From Urbanite to Astronaut: The Territorial Economics of Space

Dev: Good evening and thank you for joining us for another of our Inaugural Lecture series. I am Professor Devendra Kodwani, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law here at The Open University. I am proud and privileged to be hosting one of our Inaugural Lectures which showcases our research, teaching and knowledge exchange portfolios. Each year the Vice-Chancellor invites newly appointed and promoted Professors to give an Inaugural Lecture. Over the course of a year our Inaugural Lecture series provides an opportunity to celebrate academic excellence with each lecture representing a significant milestone in an academics’ career. This evening we will hear from Leslie Budd, Professor of Regional Economy in the Department of Public Leadership and Social Enterprise (PULSE) at The Open University Business School, who will explore the recent increase in public interest in space exploration and the future of using urban and regional economics for assessing its impact.

But before we begin some housekeeping. The lecture will be followed by a Question and Answer session. Then we invite you to celebrate with us downstairs for those who are with us in person. For anyone in the audience using Twitter please feel free to tweet using the hashtag displayed @The Open University and let the world join us this evening. For members of our audience joining us via YouTube please use the email address provided and keep your comments and questions brief so that we can address them during the Q&A.

Now some background about Professor Leslie Budd. Professor Leslie Budd is a Professor of Regional Economy in the Department of Public Leadership and Social Enterprise at The Open University Business School. He is an economist who is internationally known for his work on regional and urban economics in the context of global issues, the digital economy, the socio-economic impact of Brexit, and evaluating the socio-economic benefits of space exploration. He is currently Director of the Space Exploration and Analysis Research (SPEAR) cluster in the Faculty of Business and Law and a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Brexit Studies at Birmingham City University. Leslie has undertaken economic and financial analysis for a number of regional, national and international organisations. These include the Corporation of London, the Small Business Service, the Capital Market Authority in Riyadh, and the Iraq Ministry of Planning. Between 2014 and 2016 he was a Special Economic Adviser to the Committee for Enterprise, Trade and Investment Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly, producing research and policy briefings, for example the consequences of the devolved taxation and the impact of Brexit on the Northern Ireland economy. It now gives me great pleasure to introduce Professor Leslie Budd.

Les: Thank you for those kind words. This lecture focuses on the socio-economic analysis and evaluation of the space economy, its industry, and international exploration programmes. It covers research that attempts to create a critical narrative of the societal challenges that go beyond the narrow purview of space exploration, not just as an outcome of science. Now we all know that mathematics and science drive all knowledge but the growth of the socio-economic benefits generated by the space economy, its exploration industry between the Earth and Space economy is also becoming very important. I've never subscribed to CP Snow's notion of two cultures between natural sciences and humanities. He's a much better fiction writer than he is about describing that false opposition.

Now this is a learning journey which is central to the student experience at The Open University. So mine is no different in many respects. Like any journey there's been continuities and discontinuities along the way. The picture on the right is by the Urbanites, a 1980s radical art collection that decorated the ceiling of the Scala cinema in London, which some of here, I know, know well, influenced by the Sistine Chapel in Rome. My own identity reflects my professional and personal commitment to things urban and regional.

In the last 30 years I've developed an interest and expertise in regional economics and transport, but also retained an interest in structural engineering and architecture. It also reflects my own, if you like, professional and personal journey from my father working at British Airways for 30 years as an engineer through to structural engineer, economics, transport planning, and regional economics higher education, and also my professional and personal commitments to all things urban and regional. Four years ago, along with my colleagues in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths faculty, Manish Patel and Vic Pearson, we were successful with our Benefits of the European Exploration Roadmap in Economics, known as the BEERS project funded by the European Space Agency. This outcome was a starting point of my interest and developing expertise in the socio-economic impacts of space. There are lots of people to thank along the way on that journey some of whom are here tonight and online.

This is an overview of the global space economy in 2021. As can be seen from that representation there are three largest contributors. Consumer Services related to media and communications, navigation, positioning and timing of satellites and government space budgets. The projected growth of $1.5 trillion by 2040 shows the widening and deepening impact of space in many industries and regions across the world. The distribution of the global space economy is shown in this slide that reflects the changing trajectory of advanced economies, but also the growth of space manufacturing underpinned by the fourth industrial revolution and industry 4.0 known as I5.0 strategies. They are becoming an important component of the earth and space economy and its urban and regional territorial distribution.

