UK mulls next-gen satellite subsidies for Brit companies UK government may subsidize Brit companies working on low Earth orbit satellite connectivity projects - the aim being to support comms for remote parts of the country and boost the domestic satellite industry. An announcement from the Subsidy Advice Unit (SAU), part of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), reveals that …
It's not saying if subcontracting overseas is permitted. Many of these programmes have a clause that the funding is only available to spend in the UK, unless there is a good reason it can't be.
So let's say you get 45% funding, but you have to buy services, labour in the UK. Now if you are lucky to find a company that actually makes parts that you need, chances are it will be of poor quality and magnitude more expensive than if you got it from say China.
In that case, that funding is pointless.
The reason that it is cheaper (and better) to buy overseas is typically not a qualifying good reason.
The good old:
"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it."
We already reached the end.
There are no real incentives for small business to do anything in the UK.
Are you a professional miserabilist?
The UK space sector trade association reports that the sector has turnover of £17.5bn, employees over 48,000 direct employees. Exactly the high value jobs the country needs more of and that I'd have thought readers of this site would celebrate. Admittedly from those figures we can see the government funding is inconsequential unless unfeasibly well targeted.
Sure it's possible to pull a massive turnover being just a middleman and engineering salaries approaching third world levels, may certainly be a pull factor.
I am yet to see these so called "high value jobs". If you go to any space sector job board, you will see they are even too embarrassed to show how much they pay.
If you even find that middling £150k position, you will feel the tax man boot on your neck, while not receiving much in exchange for paying small fortune to the inept government coffers.
It is one-off, highly specialised parts made by highly skilled individuals, the UK is very competitive at that. And that is the sort of thing you need for a satellite.
Those specialists have mastered the art of hiding.
That said a system where you have to craft a highly specialised and expensive one off parts, where there is no way to check if they actually exist (you can't send an inspector to space), must be a right gravy train.
Imagine you apply to fund building a Fluxatron. A device designed to aid beam forming of radio waves. There is only one man capable of building it who is living at his aluminium covered tent on one of Welsh roundabouts (and he changes location every other week, so that Russian cyclists can't track him). For a hefty price of £500k he builds the said Fluxatron to such a level of craftsmanship, that it is indistinguishable from a One Pound coin, which can tacked onto the Bell Endometre Beam Scope by simply using a Blu-tack.
Oh it didn't work? Well, we got to build one more then.
China is good at making millions of the same thing, but we don't need millions of them.
Yes, because we don't have meaningful manufacturing industries, so any business looking to make a part necessary for their product, don't even look at domestic suppliers.
That said, even if you need a one off. You can make 10 in China for lower price and better quality and likely arriving next week made to exact specs no questions asked.
1) Where's OneWeb in all this?
2) Why not just do a deal with Starlink?
3) Why not just buy this off Amazon?
4) Is this just HMG trying to get secure MoD comms on the cheap?
5) Whatever happened to the BT/Starlink huddle?
6) Why not just use fibre? Spain fibred up its whole country in months and it's much bigger.
HMG could even pick one solution from the above AND fiddle about with garden shed budget projects to come up with new shit.
2) Why not just do a deal with Starlink?
Because Musk is a cat short of a Bond villain?
6) Why not just use fibre? Spain fibred up its whole country in months and it's much bigger.
That would be sensible and ultimately much better, but it means spending real cash, and not with Openreach who seem to take all of the rural subsidies going and deliver very little compared to the alt-net companies.
"Because Musk is a cat short of a Bond villain?"
Also, his Muskiness is (apparently) big on free speech, and operates outside British jurisdiction, which are both clearly at odds with HMG's determination to monitor all the things, all the time.
Plus, he's capricious, and might pull the plug at any time, particularly if encouraged to do something he doesn't want to do. It makes perfect sense to build your own, but the investment required is somewhat larger than the proposed subsidies, which will inevitably mean that nothing is achieved. This is how we do things in Britain:(
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