Rising Star: Ukraine accelerates space industry development

Ukraine was implementing a number of space projects with Russia and Kazakhstan and was working with Brazil to jointly launch Tsyklon-4 rockets from Brazil's Alcantara base.

President Viktor Yanukovych on Friday highlighted progress in Ukraine's aerospace industry in recent years and said his country would continue to develop its space projects.

"Our state has made a significant contribution to the development of cosmonautics and continues to cooperate with many countries of the world," Yanukovych said during his meeting with Ukraine National Space Agency chairman Yuriy Alekseyev and Aerospace Society president Vitaly Zholobov, an ex-Soviet Cosmonaut.

Viktor Yanukovych

Ukraine was implementing a number of space projects with Russia and Kazakhstan and was working with Brazil's Space Agency (AEB) to jointly launch Tsyklon-4 rockets from Brazil's Alcantara base.

In 2011, Ukraine joined China, the EU, Russia, and the U.S. as one of the top five space rocket-launching countries in the world.

Leonid K. Kadenyuk,
first space traveler
from independent Ukraine

Since 1991, Ukraine has grown into a significant player in the space industry, having launched 128 rockets and delivered into orbit 250 satellites for 19 countries.

This year, Ukraine has allocated about 322 million U.S. dollars to promote its aerospace industry over the next five years.

UK Space industry could add £40 billion to the economy

Britain's space industry could be worth up to £40 billion a year, according to a report published by the Space Innovation and Growth Team (IGT), a committee tasked by the UK government with laying out the future of the UK's commercial space ambitions.

Chief among the recommendations is more spending. The UK currently spends around £270 million on space projects such as satellite programs.

Andy Green, who chaired the IGT, told the BBC, "we already have six per cent global market share, despite the fact we spend a relatively low proportion of our GDP on space."

Getting organised

UK Space is an organisation which represents an assortment of British high-tech companies. Its chairman, Richard Peckham is also business development manager of Astrium, a UK-based satellite company.

He said that the future of the British space industry doesn't simply rely on asking for money. “You've got to have somebody that's actually looking across all of the potential uses of space,” he said.

That somebody will be the as-yet unnamed British space agency, a dedicated organisation announced in December 2009. Responsibility currently lies with an assortment of different government departments – a situation which leads to wrangling over funding.

Russian Space Industry to grow by 18%

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Monday that the output of the national space industry in 2009 will increase by about 18%.

Despite difficulties caused by the global financial crisis, "financing of the space industry has always been and will remain sufficient," Putin said at a meeting on the development of defense-related industries.

"We expect space industry production growth in 2009 at about 18%," he said, adding that overall production growth in the defense industry would increase by up to 3.8%.

The prime minister also noted that the quality of production needs improvement.

"Despite all our efforts, many Russian-made spacecraft are not as advanced as their foreign equivalents... and the R and D work takes longer than planned," Putin said.

He urged improvements to production efficiency, and said priority projects must be tackled, including the Angara-family carrier rockets and the development of new communications, navigation and remote Earth sensing spacecraft.

Putin reiterated that in the past two years Russia's space industry enterprises have received and spent over 21 billion rubles ($609 million), and that half of those funds were allocated for technical upgrading of production facilities.

Unemplyed? hundreds of professional positions available in the space industry

It has come to our attention that there are literally hundreds of professional positions available in the space industry that cannot be filled. At a time when there are millions of people out of work due to the worldwide recession the space industry seems to be booming with projects, contracts and a variety of other activities that require space professionals with some experience in all levels of organization. So, where are these very essential people?

This simple answer is that there are not enough space professionals who have the training and experience needed to do the required work. All of the qualified people that we know are working, and they are working very hard, putting in long hours and making sacrifices to try and get the many funded space projects completed.

What is wrong with this industry? During the 1960s and 70s aerospace companies were notoriously poor employers. One day, thousands of people would be laid off and the next day thousands would be hired. Space professionals had to be mobile and expect to change jobs every two or three years.

They could expect to make good incomes, but not salaries attractive enough to compensate for job insecurity. This was symptomatic of the industry in the early decades of the Space Age. Unfortunately, this image persists and the industry still experiences ups and downs. Other industries are considered to be much more stable.

Consider those professionals who went into the financial and housing industries. They felt very comfortable about job security and they had well-paying positions.

All that ended last year. today, there are fewer college students studying finance, business and marketing and fewer job opportunities for graduates in these fields. However, throughout the last five decades, the majority of space professionals have consistently had well-paying jobs and still have such jobs.

Now that there are high levels of unemployment, where are those young, well-trained engineers and scientists that are so badly needed to build new space systems? They don't exist and we will not be able to fill all of those key positions for several years to come. These people must be attracted to universities that can educate them.

Then they must spend at least four years before receiving their degrees. This is followed by on-the-job training, until each is experienced enough to assume positions of responsibility. Thus, it is easy to see that current positions will not be filled for another five to ten years.

The average age of current space industry professionals has risen steadily since the days of Apollo. today, it is not unusual to see many positions filled with post-65 year old grandparents who have the experience and knowledge needed to compete in a very-competitive international space environment.

Unfortunately, while this situation offers many benefits for those people, it is a make-shift and temporary fix for the industry. The real problem is that the pipeline of future space engineers and innovators is empty. In a few years this may well result in a loss of space leadership. Warning signs are already evident, but no solution is in sight.