I5.0 is closely associated with the fourth industrial revolution whose design principles have direct applications to space science, technology and innovation spill-overs and you can see those design principles which also correlate to regionally-based industrial policy as an agency of development across the global economy, stimulating space 4.0. For example, places like Bremen, Glasgow, Shetland, Toulouse and Turin were locales for shipbuilding, aeronautics and oil and gas production but this continuity has depended on active industrial strategies and policies ever since. The Orion European Service Module case study, which we'll come on to, also demonstrates the role of space as a propulsive industry in enabling a range of municipalities and regions to exploit I4.0 technologies and innovation spill-overs in different urban and regional context.

So this is a statement that was made by the ministerial council of ESA in December 2016. I will read it out because it shows the multidisciplinary nature increasingly of space exploration and its importance in addressing societal challenges. “That space serves societal needs, responds to European and global challenges, and offers opportunities notably to those related to the attainment of sustainable development goals and socio-economic growth, mitigation of geopolitical risks (which have been enhanced much more recently) security, science, knowledge, climate change, and a digital Europe.”

I'm not someone who usually states publicly I'm proud of things, but I'm proud working at The Open University. It is one of the few universities in the world where you can bring these things together and there’s people in this room who have done a lot to actually fulfil that role. So there's a high level of co-operation between the EU and ESA. The EU relies heavily on ESA’s technical excellence, and a large part of the EU space budget is delegated to ESA to the extent that the EU today is amongst the largest contributors to ESA programmes. Article 189 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union which builds upon the Lisbon Treaty of 2009, calls for the EU to establish appropriate relations with ESA which is a complex phenomenon in itself, but at least it's a public statement of collaboration.

So looking at new economic aspects between the Space and Earth economy. Here we see territorial dimensions to Spaceports which as we can see from their dimensions are actually very urban and very regional, and connect two kinds of territory - Earth and Space. The figure on the right is taken from the 2021 National Space Strategy showing the territorial distribution of the key nodes of the UK space industry. Spaceports are launch sites for satellites. They are either horizontal or vertical, the former using conventional aircraft with satellites slung under their wings which are then launched beyond land. The latter consists of rockets launched over water carrying satellites. Prestwick is an example of a horizontal spaceport and Shetland is a vertical one. They have benefits and costs including economic growth, employment, low operational costs but environmental damage. So it's not all joy from this kind of technology and its development. Spaceports are increasingly important in regional development around the world, especially in Europe as well as promoting space 4.0 industrial strategies. So in developing our Socio-Economic Analysis of the Planet Assessment of Spaceport Scotland, known as SEAPASS and associated Space Exploration Research SPEAR cluster activities contributes to the development of using urban and regional economics as a framework for space exploration and the role of Spaceports in space-based industrial strategies. Don't blame me for the acronyms. They are the fault of my much more creative space science colleagues who are in the room but I won't point to them.

So this gives us an overview of the trajectory of the Global Exploration Roadmap V3 of the European Space Agency. It was adopted as I said in December 2014. It proposed to consolidate exploration activities in a single European Exploration Envelope Programme (E3P) which integrates the three ESA exploration destinations - beyond Earth, the Moon and Mars as part of a single exploration process. It also consists of four cornerstones. Humans in low Earth orbit, the International Space Station and Columbus 2030 are examples. Humans beyond low Earth orbit, Heracles and in situ resource utilisation, otherwise known as space mining, human lunar robotic exploration, the Moon Gateway and Orion ESM programmes, and Mars robotic exploration, ExoMars and Mars sample return. These cornerstones were analysed and evaluated by The Open University BEERS research team to identify the range of socio-economic benefits and their direct, indirect, upstream and downstream impacts.

So direct impacts and upstream benefits, as shown in this slide, they connect the Earth and Space economy but there's a tendency to measure these types of benefits using quantitative methods to create indicators of outcomes, which policymakers and politicians love. But I always say if you want a number I'll give you one. But things are much more complex than that, as we know. The invasion of bad mathematics into economics is something that has been a bugbear of mine for many years and economists trying to reduce the methods of physics to that of economics to make it a science would seem laughable to many of the scientists in this audience, as well as me but I don't claim to be a scientist. Similarly, there are a set of indirect and direct benefits which connect the Earth and Space economy. In this case there’s a tendency to measure using qualitative based methods to create more descriptive indicators. But this does represent a bigger challenge for analysis and evaluation of these types and certainly for the BEERS, SEAPASS and SPEAR teams and activities we are undertaking that, but it is a challenge. I have to say the title is from Urbanite to Astronaut and I count myself as an apprentice, but I'm very grateful to my space science colleagues because I've learned a lot and I've read space science papers, which I really don't understand but they are intrinsically interesting. It is because I don't have the training.

