A new year in which to stretch the UK space pound
Any timeline of key UK space events in 2011 will have to include the start of the new financial year in April.
This is the point at which the new UK Space Agency formally comes into being, and with its own budget.
The year will start from my point of view with an update from Europe's Planck space telescope
No longer does the body for co-ordinating space activity in Britain have to go cap in hand to government departments and research councils, looking for cash to run a programme.
Responsibilities previously scattered across Whitehall and Polaris House in Swindon (home to the research councils) are being passed to the UKSA along with their cash.
The two major exceptions are the Met Office and the money it pays to belong to Eumetsat, the pan-European organisation charged with operating the continent’s weather satellites; and oversight of the MoD’s Skynet satellite telecommunications system which is run by a private company. These stay outside the UKSA.
The recent allocation of science and research funding [500k PDF] for 2011/12 to 2014/15 saw the UKSA being given £769,685,000 (926,028,000 euros) for the period. This is all programmatic money; administration is separate. Also not included here is the capital allocation for the period of about £76m which covers buildings and hardware costs.
The programmatic budget equates to a little shy of £200m a year, although the money is slightly front-loaded because the agency has some large, immediate commitments, most notably funding the UK’s part of GMES, which is Europe’s big environmental monitoring project.
There is also money to offset exchange rate movements that have made membership of the European Space Agency (Esa) more expensive.
Set against the current baseline, the UKSA’s funding is projected to increase by about 109%. Inflation is quite strong at the moment so by 2014/15, the allocation will probably work out as a small cut in real terms.
This is the "flat cash" settlement the coalition promised to science; and compared with other areas of science, the UKSA has done better than average, as I predicted back in October.
This almost certainly reflects the recognition of the economic importance of space and what it can contribute to future growth. Industrially, this is a sector, remember, which is expanding and taking on people.
It is worth noting also that the UKSA now sits inside the science funding “ring fence”, which ought to mean its cash cannot be raided if there is a problem elsewhere in government.
A lot of people are still reflecting on the fact that science escaped the large cuts meted out to other areas of government-supported activity; there remains a sense of relief in the air. But you can be sure that as the months and years go by, the government will again be asked to demonstrate its commitment, especially if other nations continue to pump large sums of money into their science base.
Both France and Germany dwarf the UK in terms of space spending; their budgets are five times that of the UK, and they are increasing their budgets.
What is more, not only do France and Germany pay big sums into the European Space Agency (Esa), they have a large amount of money reserved for national programmes.
Once the UK has met its Esa subscription, there’s not a huge amount left in the tin. UK space scientists and engineers, though, are masters at stretching a pound to make it do remarkable things.
And so we gallop ahead. What am I looking forward to most? Well, I’ve got quite enough on my plate already this week, thank you. Tomorrow (Tuesday), we get the first big science results from Esa’s Planck telescope.
I’ve had a sneak preview and it’s impressive stuff. British research is to the fore, too.
In fact, we’ll be focusing quite a bit on Esa this week at the BBC.
If you are in a part of the globe that can pick up the BBC World News Channel, you will be able to see our link-up with the International Space Station on Thursday at about 1415 GMT.
Tim Willcox will be talking live with Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli. He will be showing viewers his new home and taking some questions.
I took part in an event with Paolo back in the summer at a science festival in Turin, and he is an excellent communicator. If you haven’t caught his Tweets, you can follow them here. He’s also taking a stream of pictures of the Earth.
The hope is we will also have the UK’s Esa astronaut-in-waiting Tim Peake in our studios; certainly the director of human spaceflight at Esa, Simonetta Di Pippo, will be there.
It will be a chance to find out where Europe thinks it is going with the ISS. Esa member-states are committed to the extension to 2020, but they’re some way off approving a budget to make it happen. This matter is quite pressing now and something they really have to sort out in the next few months.
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~42~RS~)
I’m 
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Umm could you make the funding figures clearer? It almost looks like the UKSA is getting £769 billion!
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ooh imagine what the UK could do with a 769 Billion budget, Mars here we come.
