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NASA Administrator – Jim Bridenstine

By Gurbir Dated: October 28, 2019 Leave a Comment

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine is unique in the short history of NASA. He is the first administrator not to have any first-hand experience of Apollo. He is not old enough.

A former naval pilot and experience politician, Bridenstine is now a powerful advocate of NASA’s work in addressing climate change, space exploration, return to the moon, engaging private-sector space companies and collaboration with international partners. Italy and Japan have already signed up to work with the project Artemis which the Presidential Space Directive 1 says in part “”lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities”.

In his post for less than two years, Bridenstine is an articulate, extremely well informed and appears to be steering NASA through some particularly tough challenges on the road to successful.

In this 30 minute video, he answers questions for the registered press (and frankly members of the public who happened to be passing through the NASA booth in the exhibition) at the IAC2019.org on 24 October 2019 in Washington DC.

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Made-in-India – products for the global markets

By Gurbir Dated: October 26, 2019 Leave a Comment

A two-day summit called Spacetronix and Deftronix, organised by the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association in Bangalore attracted over 50 speakers, 45 exhibitors and 600 visitors. The first day, Spacetronics focused on India’s space sector and the second on defence – Deftronix. The key themes addressed the state of manufacturing of hardware, outsourcing and supply chain, a closer look at some successful space startups and the challenges of standards and security. 

The two-day event was extremely well organised and the venue, the Taj Yeshwantpur, met all the needs. It was disappointing that the organisers were left waiting by the tardy attendance by the keynote speaker, the first one on the second day. Being an industry centred event, many of the presentations involved major sponsors showcasing their products. Some of the speakers such as minister of state Dr. Jitendra Singh and DRDO chairman Dr. Satheesh Reddy did mot make an appearance but in both cases, their billing was subject to confirmation.

The first day focused on space. Representatives from a variety of Indian Space Research Organisation centres made presentations indicating their willingness to engage with the private sector to help meet their increasing capacity demands in avionics, semiconductors, 4th generation wifi products, digital receivers, high-speed data acquisition and playback, Field Programmable Gate Arrays, systems and cybersecurity. In addition to capacity building and reducing costs, ISRO was looking to the bourgeoning private space sector to introduce innovations in products design and manufacturing techniques.  

The general view from outside ISRO is that India’s space sector is dominated by its national space agency – The Indian Space Research Organisation. Private sector startups find it hard to overcome ISRO’s role as the primary producer, customer and regulator. The emerging space startups see ISRO as a gatekeeper restricting the commercial opportunities to new players. 

Gurvinder Singh
ISRO Semiconductor Laboratory in Punjab

Multinationals choose to setup manufacturing plants in China because, unlike India, China has an internal market for their products. India’s advantage, a cheap labour force, is offset by the need to export goods once they are made in India.

Challenges experienced by the private sector when working with ISRO included 

  • No single point of contact for initial registration by a private sector company
  • No support (risk sharing) for small companies that invest in prototyping as part of the bid-process
  • ISRO is a big organisation and currently has no template for interfacing with the private sector. 
  • Start-ups have to work work to ISRO’s methods and process which are not consistent.
  • Companies that work with ISRO IP tend to be favoured over those that  are offering independent products and services

The two-day event was supported by an exhibition where national and international companies showcased their products and services. Representatives from ISRO centres made presentations indicating their requirements for specific products and services to assist with capacity, cost or new innovative solutions. Whilst ISRO centres hold international industry standards such as ISO 9001 (Quality), AS9000 (Aerospace) and 14001 (Environment) but security standards such as ISO 27001 was conspicuous by its absence. This was especially striking since security was a major theme of the event.

In June 2019, India’s prime minister announced a new target of 5 trillion USD digital economy by 2024 from the current 2.8 trillion USD. Space and defence are two of the sectors where the digital economy will grow. Numerous former ISRO chairmen have announced initiatives to facilitate greater engagement with the private sector but engagement remains weak.

NASA has about as many employees as ISRO but 20 times the budget. Most of NASA’s budget is spent on outsourced projects. Although NASA was not explicitly cited, one theme was to learn from other countries on the benefits of outsourcing space projects. An interesting word used during an ISRO presentation was “Indeginization”. This was a reference to a desire for ISRO to make in-house components and systems that are currently imported or made by international manufacturers in India.

During the early 1990s, India’s went through an economic liberalisation that reduced the role of the government and attracted private and foreign investments. Millions of Indians benefited from easier, cheaper and faster access to private telephone lines, cars and household goods. The national economy has seen huge growth since. For India to achieve similar growth in the new strategic areas of space and defence, a similar liberalisation is required if the targets of the digital economy are to be met. One urgent step for the government is the needs to establish a space policy and publish a space bill that will allow the nascent Indian startups to flourish. 