Now we come on to the Impact Evaluation Framework on the Benefits of the ESA Exploration Roadmap in Socio-Economics (BEERS) and I won't explain why it's called BEERS, but again my creative colleague wanted the ESA Ministerial Council to talk about the benefits of BEERS in space exploration, which shows insight and humour which we do have in abundance at the OU. So this was an ESA-funded research project to evaluate E3P by the BEERS research team, drawn from three OU faculties. We created this Evaluation Impact Framework based on a stage approach using a multi criteria methodological framework. This was first pioneered over 10 years ago with other OU colleagues in the electronic Governments for You project funded by the European Union. So the first is a critique of conventional studies which are usually cost benefit analysis. But when it comes to qualitative based benefits the response is usually too complex. We are talking about some of the large management consultancies that can add to their list of failures. I’ll not be controversial there. Secondly Input-Output Analysis is an economic method most closely associated with the Soviet-American economist Leontief, frequently used in regional economics and it provides a comprehensive treatment of the economy as a whole, encompassing all of its industrial sectors using standardised Input-Output Analysis. I am very pleased to see some of our ex-PhD students here tonight who have got greater expertise on Input-Output than I ever had and also a colleague from the Department of Economics. Again, that kind of environment in which we attract people like that from all over the world is again one of the benefits of the OU and I'm not looking for promotion, that's me. But it is a fact. Now the Capitals approach is based on Pierre Bourdieu’s approach. He was the French anthropologist and sociologist and he criticised conventional economic capital as being too focused on material exchange. He argued that people from different social positions, different from one another, with regard to their possession of three forms of capital - economic, social, and cultural. There is also a relation here to the continuities and discontinuities in my own journey in that I had a research secondment to the Centre for Urban Sociology in Paris in 1985 and many of my French colleagues had actually studied for their PhDs under Bourdieu. Every Friday I went to his public lectures at the College de France. That also formed the basis of my developing interest and links to the OU by becoming a part-time PhD student two years later. So there's lots of people in this room to blame, but I won't go there.

But these forms of capitals can also be classified as community capitals or resources that are increasingly being used in studies evaluating public policy programmes within a community or society. So I think it was about two years ago, Greater Manchester Authority took on more public service roles, and they undertook a capitals approach to evaluate what the benefits might be of that policy shift and what kind of public management and services that they may deliver. So, in a sense, we are ahead of the game and this kind of approach is becoming increasingly important based a lot on urban and regional economics.

Fourthly logic models are widely used in programme evaluation. These models represent the most important relationships between project activities and expected outcomes, outputs and impacts. Finally, data visualisation methods were adapted to graphically demonstrate some of the outcomes. In the Space19+ strategy for funding ESAs programmes the next five years the OU BEERS teams work was mentioned but they were particularly happy as policymakers and politicians are with the graphic representation of some of our results.

This is the adaptation of Bourdieu’s capitals, otherwise known as ‘community resources’. So for the BEERS programme we expanded beyond the three programmes and you can see the definitions there. You could probably evaluate any kind of programme by the interaction of these things because they do show the kind of socio-economic integration of social sciences with natural sciences and also humanities.

You might wonder why we didn't choose education as a capital for the BEERS project. We've had a lot of debates about that and we can't actually remember, but it seemed to me that we didn't include it as a discrete capital because it related to elements in the human capital particularly skills formation and training, as well as conforming to the OU’s purpose of promoting lifelong learning. But the choice of capitals is pragmatic like many evaluation projects, and it depends on the nature of the project and its context.

I like pictures and I like old technology. I’m of a generation that actually remembers, we had a day off school when the first Russian satellite was launched, long ago about the reputation of Russia. But the International Space Station is a 20-year co-operation between the European, US, Japanese and Russian space agencies and they are their logos, fairly obvious, I hadn't deliberately put the Russian one on the bottom right. But ISS orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, on board are astronauts from various participating nations who undertake experiments that have led to a number of benefits including technological, environmental and health ones. Many of these experiments are under microgravity conditions, which is weightlessness, leading to new scientific evidence, technologies and innovation. The ISS closely connects the Earth and Space economy through environmental mapping including weather forecasting and managing the effects of extreme climate changes, for example tsunamis. The current challenge is the continuous participation of Roscosmos due to the war in Ukraine for which the Head of the Russian Space Agency announced Russia's intention to withdraw next year, despite senior NASA figures seeking to continue the collaboration. It is quite interesting the dynamics of this and I don't want to go into it but a number of the Russian cosmonauts aboard the ISS were actually wearing Ukrainian T-shirts and flags. The colleagues at ESA we dealt with always said that the thing about Russians is if you suck and drink with them, they're really good collaborators. The ISS is important for its technology. The Soyuz rockets which launched it are now using SpaceX, it is really old kit and at ESTEC in the Netherlands, which is the technical and scientific branch of ESA, they've got mock ups which I'll show you later. You go in I think this reminds me of my childhood flying on Dakota DC3s at 5000 feet, no flatbeds, no business class in those days and old kit, but it is remarkable. It's remarkable I think that it’s coming to the public perception of the benefits of space, particularly of ISS in the last few years, using old technology but with new kinds of adaptations and new discoveries.