To come back to the real world, I got confuse with the figures an just wanted to ask how much, after we paid our memberships fees to ESA an fund vairous other current committments, how much money does UKSA have to spend if any on it own independent projects.
I also wondering what Facilities an equipment does UKSA takes control of after April 1st.
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@ChrisC.Getting ahead of myself there. Fixed. Thanks. Knowles2. In the recent past, the Esa contribution has taken of the order of 70-75% of the civil space budget. Its precise size at the moment is the subject of some discussion and should be settled in April.
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Why must you always trumpet British science? When it comes to uncovering the mysteries of the universe, why does it matter what legal entity the team doing the discovering were born in? Quite often I feel like it's a distraction, that there must be something more note worthy occuring in the world somewhere in regards to science that is being ignored due to patriotic puff pieces. Should we expect individual reports on the space budgets of Japan, China, India, France, Germany?
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@4 Because it is the BRITISH Boardcasting Service? And Jonathan has commented in the past on NASA and ESA budgetary developments. Also, since UK space science is finally coming back after decades in the doldrums this is an event well worth commentary.
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@Olyus. If I don't write about British space activity, I'm not sure who will in the mainstream media. It is not a subject that garners much coverage in the UK national press (with some notable exceptions). But close followers will have noticed recent articles on the German space budget, on Esa's financial position, and the difficulties of other European nations on specific issues. I could regurgitate material that is mirrored on every other blog or I could write something different. I choose the latter.
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JonClarke wrote:
"Because it is the BRITISH Boardcasting Service? And Jonathan has commented in the past on NASA and ESA budgetary developments. Also, since UK space science is finally coming back after decades in the doldrums this is an event well worth commentary."
You sound awfully and unusually sensitive about the UK and its "space science" for someone that wrote the comments below on the rover thread criticizing an American for standing up for his country's space program .
”You can be as isolationist as you like, the fact is space exploration is international and multinational and has been so for many decades. It will remain so in future."
I'm not surprised at all. :)
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AllenT2.
Not sensitive at all, just pleased to see the UK doing more.
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Any news on SKYLON? It is really hard to find some up-to-date information on the internet. I've read on this blog (somewhere) that Reaction Engines Ltd. plan their first demonstration of the Sabre engine this year and so if the test succeeds, it will basically be a proof that the whole thing is viable, correct?
Do ESA and/or UKSA have any plans to fund the project more in the future? Because that would really be exciting. I feel Europe is falling behind now when the US have SpaceX and all the other space companies. SKYLON could be a good answer, a first real reusable SSTO.
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Victor: the Reaction Engines test this year is not of the complete Sabre engine, but of its key technology, the pre-cooler. See http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/techdemprog.html
I understand they'll be putting the pre-cooler on the front of the conventional Viper jet engine they have at their test facility in Culham. The question as to whether further funding will be forthcoming depends on the results of that test.
Stephen, Oxford
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JonClarke wrote:
"Not sensitive at all, just pleased to see the UK doing more."
Of course, but not pleased to see an American wanting to see his country continue "doing more," huh?
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@AllenT2
I am all for increased US spendsing on space exploration. I have never said otherwise.
Kindly stop putting words in my mouth or looking for arguments where none exist.
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JonClarke wrote:
"I am all for increased US spendsing on space exploration. I have never said otherwise."
Sure you are, so long as America's "space exploration" is shared with "European" organizations, companies and space agencies.
"Kindly stop putting words in my mouth or looking for arguments where none exist."
Just highlighting some inconsistencies in your remarks and reactions. I previously, and merely, stated that America should protect its jobs, its technology and its "space exploration" efforts. You didn't like that at all. And yet you were quite defensive when it came to efforts to further UK "space exploration."
I thought the UK was part of the EU, part of ESA and part other so-called European organizations? Why does it need to have its own "space exploration" program?
Now do you understand?
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@AllenT2
I understand you perfectly. You are looking for an argument. I am not going to oblige
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Not only are UK Space Engineers brilliant at stretching a pound, they even have to supply their own power tools. Ee, it's like Wallace and Gromit's "Grand Day Out" down here, I tell you! I even had to lend them my teapot when they had to entertain visitors. So very British...
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