from contradicting the official releases
Except it kind of caught up with them in the end...
Some years ago I was involved in tendering for a logic system to be installed on a European nuclear site.
We took pains to be certain the choice of hardware was not restricted. We asked specific questions and got comfortable answers.
Tendered and lost. Ah well, you win some and you lose some. Move on.
It was only a year or two later I happened across a specification document from the same organisation, which very clearly defined hardware for that kind of application as that from a (inferior) German supplier.
We also have very strong suspicion that it would have made a huge difference if we were a French company.
We were pissed at the bought of being merely bid fodder.
Yes the playing field wasn't level...
This was one of the motivations for the UK promoting the creation of the Single Market and having a seat at the EU table that set the rules for the SM. Subsequently the UK used its position in the EU to increasingly put teeth into the "level playing field" rules by getting them encoded in law and thus directly challengable through the courts and also getting other members to abide by the rules. Whilst not perfect, it was moving in the right direction, namely looking after UK interests...
With the UK leaving the EU and SM, the "level playing field" rules will no longer apply (ie. EU business don't even need to pay lip service to them), so expect things to get worse rather than better. Eg. not being invited to tender.
There is an actual open bidding process (where the best products or approach should get picked) and the ticky box version to satisfy funding, equality legislation or whatever.
BTW All EU project bids can specify a minimum local content level.
AFAIK UK govt bids never did this.Which is why stuff got built by Germans, French and Italians.
Nothing to do with the EU. British politicians and British civil servants.
"UK govt had more faith in Germans (particularly) but to a lesser extent French and Italians actually delivering the thing that was procured"
And for bloody good reason - The same reason governments and large orgs around the world tended to bin British bids having being repeatedly stung by fraudulent bidding and suppliers who would "run away" from their obligations
I would argue that there was a slight failing on behalf of your bid teamm not to understand the situation here.
Having been on both sides of that situation before in past lives, our bid teams were very good at researching our competitors and picking out if any of the unique features that only our competitors had appeared into a tender spec. If they were there, then that tender had been "got" by a competitor, so we would just stick in a token effort so we stay on the framework rather than go all out.
If not then go all out to win. We also worked hard to improve our market and business intelligence to try and get in ahead of tender in the future.
Why did the UK vote to leave, because EU contracts never came here, German and French gvmt never buy from anyone else, our gvmt sacrificed our industry on the altar of being good Europeans. If you want to know who to blame look no further than a European worshipping civil service and a bunch of weak willed, grease pole climbing, back pocket filling charlatons collectively known as politicians (not party political I hate them all)
I bet our chicken politicians and our europe worshipping civil servants will not take the only appropriate action. The obvious and only reasonable response is to immediately stop all UK funding to ESA and all other European projects. We need to build a navigation system of our own so use the money for that, then invest in creating rockets and launch facilities, after all we used to have them. Stop squandering our money by giving it to these unpleasant and ungrateful bar stewards
As much as the your answer might sound 'bitter' upon first read, I'll agree. UK left EU to do things on their own, and it is both ignorant to believe that UK concerns would be considered after the fact, and silly to not follow through on their promise/threat by continuing to fund EU projects rather than create your own.
However, note that does NOT necessarily guarantee [market] success in the endeavour - only that the idea was to do things on your own, so let's see how that goes along.
The problem is that ESA membership, even without EU membership, is still a net benefit for a country that takes its aerospace industry seriously. There are a number of non-EU members that are ESA members. There is a reason for that.
Of course the UK can leave ESA but that doesn’t fit in with the UK’s strategy to develop its aerospace industry.
We just have to be realistic. If an ESA project is EU funded (such as Galileo) then non-EU members can’t expect to have any serious involvement in it. If an ESA project is funded by, let’s say, the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and the UK chips in funding wise then the UK will be a serious contributor as well.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
I should have thought the statistical evidence is that at least 17,410,742 British citizens are completely incapable of being "realistic"
Even when the consequences are explained in language an adolescent could comprehend.
Oh dear, still sore that the British people have faith in their own country? Upset that we have left the EU?
Tough. We've left the EU. We did so for good reasons and now we're going to enjoy the advantages of free trade across the world, unhindered by the protectionist continental political control. Better yet, we have a head start on all of the remaining EU nations who will have to join us when the EU collapses.
It's already on its way. I'm finding this all very entertaining.
Cummings? Entirely irrelevant. I was campaigning to leave the EU in the 90s. The only people that care about him are the people upset that they lost the referendum, lost the General Election, lost the European Elections and lost the other General Election. Why, it's almost as though the British people have consistently and repeatedly voted to leave the EU, which is why we have left the EU.
Enjoy being part of a strong independent nation.
At last.
Someone who will articulate those reasons beyond the "Taking back control" slogan you all spouted like brainwashed cultists whenever I asked a British person why they wanted to make themselves worse off than if they stayed with the status quo.
This should be good.
Come on, let's here them. Share with the group.
I've looked at it.
Looks like the usual "I hate the EU (but don't really have a coherent reason for doing so, because I just do)".
Weak.
Very weak.
Care to try harder? An actual coherent, rational argument for leaving, perhaps?