So ISS Inputs and Outputs. So we have input-output analysis to analyse the economic effects. So the input is the onboard experiments and on the lefthand side is the mock up where they undertake experiments. When I first got involved with the BEERS programme they kept talking about ice cubes and I thought they just drink gin and tonic up there with ice cubes. The ice cubes are actually little mobile laboratories and they're called ice cubes because they're cold. Perhaps there’ll be an ISS gin, we’ve got Edinburgh gin these days. The image on the righthand side is of the XML MRI scanner, they can diagnose osteoporosis in minutes, as a result of the ISS astronauts undertaking experiments on themselves and building a prototype which has now been commercialised for international markets. Osteoporosis is a condition that ISS astronauts can suffer for at least four years after re-entering the Earth. Telemedicine is also a health benefit because of the development of robotic arms for surgery and this has led to experimental collaboration between NASA and US health companies aboard the ISS in real time. So aboard the ISS they've been using these robotic arms and in real time this is projected down to hospital theatres where surgeons are actually undertaking operations. So again the ISS is a classic example of connection between the Earth and Space economy.

Now this is a particular experiment called Electro Magnetic Levitation (EML) aboard the ISS. Along the top we've got the E3P activities, Outputs, Application and Technological Externalities. So it's Coolcop, which could be a kind of, you know, dodgy US film, Magnephas and Semitherm. This is using the Columbus laboratory on ISS. EML allows metal to be melted at high temperatures and then cooled under microgravity conditions, weightlessness, to create new alloys for development on the Earth economy that would not be possible on the Earth because it's weightlessness that allows various metals to be combined to create an alloy. So to do them on Earth you would actually have to build a chamber under microgravity conditions. But again it shows these kind of insights and things that you can do aboard space under weightlessness and not on the Earth. So if we look at the Outputs, copper and cobalt, nickel titanium, silicon. Along the bottom you’ve got the Experiment Component, Ready to Market Applications, Commercialisation, Future Applications, and then Value-Added. So those are important linkages and without things like E3P programmes, like the ISS, these things would not be possible. But the inputs and outputs of this form of technological capital also creates environmental capital as a consequence, as well as innovation spill overs. But all three experiments can be said to relate to urban and regional economic development, smart cities, of which Milton Keynes is apparently one. At a lunch today some of my friends and colleagues were actually impressed, I think as the sun was out, but it is a smart city and lots of things are going on here. So architecture, engineering, building materials, and intra and inter regional transport systems that generate locational advantage and agglomeration economies.

The Orion-ESM network as a driver of space locales. The European Service Module is the service module component of the NASA Orion spacecraft serving as a primary power and propulsion component until it's discarded at the end of each mission to the Moon. So funded by NASA and ESA, Orion ESM is a six-phase programme to service the Artemis lunar missions from 2018 with annual launches between 2021 and 2027 with both robotic and human missions. During the development and construction of ESM, Airbus has drawn from its experience as a prime contractor for ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle between spacecraft and say the Moon. ESA selected Airbus in Germany to lead a consortia of companies develop and construct phases 1 to 3 of ESM, all of whom had ATV experience. The network of contractors and subcontractors includes more than 18 companies in 10 different European countries as shown on the map, unfortunately excluding the UK. The experience of the members of the consortia who are working together over the first three missions represent a form of organisational capital with an externality consequence of social and human capital. As the network gains in efficiency and lower transaction costs, which is the cost of doing business result. The ESM network is also a driver of Space as a propulsive industry within the agglomeration economies in the Space City regions and municipalities where the network members are located. But also the one thing we overlook is the role of Space, Space science and exploration, in contributing to the design economy. So the Orion capsule is the successor to the famous Apollo ones and central to plans for lunar missions of the Artemis One programme which has six phases and Mars exploration programmes in the future. Much of its design principles are drawn upon for lunar architecture projects, particularly the use of new materials, as well as in situ resource utilisation, again known as lunar mining. But there’s a lot of noise about the knowledge economy. My parents in law were in care homes where I was really impressed by that branch of the knowledge economy where the carers were highly skilled in just things like putting on their clothes. When I tried to put my father in law's jacket on him I nearly broke his arm. It's a knowledge economy. There's nonsense talked about it and again it infuriates me. But in fact it's really about the design economy, of which the relationship between Orion ESM, lunar habitats, and ISRU are said to constitute one. In its 2018 report the UK Design Council stated ‘Design and design skills are the heart of the fourth Industrial Revolution. They give us the tools to respond to these unprecedented challenges and instigate the growth, innovation and jobs that will drive UK’s global future.’ and ‘We define this activity as the design economy. The value created by those who use design in a wide variety of industries. This includes designers in design industries, other roles in design industries, as well as designers in other sectors of the economy, such as banks, consultancies, automotive, or aerospace’.