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India – Space or Poverty. What should come first?

By Gurbir Dated: January 13, 2019 2 Comments

If a country has a space programme, does that help to reduce its national poverty or increase it? On the face of it, it appears that a country that spends money on building satellites to explore the solar system or beyond will have less to spend on poverty relief. This argument ignores the economic and the societal transformative potential inherent in modern technologies of which space is just one.

If developing nations did not develop their own infrastructure for modern technologies they would either have to live without their benefits (internet access, mobile telephony, satellite television) or be at the mercy of a third party supplier forced to pay predetermined commercial rates and having little or no say on availability or quality of the service.

Acquiring accurate figures for how much nations spend on their space programmes or even the cost of individual missions is problematic. Definition of poverty vary in countries, organisation and over time so measuring and comparing global poverty levels is not straight forward. National space programmes have objectives that are intertwined with national security, geopolitical and economic aspirations.

Essential contributions provided by resources outside the jurisdiction of the Space Programme are not usually included in the costing. Physical security may be provided by the army, the navy is frequently used to assist with capsule recovery after splash-down and educational institutions contributed payload design and development.

Eight of the world’s largest economies. Credit World Economic Forum

Since 2001, as part of the emerging BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), China and India have been regarded as “emerging market”. Today as the world’s 2nd largest economy, China has surely completed the metamorphosis and has now “emerged”.

India, as the 6th largest economy should also now be seen as a developed nation, not as a developing one. India has transitioned from a recipient of international aid to a regional net donor. Despite reports to the contrary, the government of India no longer receives aid from the United Kingdom.

During two years 2018/19 and 2019/20 the UK government’s Department for International Development (DfID) will invest £98m in Indian enterprises to help develop new markets. This “will also help create jobs for UK businesses, and generate a return for the UK.“.

The Department for International Development acknowledges that “India invests more in the UK than in the rest of the EU combined” (downloadable pdf) and recognises that UK’s targeted support in India will “generate a return for Britain by creating new markets for trade and investment”. Thus, UK’s financial contribution to projects in India should not be seen as aid but as a commercial investment.

Besides as the USA, the world’s leading economy and one with a mature space programme has illustrated, eradicating poverty is not a goal it has achieved. Throughout the period of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, the poverty level in the USA hovered between 10% and 15%.

The number in Poverty and Poverty Rate: 1959 to 2017 for the United States. Credit Soibangla

India’s annual budget for its space programme has been increasing. In 2018 it was $1.3 billion. This excluded the $1.4 billion for the Gaganyaan (Human Spaceflight) programme to be completed by 2022. Despite investing in its space programme since 1962, poverty in India has been on a consistent decline.

India Poverty rate since 1993 based on World Bank $1.99 PPP poverty line. Credit Pkhagah

National Space Programmes can have a reputation for being expensive but the actual investment represents a very small percentage of the national GDP. In 2018, the largest annual budget, around $20 billion, is that in the USA, representing just 0.4% of GDP. India’s annual budget of $1.3 billion is less than 0.1% of its GDP.

Space budget as a share of GDP for selected countries for 2008 and 2013. Credit OECD (pdf)

The international aid India receives has been declining since the beginning of the 21st century as its economy has grown. In parallel, what India gives out in aid has also grown. Regionally, India is now a net donor with commitments of $10 billion towards development projects in Africa, $1 billion toward rebuilding in Afghanistan and $825 million in students from developing nations to study in India.

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Episode 79: satsearch.co – A single digital marketplace for the global space supply chain?

By Gurbir Dated: November 16, 2018 Leave a Comment

Satsearch co-founders  – Kartik Kumar, Alberto Vaccarella and Narayan Prasad

A space startup based in The Netherlands – www.satsearch.co is attempting to establish a single digital global marketplace for space components, products and services.  Ultimately, Satsearch’s goal is to reduce cost and time by helping customers for and suppliers of space components, products and services find each other online.  This episode available in audio and video below.

https://media.blubrry.com/astrotalkuk_podcast_feed/astrotalkuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Episode-79-Satsearch.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:36 — 22.1MB) | Embed

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The Satsearch website/portal is hosted on a cloud-based environment (Amazon Web Services) and is only available in English but other languages are in the pipeline. Currently, the service to both suppliers and customers is free of charge. How it will make money in the future is not yet year clear but the current focus is on growth. The founders hope to develop Satsearch into a  sort of “yellow pages” for space products and services but with a richer vendor-neutral metadata interface supported by modern AI tools and applications.

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