It was winter 2009 when I attended the UK Space Conference.
Scoring a discounted ticket as a student, I dutifully attended the science lectures and presentations.
I got bored.
Don’t get me wrong. The science was cool. But about 1 in 6 of the speakers knew how to give a presentation.
(Which sparked the beginning of my career in technical communication, but thats another story.)
I stepped out, and flipped through the programme of the conference. There was another half to the conference — business & industry.
My curiousity peaked, I left and entered the other conference room.
I sat down near the back, being the only person under the age of 35 in the room.
The next speaker began, and within 5 minutes something clicked in my head. And the way I viewed the next few decades wasn’t gonna be the same again.
(Yeah, a bit of hyperbole. But seriously).
The guy speaking had been the middleman in a couple of failed deals to sell old Russian ICBMs as space launch vehicles to some entrepreneurs interested in launching rockets. (A certain American South African entrepreneur might have been one of them…)
Next up, was someone from Reaction Engines talking about their progress in hypersonic propulsion (there was actually a bit of disgruntlement in the audience. Think there were a few investors who weren’t happy…)
But the part that blew my mind as speaker after speaker came up was the fact…
Space entrepreneurship was a thing.
One day, possibly in the next decade or so, was the common sentiment, the cost of space travel will come down by a factor of ten. This will not only make human space travel cheaper, but the cost of getting satellites and experiments into orbit.
My brain went a bit further…
Microgravity was cool for experiments, but what if we discovered it was necessary for certain types of manufacturing?
Space tourism will be cool but what about the support services and industry around that?
It’s been fifteen years since that day. The cost of space travel has come down by not just a factor of 10, but two factors of 10. ($100,000 per kg to $1000 per kg).
Starlink *is a thing* (and helped me do a few zoom job interviews in my cousin’s place in Lagos).
Who knows what will happen in the next fifteen years.