Now we come on to, if you like, definitions of organisational capital and its linkages. I'm grateful to my colleague, Stefania Paladini of Birmingham City University for bringing this to my attention. So intellectual resources and development linking to organisational capital, human capital and relational factors. This form of capital is rooted in corporate strategy and accounting valuations. But the later elements include human capital, relational factors, intellectual resources and development, as well as organisational culture and structure, learning and intellectual property. Again, going back to the continuities and discontinuities of the journey at The Open University, one of the original authors was JC Spender, a former Visiting Professor at The Open University Business School. Now the ESM can also be considered a learning organisation in that the process of manufacturing a series of large items creates learning effects for the internal and external stakeholders through collaborative working and sharing knowledge. This form of capital also links to Space 4.0 Industrial Strategies in countries and places participating in the ESM Consortium.

Again this shows the locational distribution of Orion-ESMs organisational capital. It represents the proportion by funding based on the hub and spoke model with Airbus Germany and Thalas Alenia in Italy as the main hubs. But there's also a locational hierarchy within the network and trade and transport links amongst the participants. But most importantly is the creation of agglomeration economies in the network locations as a basis of the territorial distribution of the socio-economic benefits. So it's just another example of the way in which deindustrialisation can actually take away a major propulsive industry be it shipbuilding, mining etc and the knock on impacts in direct employment as well as for the indirect employment. Where I live in North London if you had a major hit economically to North London, you think of all the coffee shops that would close, which may or may not be a good thing, but that's a personal choice.

Let's come on to agglomeration economies. Here we have short definitions and details of the three types of agglomeration - Localisation, Urbanisation and Activity-Complex economies. So these types of economies are central to urban and regional economics as well as territorial development in which organisations and individuals collocate for a range of activities. One aspect of agglomeration is that firms are often located near to each other leading to cost savings arising from urban agglomeration. This concept also relates to the idea of economies of scale and network effects and important links between transport improvements and agglomeration. They can be intensified without increasing the physical concentration of firms and workers, but rather by improving transport connectivity

The propulsive industry in activity-complex economies refers to the work of the famous Joseph Schumpeter most closely associated with the concept of creative disruptions. These definitions are based on edited work of John Parr at UCL.

So let's come on to lunar architecture. Again new economic aspects of the lunar region because the Moon can be seen to be this planet that could be described as a region. So the UK architectural practice Foster and Partners are promoting their lunar village, whilst the large US firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is creating its Moon village, both as lunar habitats. The latter was on show at the Venice Biennale Arts Exhibition in 2021. So again this is an example of architectural firms, Space science and exploration, the design economy and cultural capital.

So SOM worked closely with ESA on a semi-inflatable habitat design, which could be part of a long term vision for an international Moon settlement, insulated by Regolith, a locally found material. Now I'm not one of those space cadets who believes that we're all going to move to the Moon like in Douglas Adams famous book and radio series. But rather you will see scientists and engineers staying longer on the Moon to explore and undertake research. There may be benefit for both the lunar habitats but also the Earth economy. There's also strong support for development starting with the former Director of ESA Jan Wörner, and now through the formal co-operation agreement between ESA and the large architectural firms for lunar and Mars habitat architecture. I won't go near Mars because that is just too challenging frankly but is also an interesting future development. Again we have experts in the room who can tell you more about that than I ever could in a lifetime frankly. But the proposed location of the Moon village is on the most favourable part of the moon, near the south polar region on the rim of the Shackleton Crater. This self-sufficient settlement can use continuous daylight that that region receives throughout the year. But again, let's go back to the design principles - atmosphere, thermal protection, meteorites, radiation, moonquakes. Regolith consists of 45% Oxygen as well as water and now Tallin University is using this material to build solar panels for other regions of the Moon. An issue in other moons because you get two-week days and nights. The Chinese have landed on the dark side of the moon which is interesting, whether they're fans of Pink Floyd or play it continuously I don't know, but it is their worst album. But again, we can discuss that. Helium-3 is important for cold fusion for potentially safer nuclear power that can contribute to sustainable energy transition. That also has implications for the Earth economy as we face energy challenges at the moment as well as future developments, but it's been unsuccessful to date. But there are also important developments in the governance environmentally sustainability of space missions is also occurring. Under its space and governance workstream, the OU’s Astrobiology Research Programme is addressing these issues.

