Astroscale

Yeah, Matt, that's how we're going to sell it.

You've got to talk to Astroscale and some of these companies.

Well, I have a better

idea.

But I also did have some fairly core beliefs.

So seeing things like Astroscale form as a company and ClearSpace and the early missions in Switzerland, seeing things like um the challenges that back then terra bella had in their astrodynamics orbit prediction based on their blog before they sold to google um you know there was still that kind of core interest and things like the evolution of the uk space agency back then and again more recently like It gave me the interest, but the very specific skills of astrodynamics were not so hotly contested in the UK.

I did contemplate moving over to the US for a job with someone like SpaceX or NASA.

But in the end, I think for some personal reasons and So friends and family sticking around in London was the choice I made.

For sure.

And I'm sure you've been asked this question before, but, you know, there's been a lot of talk, especially, you know, with companies like Astroscale, you know, becoming more well-known about space junk.

Does V. Leo change the debris conversation, you know, with Leo possibly heading for space? over 100,000 satellites by 2030, is Velio a relief valve or is because they have a shorter lifespan, is that less of a concern for you?

Yes, so the biggest concern for everyone about space debris is the Kessler effect, mainly.

The race is on.

Well, a company called Astroscale proposes a fleet.

A fleet.

of bodyguard spacecraft to protect satellites from orbital attacks.

Now, let's see.

Oh, that's another story.

Space cleanup company Astroscale thinks that technology is developed and tested in orbit to remove space junk and fix broken satellites can be speedily repurposed to build fleets of bodyguard spacecraft to protect important satellites from adversary attacks.

We've talked on this show before about they're developing these spacecraft to go up and do maintenance or do refuel.

We're the facilitators.

We're the guys selling the pickaxes in the gold rush, right? But there are other companies in the UK which do have the capability to build spacecraft and to do activities, you know, like the Space Forge, which want to, you know, manufacture seed crystals in space, or the likes of Astroscale, which want to collect bits of space debris.

You know, these are people we want to work with and we want to enable them to, go on and be the best version of themselves basically and succeed in their business models so that we can succeed in the short term to be the facilitators of ISAM and the industrial revolution in space, but then long term to actually be the customers.

And once we're actually mining and manufacturing things in space to buy that material in to refuel our systems to go that much further because we want to open up the wider solar system.

And then there's a company as well.

It's called Astroscale, and they are testing a spacecraft that uses a giant magnetic net to catch debris and drag it out of orbit.

A magnetic fishing net, basically, in space.

Imagine just you going to fish with a net and then you get a huge amount of fish pulling it out of the ocean.

And if everyone agrees to use one set of data, you can then autonomously move satellites out of the way of any of any oncoming danger.

The other thing that we've been investing into, so there's a multi-trillion dollar market that's been created in order to address this very problem, are companies like Astroscale and D-Orbit.

And what they do is they are like the RAC van.

When a satellite breaks down or it's reached the end of its life, they'll be called upon and they'll go and tow that satellite and effectively push it into the Earth's environment where it burns up.