I've checked, several times.
You've never posted any reasons, rational or irrational, that actually pass the basic test of "existence and relevance".
Though neither did the Leave campaign, which even broke the law. I suppose illegal campaigning is just fine in your world.
I'm more aware of the flat out lies told by the Leave campaign, starting with the big red bu***hit mobile and it's claims about the NHS. And BTW that "Oh everybody lied" routine is a classic "reflection defense." Suggesting someone who can't deal with deeply ingrained beliefs being questioned (perhaps because those beliefs would fall apart if you did so).
Bul**hit Boris's money to the NHS is about 5 weeks worth of EU contributions according to the side of the bus so far.
So where's the rest?
These are the lies Leave told to win. Now let them either put up or admit "Britain we lied. We told you what we thought you wanted to hear so we could win."
Then tell the UK how you really think you're going to make the British economy better outside the EU than inside it.
I will be most interested to hear what that plan is.
@John Smith 19
"I'm more aware of the flat out lies told by the Leave campaign"
You should be acutely aware of the remain lies too. Tried and tested and shown to be false because we voted to leave and the remain claims were disproved outright.
"starting with the big red bu***hit mobile and it's claims about the NHS"
Was the bus a lie? It stated the gross figure. I would prefer the NHS was left out of the statement but the national religion was used against brexit and Boris used it for brexit.
"Bul**hit Boris's money to the NHS is about 5 weeks worth of EU contributions according to the side of the bus so far.
So where's the rest?"
Same place as the 2 predicted recessions and the punishment budget. I support brexit but the official remain and leave campaigns were both bull. The desire for brexit has been a thing long before Boris and we dont need to be Boris supporters to support brexit.
"These are the lies Leave told to win. Now let them either put up or admit "Britain we lied. We told you what we thought you wanted to hear so we could win.""
Amusingly remain has been exposed by this too very openly. Yet I dont see the remainers announcing that either.
"Then tell the UK how you really think you're going to make the British economy better outside the EU than inside it."
I cant speak to Cederic's posts but me and you have traded comments before and I have often enough offered to discuss leave reasons, and the few who didnt do the usual ears closed ranting got reasoned discussion (even if we didnt agree).
There are many reasons to leave but my favourites are economics, democracy, trade, sovereignty and border control
Scotland?
The Republic of Ireland.
I'm scratching my head to work out who you're talking about about.
My inferencing skills are usually pretty good, but in this situation I'll have to admit defeat.
You'll just have to name the country you're thinking of.
So.. How about the pound collapsing?
The pound sterling has behaved more like the volatile currency of a developing country over the past four years since the Brexit referendum vote, according to an analysis by foreign exchange traders.( https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/pound-sterling-developing-country-currency-brexit-a9583106.html )Since the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016 the pound has suffered a record fall against the dollar, a rapid gain and then another precipitous slide to its weakest level in 35 years.
The Bank of America analysts are clear that the volatility of sterling in recent years has been largely driven by the result of the Brexit vote and they warn that this is likely to intensify, rather than fall away, as the UK formally leaves the bloc, with or without a trade deal, next year.
“Brexit is likely to permanently alter the way in which investors view the pound,” they say.
> Oh dear, still sore that the British people have faith in their own country? Upset that we have left the EU?
Yes. Faith isn't some golden ability, and in this case it's misguided. You may bang on about patriotism, but it's us who seem to care that the country is going to collapse because of your jingoism and short sightedness.
No free trade? Even though we've signed 19 trade deals already, are in advanced negotiations on 17 more and that doesn't include the ongoing trade negotiations with Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the USA and the EU? Not to mention the work towards joining the CPTPP.
It's amazing how much you can get done when you don't have 27 other countries pulling in different directions.
All deals currently made are at worse terms than we had under the EU.
Also, the EU was 49% of our market.
Even accepting your figures are true, that's 19 deals in 4 years. Meanwhile we lose 41 deals with 72 countries simply from being outside the EU.
It's funny how all the top economists and business people say this is a bad idea. The only exceptions are those that have bigger European investments, or are looking to short the country as it collapses.
Quoting the Financial Times:
Writing in July 2016 after the UK’s vote to leave the EU, David Davis, the Conservative government’s first secretary of state for Brexit, foretold a golden age of global trade deals.- See the complete article for more unicorn-busting facts: https://www.ft.com/content/6cfea2a0-5d53-11ea-b0ab-339c2307bcd4“I would expect the negotiation phase of most of them to be concluded within 12 to 24 months,” he predicted breezily.
More than three-and-a-half years after Mr Davis’s fact-free forecast, the government continues to emit an overpowering fog of promises about non-European trade deals.
If it were possible to monetise these promises, we would all be rich by now.
What is the reality behind the propaganda?
In a new booklet published by the UK’s international trade department, official statistics show that EU countries accounted in 2018 for 49.1 per cent of British trade, valued at £659.5bn, and non-EU countries for the rest, valued at £683.3bn.
Seven EU countries (Germany, the Netherlands, France, Ireland, Spain, Belgium and Italy) and Switzerland were among the UK’s top 10 trading partners. The US was the largest, and China was the fifth largest.