Future Research. This image is taken from a report by the Space Science Board of the US National Academy of Sciences published in 1965, and again reflects the continuities and discontinuities. Henry Ford might have said history is bunk but history is always with us. We often as we know to our cost, don't learn from it. So hopefully we can learn from this earlier research for the future, particularly in relation to the Earth and Space economy. So the role of I5.0 in stimulating Space 4.0 and its developing relationship to Environmental, Social and Governance ESG criteria is important. This criteria is a set of standards for a company’s operations that socially conscious investors use to screen potential investments. Environmental criteria consider how a company performs as a steward of nature. The social criteria examines how it manages relationships with employees, suppliers, customers and the communities where it operates. Governance deals with a company's leadership, executive pay, audits, internal control and shareholder rights. It can be argued that much of what constitutes space science, for example the Moon and Mars rovers is actually part of the design economy to which space exploration in general supports its growth. In 2019 the Design Museum in London had a space exploration exhibition to further exemplify this relationship. The next steps on the journey is to further progress a multidisciplinary and cross faculty approach. This can make significant contribution to addressing the societal challenges of future space exploration, as well as analysing and evaluating the socio-economic benefits between the Earth and Space economy.

Just to thank everyone who's come and for your patience, and keeping you from your refreshments, both here and online. But I also want to thank the one person who's enabled so much of this journey. As a global commodities analyst she has taught me so much about the mining and metals industry, particularly opened my eyes to its potential in relation to the space economy. So here's thanks to my wife, Vanessa Davidson. Thank you.

Dev: Thank you Leslie, fantastic, thought-provoking reflections and findings from your research. Thank you for sharing. So it's time for us to hear from you in the audience here in the theatre as well as online, questions, answers, a chance to discuss with Leslie some of the aspects of what he has presented and other questions you may have. So Leslie please join me. So before you ask questions, I'd suggest you wait for the roving mic to reach you and please tell us who you are and from where you are. Keep your questions or comments brief so that we can have as many questions and answers as possible. Those who are watching online and have any questions for Leslie, please use the email which should be somewhere here. CommsInauguralLecture@open.ac.uk and we'll try to pick up those email questions as well. So thank you for your patience. Leslie are you happy to take questions now. We have one from online straightaway.

Helene: I've got a couple that are related online so I'm going to read them both because they're around the same theme. Could Russia's involvement in space programmes aid their worldwide reintegration once the war in Ukraine is over, or even help contribute to potential peace by keeping conversation lines open while the war is ongoing? And another one. Does it seem likely that the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent pulling out of collaborative projects will lead to a significant economic loss?

Les: Well they've already suffered an economic loss and obviously it depends on regime and political change. But it's very interesting that senior figures at NASA really do benefit from that collaboration. It’s a difficult position for the astronauts and heads of Roscosmos. Beyond that I have really nothing to say because it's too complex, too early and frankly too tragic. I'm someone who's not usually depressed but 2022 is not turning out to be a good year.

Melvin: My question relates to funding. NASA has suffered from political interference since the start of the Mercury missions and when I refer to Mercury I'm talking about the manned missions. Today it's even further hit by political intervention in their funding streams to the degree that they've moved to a system whereby they tender to private companies. How much of a threat do you see private companies being to the continued exploration and the economic effects of space?

Les: That's kind of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy territory. Well SpaceX is subsidised by NASA. It's inevitable. The state enables so much, which is misunderstood by most. The issue of funding is, I mean, when Trump was in power he wanted a space army. There's always the issue of security and space and who owns space and those treaties. I don't think there are threats but I do think they could be like, you know, the new robber barons of the digital companies. But if you actually think without the public funding they won't do anything. Elon Musk would not be able to take over Twitter and they can do some good things like in South Australia with battery technologies, etc, etc. But again it's about regulation. It's about governance and law. But also off the top of my head, the Space19 Strategy of ESA for its funding for the next five years was 19 billion euros. That's the equivalent of each citizen in the whole of Europe, not just the EU, going to the cinema once a week. They are big numbers, but it's like when people discuss public debt. We live in a £1.5 trillion economy per year. So many of these figures, they make a difference on the ground, but if you think of their kind of benefits. Again it's the way in which the UK space strategy goes on about Global Britain. It's all about security. Boris Johnson dismissed the idea of European ground wars. As Macmillan said ‘It's about events dear boy, events’.

