This Government costs real money.
Wannabe space 'superpower' UK tosses £1.6M at eight research projects
With the noble goal "to grow the UK as a global space superpower," the UK Space Agency (UKSA) has scraped together a princely £1.6 million ($1.9 million) to be divvied up between eight research programs. This is part of "the government's strategy to use our £5 billion investment in space science and technology to grow our £16. …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 8th March 2023 15:53 GMT Paul Kinsler
I'm not sure it's possible to pay one researcher for one year with that amount of money
It likely isn't enough, once you take into account non-salary employment expenses. But MAC SciTech is not a university, and likely they're already paying somebody to do a related, similar, or even exactly the same thing, and this extra support will part-fund that salary and/or pay for equipment or other expenses.
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Wednesday 8th March 2023 16:23 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Sort of depends how you account for it.
Dept gets $100K, university takes $30K cut, or dept needs $70K, university will want $80K - grant application is for $150K
It did 'mildly infuriate' me that we were actually more expensive than the national laboratory next door when you included the university's take, and yet we were being paid post-doc salary while the national lab researchers were being paid a salary "commensurate with private sector" to "attract and retain talent"
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Wednesday 8th March 2023 21:58 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: Ouch, 100-120% these days? I
Argument used to be that overhead on rich, research grant loaded STEM paid for the poor starving arts departments and that we should be proud of supporting culture.
Now that they charge the students 10K/year to do poetry and they've closed all the labs cos it's not profitable to teach chemistry for 10K/year
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Wednesday 8th March 2023 15:54 GMT elsergiovolador
Checkboxes
All these funding programmes are just PR stunts to make government able to say we support this and that.
If you look into things like Innovate UK or Help to Grow schemes, you'll find this is all carp.
I have no idea who would apply for these as requirements are bollocks and any benefits meaningless with the current cost of living and global supply chains like one of the requirement is:
carry out all your R&D project activity in the UK
How is that possible when we don't make anything or the things we do are magnitude more expensive than commissioning them to be done in China?
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Thursday 9th March 2023 10:43 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Checkboxes
While I agree with you, it's worth noting there are always loopholes. eg "Made in Britain" has never meant that 100% of the materials and manufacturing must be "Made in Britain". R&D can easily be said to happen in Britain even if some or even most equipment and/or materials are imported, so long as the actual human bodies doing it are in the UK.
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Wednesday 8th March 2023 16:10 GMT Paul Kinsler
A whole £1.6m, that's the coffee and biscuit budget for other nations
I would not think that 1.6M£ is some sort of national coffee and biscuit budget, unless the nation is rather small, hates coffee and biscuits, or both.
E.g. if everyone spends an average of £1 a week on c+b, that's approx £50/year each, and so ...
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Thursday 9th March 2023 14:21 GMT JT_3K
Re: A whole £1.6m, that's the coffee and biscuit budget for other nations
Each to their own. I've got builders in at the moment and it's costing me ~£11/day in Creme Eggs, Fanta and a variety of chocolate biscuits. Worth it though to make sure they know how pleased I am with what they're doing.
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Thursday 9th March 2023 14:35 GMT Michael Strorm
You joke, but £1.6m here, £1.6m there, pretty soon it adds up to...
...a pathetic drop in the ocean.
Seriously, this is *nothing*. It's the equivalent of less than 3p from every person living in the United Kingdom.
Why even bother announcing it? Did they think no-one would notice the difference between £1.6bn and £1.6m?
It's several orders of magnitude smaller than the sort of money you'd expect them to be spending on anything remotely serious if Britain was to develop a serious space industry as they suggest.
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Wednesday 8th March 2023 16:05 GMT alain williams
You can tell where the Gov't priorities are
Compare to the cost of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda So far the UK has paid the Rwandan government £140m for the scheme.
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Wednesday 8th March 2023 21:36 GMT Headley_Grange
Afronauts
Zambia had a space programme to get to Mars in the 60s. I first read about it in a very good novel called "The Old Drift" and assumed it was fiction, but the notes in the book implied it was based on real events so I read up on it and it was one of those "fact is stranger than fiction" things.
https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/zambian-space-programme
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Thursday 9th March 2023 10:58 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: You can tell where the Gov't priorities are
I find it a little odd that, especially in this context, that "preferred suppliers" comes across as a pejorative. Preferred suppliers is just normal business practice. The potential scandal isn't using preferred suppliers, it's how those suppliers came to be on the list in the first place. Generally, it's because they provide value for money or being the friend of the barmen at the Ministers local.
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Thursday 9th March 2023 11:09 GMT 42656e4d203239
Re: You can tell where the Gov't priorities are
>>Or £200 million PPE contracts to preferred suppliers
preferred suppliers who didn't exist mere days before contract award.... or are directed by Honorable Member's relatives... Eyes passim
All completely legal of course becasue the Covid act allowed award of tenders with no scrutiny at all - with no sunset clause either....
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Wednesday 8th March 2023 21:49 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Re: Modest proposal.
British space agency:
BRASSIC.[SPB]
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Wednesday 8th March 2023 19:43 GMT ploppy
> British space agency: BRASSIC.
A "few years" ago, a university department of which I was a former member, announced it merging with a number of other departments. Suggestions for the new name of the merged department were invited ...
Unfortunately my suggestion SCRAPIE (SChool of Remaining Assets in Physics Informatics and Engineering) didn't go down too well.
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Thursday 9th March 2023 10:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
All related to confidence in the bedroom
You have to just pretend to be engaged while the US,china,india etc spend money to show they are important. The UK is clever enough to know there is nothing worth exploring in reach.
Which country's population has the biggest knobs? Bet they dont have a space program.
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Thursday 9th March 2023 11:59 GMT Nifty
Re: Which country's population has the biggest knobs?
Dame Julia King was interviewed in a recent Life Scientific and noted the lack of Scientists in the HoC (1?) pointing out that they're much better represented in the HoL (20?).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001jshz?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile
King wrote the pivotal 2008 King Review that was apparently the seed guidance to government that the UK can be ready for net zero transportation by 2050. During the interview she was firmly optimistic about the speed with which battery technology improvements will get us there...
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Friday 17th March 2023 07:58 GMT bpfh
Off topic but...
Back in I think 1986 or 87 as a youngun, I remember looking at an estate agent near Nutmeg Wharf in London, and marvelling at the new dock lands penthouses at 800 000 to just a little over a million and thinking who on earth can afford that astronomical price?
Fast forward to Austin Powers and Dr. Evil asking for one meeeelion dollars and everyone burst out laughing.
Fast forward to today. 1.6 million, and think, yeah that will cover an office, office management and the payroll of 5 engineers for one year if we're careful...