Josef Aschbacher:

It is the one that if we don’t get widespread buy-in and risk-tolerance fast, then the other priorities become quite irrelevant. This of course applies to projects or programmes that one may consider in the NewSpace domain. Having said that, there will always be domains where the commercial sector has no interest to invest and where projects will follow the more traditional space project development scheme. I would put high precision, cutting edge, long-term missions with fundamental technology development needs into this category, like BepiColombo, Aeolus, or Mars Sample Return.

But in many other domains, where technology is more mature and markets ready to pay for services or information, industry has completely changed its approach and has become very pro-active in co-developing and/or co-funding space projects. I have seen many incredibly encouraging examples where this is happening right now. 

When I look at the European space sector, I see a huge talent base, with many engineers and scientists having incredibly innovative ideas which they want to bring to fruition. I would claim that Europe’s human resource excellence is unique world-wide with some of the brightest talents among them. Where Europe is weak though is easy access to funding and speed in implementing projects. Lower readiness to take risk is often linked to these deficits. 

The overall European space economy could be at risk if Europe doesn’t respond to this evolution. Let’s take for instance the case of European-bred start-up Spire, founded by three Europeans educated in Europe. Spire was created 8 years ago, ultimately choosing Silicon Valley over Europe due to lack of substantial financial funding opportunities here but has in the meantime expanded very impressively and was listed at the NYSE just last month. According to market expectations the company may be valued at up to 1.6B US$, with more than 200M US$ of new cash to invest. As much as I am happy about this success for Spire and for space in general, I regret that the financial backing has been made primarily by Silicon Valley investors (I said primarily – not totally).