Despite the EU’s prominence in British trade, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government plans to detach the UK as far as possible from continental Europe in terms of regulatory standards and legal frameworks.
The other side of this coin is the pursuit of deals with the US, China and other large non-European economies.
Some, such as Japan, already have extensive trade and investment ties with the UK. But Japanese business executives sound gloomy.
“Essentially, the United Kingdom’s departure [from the EU] is nothing positive for the Japanese companies doing business there, so the focus going forward is how much the negative impact is alleviated,” Akio Mimura, chairman of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said last month.
"No free trade? Even though we've signed 19 trade deals already, are in advanced negotiations on 17 more"
Most of which are for "drop in the ocean" amounts with tiny little countries, half of which, based on most recent 2018 figures, are for under half a billion. The lowest value is Kosovo (£8m of trade in 2018).
I'd like to think we will get some decent deals with the larger economies, but I'm not holding out much hope. The UK doesn't have a great deal of experience in negotiating anything any more.
Have you ANY Idea how expensive our own constellation would be? Any idea at all?
About £15B minimum to get it up there, and a couple of million a DAY to run it.
All that money just to replicate something that ALREADY exists.
Might be cheaper if using a LEO constellation like Starlink, but LEO is getting crowded.
None.
None whatsoever.
It's just the enormous ego's involved that are driving this thing.
And an Indian Billionaire's desire to recoup some fairly serious losses.
Wonder what he's promised this shower? "I'll spend more money in the UK as a non-dom?"
Lets follow your logic?
A quick google shows we pay into the ESA 374 million a year.
So in your make believe world where does the funding come from for a purely UK space agency? If we do it on our own, where does it come from in a cash starved UK economy that is a shadow of its former self.
The ESA budget per year is around 6 billion (remember we pay in 374 million). https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Corporate_news/Funding
Do we cut Health, Defence, Benefits, what about the pensions? Education? Bearing in mind we need to buy the rockets or build them, find a space port near the equator, pay the country to let us launch rockets from their land like the ESA does, open a technology centre, recruit the scientists and all the other expensive stuff that the ESA currently do.
Lets look at JUST the Galileo GPS system which apparently was 10 Billion?
So in your world lets cut defence to pay for it. Our defence budget is 39 billion, from 2019 numbers. So we take 25% off defence to pay for your UK GPS system. What do we lose? Both aircraft carriers or a couple of submarines? All of the RAF?
Benefits? The largest state benefit is the pension which was 96 billion in 2019. So every pensioner takes 10% pay cut for your space GPS system (lets not count all the other required stuff like rockets and staff).
Education, how many school and teachers take up 10 billion from the education budget of 89 billion?
No amount of bravery and happy clapping will cover the fact that doing it on our own is too expensive and budgets need to be cut somewhere to pay for it.
Brexit supporters really don't get it. All bluster with no real look at the finances involved when 28 countries pay in together versus doing it alone.
No they don't.
You need to realize this was not won by appealing to their common sense but their emotions
Each group carefully fed just the right kind of bu***hit to hit their buttons.
Basically "If you vote leave all your dreams will come true (promise) but if you vote remain all your worst nightmares (even things you didn't think were that frightening) will come true.
Cummins did an excellent job. Just what you'd expect from someone with a complete lack of ethical restraint and a massive desire to win by telling people exactly what they didn't want to hear (IE their worst nightmares).
Yes, the brits got the prep school class clown with the over developed sense of entitlement, and propensity for fantasy who couldn't keep it in his trousers.
While the Americans got the prep school class bully with the over developed sense of entitlemen, and propensity for fantasy who couldn't keep it in his trousers.
It's 6 of 1, 1/2 dozen of the other. *
*Although Nelly's budding bromance with various dictators around the world is slightly more nauseating. I guess the only thing a bully really respects is another bully.
This post has been deleted by its author
I'm assuming that this article is a bit of an attempt at distraction. The UK will get contracts from the ESA commensurate with its financial contribution. That's written into the treaty that governs the workings of the organisation.
What's more important post-Brexit is the continued working of international tendering law. Is El Reg chortling at the thought of the UK not being allowed to join international competitions or, somehow, being excluded from winning any as a result of non-EU participation?
I imagine the US, Israel and not to forget Norway and Switzerland might be unhappy about that? And that's not to mention China, South Korea, Japan and so on; pretty much every country in the world which bids for big international projects.
The problem is the UK not being allowed to access those ESA projects which had a clause in the agreement specifying the work had to be done by EU companies and were funded with EU money, at least not without a special agreement with the EU permitting it.
It seems this was not a priority for the British government in the negotiations so they can't really turn round and complain as it's the logical outcome of Brexit. The resulting flailing around is pretty humorous though.
No.
It's chortling that HMG is complaining that it's not getting it's share when it's the EU that's funding this, not directly through ESA.
Anyone competent in international contracts would be aware of this consequence. But they are still whining. And that's pretty funny. They wanted to "Get Brexit done." Well it is. And they've been done by it.
And the response "We'll we'll start our own GNSS, so there" on Galileo sounds more appropriate to a 6YO in a playground than what is currently the 7th largest economy on the planet but that's another thread.
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