Phil: Thank you for a fascinating talk this evening. Phil Tomlinson, University of Bath. We've just recently had a government white paper on levelling up and trying to address or purporting to try and address regional imbalances. How do you see or where do you envisage the space industry playing a role in levelling up Britain?

Les: Funnily enough I actually put in a paper with my colleague, Alessandro Sancino about place-based leadership for space city regions and municipalities referring to the ESM. Unfortunately the Friends Provident funding let us down but we will put it in again. But if you take somewhere like Yeovil, so a poor town near where you live, centre of the Westland scandal. But an Italian helicopter company took it over, there's space activities there. Again one of my colleagues works with Airbus in Stevenage. In the 1980s Stevenage was the insurance capital of Europe, mergers, collapse in the market, it became a relatively poor place. But you can actually see these demonstration effects. Again if you look at the relationship to battery metals, things like green hydrogen which is becoming important, so the treatment of batteries on the ISS by hydrogen expands their life. So there's a link there. So you could see these kind of towns with former industrial heritage, Stoke is an example of where you come from, and where ceramics is a very good insulating material for the Orion space capsules. But my own view, even as a dyed in the wool Londoner, privilege in London is bad economics and bad politics. Frankly London needs to be levelled down and I think the space industry can do something in it's associations with aeronautics and automotive to level up some of those towns in a kind of distributed way. That's what we want to explore, the degree to which place-based leadership in those places in the UK and Italy might achieve that.

Alan: I’m Alan Cochran from Social Sciences. I did once have a close relationship with Les as one of his PhD supervisors 153 years ago.

Les: It's all his fault. Blame him.

Alan: That was a fascinating talk. One of the things that came across, of course, is the direct and indirect effect of investment in space exploration, I think that's interesting. The question I have is the indirect effect, could there have been other investments which might have had those indirect effects or could there have been other investments which might even have had better indirect effects? Is there something particular about space exploration which gives you this range of indirect effects which are particularly good for the economy in various ways? Or if you looked at something else, I don't know, if you looked at military expenditure or expenditure on universities or whatever it was, would you be able to find a range of indirect effects which were not intended, because they're not intended I presume by the people spending the money in the first place? Do you think there's something special about work in the space exploration industry if you like, that generates particularly powerful and important and worthwhile spin-offs?

Les: Well I agree with other direct impacts, and it's the kind of societal and political choices about resources. I do look upon myself as a kind of apprentice astronaut. I went from urbanite to astronaut and it's your fault. But I think what’s interesting for me about space and the socio-economic impacts is that you can bring together socio-economic benefits, location, geography, that interacts with a number of sectors, automotive, but also universities. As I said the OU is a classic. At the time we were astounded we got the ESA funding for BEERS because we were up against the big consultancies. But this is one of the few universities that could do that. But I think a better understanding, and some of the things that have come out in the last 10 years with regard to environmental sustainability, and in the scale of things compared to military expenditure is not that much. So people will say, ‘Well why can't you have clean water?’ Well we can have clean water and we can fund it in parts of the world, but also some of the scientific experiments and discoveries and exploration, we're actually bringing about ways on the ground of addressing that. So that would be my argument, it's stage. I'm not saying it's primary. My frustration with science papers is they're intrinsically interesting and for me difficult. I mean I don't have the maths either. But my response is that this is really interesting, and there's not enough and, but as I said I've become a bit of a convert. But I actually do think it's worth investigating. I’ll just give an example take Glasgow. The Glasgow sub region has become the largest manufacturer of satellites below 250 kilos, you could say that's linked to a kind of industrial-like archaeology. The issue is, of course, all these commercial satellites that are thrown up and the environmental damage, so there is a kind of balance to be struck. I was in John Lewis in Brent Cross collecting a parcel one day, and it came up on a screen, this was before the lockdown, one of the Mars landers and everyone just stopped and watched. I enjoyed that moment because I thought actually there's a lot behind this but we need to do more work on it. Again, my view is that there should be more multidisciplinary and more cross- faculty.

David: It’s David Bailey, University of Birmingham. Thank you very much. Sorry to raise the B word. But Brexit, post-Brexit UK is out of Galileo, as far as I can understand. A lot of speculation about OneWeb and whether that can be made into something, but could you talk a bit about the impact of Brexit and the possible cost of that? Are there any opportunities for Global Britain or is it just these big platforms now?

