Original Summary

In 2005, a young space engineer called Craig Clark moved back to his home city of Glasgow. He'd graduated from university just over a decade before, but the only jobs he could find were south of the border. Now Craig wanted to start a company of his own. He called it Clyde Space. I went to school not far from the River Clyde, where the city's shipbuilding heritage was forged, and knew Glasgow had once been an industrial powerhouse. When I was a child, "Clyde-built" really meant something: craftsmanship and engineering excellence. There was a saying that I grew up with: "The Clyde made Glasgow and Glasgow made the Clyde." What I hadn't realised until recently was that, in a different guise, that tradition is still alive. Two decades later, Glasgow is a European leader in building small satellites. Many of those built here are known as CubeSats. Their basic building block measures just 10cm by 10cm by 10cm - think of something about the size of a Rubik's Cube. They are much smaller, cheaper and quicker to develop than the huge contraptions that you might picture when you think of satellites. Getty Images / CubeSats - like this one, pictured in the offices of Spire Global in Glasgow - can be used for anything from weather forecasting to global positioning But crucially, they are modular and can be stacked together, then packed with cameras, sensors, communications equipment or other technology depending on their purpose. And their size belies their significance. The data collected by satellites of all kinds is increasingly woven into everyday life. It helps us communicate and navigate, track ships and transport goods, monitor forests and crops, manage energy networks and understand changes to our climate. For governments, that information can help inform decisions and respond to emergencies. As satellites have become more capable, space has become increasingly important. More than two decades after the first satellite company was established there, the Scottish Government says more small satellites are built in Glasgow than anywhere else in Europe. Across Scotland, the wider space industry generated £335m in income in 2022-23 - up 69% in five years. Excluding traditional satellite television broadcasting, it employed 2,811 people, an increase of 81% over the same period. But elsewhere in Europe, governments are committing big money to their own satellite industries. Could this take investment and jobs away from Glasgow? And if so, what - if anything - should the Scottish and UK governments do about it? And what should be the role of the state when it comes to backing important industries? Glasgow's rise to small satellite superpower Perhaps the most surprising thing about Glasgow's success in the space industry is that it wasn't planned. One of the catalysts was Craig Clark's Clyde Space. The company specialised in CubeSats at just the right moment, a few years after it launched, as smaller and cheaper spacecraft were taking off, and would go on to build Scotland's first satellite, the UKube-1. Crucially, the tech was built in partnership with the University of Strathclyde - which provided skills and research, as well as a ready supply of engineers. Other companies followed, including Craft Prospect and Alba Orbital. Expertise grew and a new space cluster began to form. American satellite company Spire chose Glasgow for its European base in 2015. Smaller businesses developed, while established engineering and technology firms became part of the supply chain. "Companies started moving to Glasgow because they could see that it was possible to do it here, and there was an ecosystem that was starting to grow," says Andrew Strain, chief technology officer at AAC Clyde Space - the company formed after Clyde Space was acquired by Swedish firm AAC Microtec, although Glasgow remains the group's main satellite manufacturing site. Soon Glasgow was host to an "entire small satellite value chain", from components and satellite manufacturing, through to launch, spaceports and ground stations, according to Daniel Smith, founder of space marketing firm AstroAgency and the Scottish Government's trade and investment envoy for space. There are wider benefits too. According to a review commissioned by Space Scotland, space manufacturing alone accounted for more than 1,000 Scottish jobs in 2022-23. The wider industry generated £202m for the Scottish economy. And as the industry grew, so did the pool of knowledge. There are now more than 100 people working across space-related activity at the University of Strathclyde, with the subject now one of the institution's strategic priorities, according to Prof Malcolm Macdonald, its chair of applied space technology. The university works directly with commercial space companies on research and tech development. Macdonald recalls that when he graduated, there was basically no local space industry for him to join. Now, "when our graduates leave the university, they will go and work in the local space sector because it is now here in Glasgow for them", he says. But what's significant, Macdonald says, is that Glasgow's satellite industry wasn't something the government set out to establish. Instead, the process was "largely organic", says Smith. By any measure it's a success story. But there are warnings about competition from overseas. "It's not necessarily that we're going backwards," Macdonald tells me. "But other people are catching up." The challenge to Glasgow Bavaria is emerging as a significant European hub for aerospace and defence technology. Germany's Defence Ministry says it plans to invest around €35bn (£30bn) in military space capabilities in the coming years, including more than 100 encrypted communications satellites. For Macdonald, that kind of spending is changing Europe's space industry. Against a backdrop of the war in Ukraine and wider geopolitical uncertainty, governments are no longer simply supporting research and innovation. Increasingly, they are

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  • 信息来源：英语新闻 / BBC News Top Stories
  • 发布时间：2026/10/6 07:07:08