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John Abbott

CEO of the Satellite Applications Catapult, the UK's space technology and innovation organisation, and a guest on the In-Orbit podcast.

Oct 6, 2026

24:15
This is your
24:15
chance, John.
24:16
Yeah, we don't talk about a company like a Filtronic.
24:21
um in the northeast of the uk who make rf components for starlink satellites and are i was up there the other day i was up where you okay so you can talk about them and you can see a whole bundle of people with good jobs in a part of the country that really needs good jobs and you're walking around a company that's a bona fide unicorn um yeah a company with a To Tom's point about academia, we don't probably talk enough about companies like MagDrive, two Imperial graduates, met at Imperial, raised money from Founders Fund, and have an ambition to create a propulsion system that will be on every satellite in space.
24:59
And there's going to be an awful lot of those as we go forward over the next sort of 10, 20 years.
25:03
And they're a business that's over there in Harwell that is where they build the propulsion systems at the moment.
25:11
but they're already exporting to the US.
27:45
Just With this bit of background, what's changing at the Satellites Applications Catapult? Where's the direction of travel for you?

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