Les: There is. The problem is we're in this kind of interregnum in a way. A Brexit opportunity would actually, I’d put Rees-Mogg on the ISS, but again that's personal prejudice. The problem is that again in terms of OneWeb and Galileo, let me say this publicly, and I'm willing to defend it, this is the most stupid incompetent government in my lifetime, and I've seen a few. When I was Special Economic Adviser to the SETI Committee in Northern Ireland, I wrote the first briefing on Brexit. I gave evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. There were 23 peers and members of parliament on that committee. Three had a clue of what Brexit actually meant, particularly for Northern Ireland. So similarly, the three in one of the slides which will be available, there's the three major EU programmes which the UK cannot bid for because it's a third member country, so if you think about Sowee satellites and a number of things. The argument you could make about the possibility of Scottish independence, but the growing Space sector in Glasgow could bail out some of the fiscal implications, but it's damaging. The other thing is just things like the Erasmus programmes, the flow of students and the Astrobiology programme here has its first successful PhDs. That's a really important thing but where are they going to go. So we had COVID. We haven't been hit by the consequence of Brexit. But at each stage you're going to find look what’s happened to automotive. Look what's happened to. If Airbus pulls out of the UK, which it could do, building the wings, etc, etc at Broughton and in North Wales, it is difficult. Brexit is a disaster whatever way you look at it. But there's no strategic thought. I was at lunch with you today so I didn't read the Queen's speech but there's nothing about science, there's nothing about technology. I think Global Britain in five years’ time will look like a fairground merry-go-round.

Dev: Not a very encouraging thought.

Les: I'm old enough and ugly enough. For younger colleagues, we live through these things and we come out the other end.

Dev: Okay, so I think we need to wind this up. It has been a fantastic conversation, and the amount of interest we have generated Leslie, is there a question there? Let's take the one more.

Sheila: I'm Sheila Watson, I work for something called the FIA Foundation. You mentioned Space as a propulsive industry. We touched a little bit on private and public, but you talked a lot about initiatives I think and programmes which are largely publicly funded one way or another. What is your take on the impact in terms of territorial claim and also local economic impact of Elon’s projectile, which I still think is the funniest thing in the world that it is designed to look like that, and everybody else's private space missions?

Les: Well I think without the public funding, it's the classic, monopoly capitalism is underwritten by the state, end of. Without the state you wouldn't get it. Unfortunately, again if those who are old enough to remember the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where they pretended the Earth was going to explode, be hit by a big meteorite, and a hairdresser's marketing PR people, not communications, advertising people were sent. I'd happily send Besos, Musk, and all the rest of them to Mars which I understand takes 16 to 24 months to get to and back again. There is an issue and there's a clear issue about who owns Space. So we've got colleagues in the Astrobiology who've done a lot of work on space and law. One of the great things is the work that was done by the Citizenship and Governance Strategic Research Area on that very thing. There is a danger of all these private satellites going up. It's good for Stoke because the ceramics built the Orion, but when they come back into Earth there's a real danger. So it's something again we have to really look at. It’s like big tech, the internet was going to free us all. But again it's just another if you like development in Monopoly capitalism. So again, in terms of space research and programmes, be careful what you wish for. But at least in other European countries, particularly in Italy, there's some attempt to actually look at that role. We will need a change of government here as you well know. Thank you.

Dev: Thank you Leslie for that fantastic lecture and the questions also were very probing and fascinating. Thank you for your participation. We strive for continuous improvement and your feedback in helping to shape the series would be very welcome. Please do complete the feedback form which we will send to you after the event. All that remains for me to say is thank you for joining us this evening and for always supporting The Open University. For those here in person in the auditorium it is time to celebrate too. So please join us downstairs and I leave you with the details of our next Inaugural Lecture event on the theme of Capturing Feeling and Experience in Research about Creativity. Sounds like a fascinating topic which will take place on Tuesday 14th June at 6pm and will be delivered by Stephanie Taylor, OU Professor in Social Psychology and will look at the associations of creativity, its contradictions and how we can understand the experience of being creative. Details can be found on The Open University Research website. Let's leave you with a trailer here. Have a good evening, thank you.

Video: Creativity carries contradictory associations, and some of those come from psychology. For instance we think of creativity as the special gift that marks off a minority of ‘great’ people, but also as a capacity that we all possess and should exercise, for our mental health. In my Inaugural Lecture I'll look at how different areas of psychology have contributed to our understanding of creativity and the experience of creative practitioners. Join me to have your say.