Space and its exploration
Last week I attended and spoke at a conference celebrating the 50 year anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight, when he became the first man in space. On 12th April 1961 Gagarin became the first human being to leave the Earth’s atmosphere, and although his flight was to last only 1 hour and 48 minutes, circling the Earth once, it provoked important political, social, cultural and technical changes, and changed humanity’s perspective of its place on Earth forever. In my capacity as Executive Vice-Chair of the Parliamentary Space Committee I spoke about the UK space industry and contributed my points to the main discussion of the conference, namely the long term objectives and strategy for human space exploration in this century. For me, space, and its exploration, is as inspirational as it gets. Like every other typical young boy, I myself, was obsessed by rockets, by Yuri Gagarin and later by Neil Armstrong. The courage and determination of those early space pioneers, for me, personified everything that is great about human beings.
Last summer I visited The Pines primary school in the Bracknell Constituency during their STEM week. This drive to encourage more participation and interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics has become an important part of education. What struck me during the visit was how space, and its exploration, was being used to stimulate the children at The Pines. They were building cardboard rockets and drawing pictures of various plants and the sun. It was clear for all to see that space remains a great inspiration for any child interested in these subjects.
But it’s not just inspiration that space provides. One only has to look at the UK space industry’s performance over the last decade to see the remarkable economic opportunities that the exploration of the heavens provides; at present the UK space industry is worth £8 billion annually and has grown four times the average since 2000. From transport to telecommunications, navigation to weather forecasting, and TV to the internet, space plays an integral part in all of our daily lives. In our own constituency, the Bracknell based company Tektronix makes sophisticated measurement gear for satellites.
Looking to the future, there is no doubt that the UK needs partners to participate in the exploration of space, which is why I was pleased that the Gagarin conference included representatives from the Russian space industry, eager to cooperate and share their knowledge with our own space industry. To my mind man is nothing if he is not pushing back boundaries of his knowledge and there is no greater opportunity to do this than in space. I note with interest that in a recent survey of UK engineers, 38% indicated that space had influenced their career choice. If The Pines School is anything to go by, I suspect there will be successful engineers of the future now living in the Bracknell constituency.
(Published in The Wokingham Times on the 20th of July 2010)