Stefan Mileschin

“Galactic scale stupidity”

British moves to leave the EU will gut its space business according to one of the country's most successful space entrepreneurs.

Will Marshall's Planet company operates the world's largest satellite imaging network, with 150 spacecraft able to fully picture Earth on a daily basis.

He warns EU withdrawal will do immense harm to Britain's space industry. The UK will be "lost in space", he says.

Writing in his blog, Dr Marshall, a NASA employee before founding Planet, said that after Brexit, no CEO would locate a space company in the UK.

"Why put your European base outside the single market of the largest trading block in the world?! Or likely without access to the main government programmes? Company after company will avoid it", he adds.

Dr Marshall scorns for the UK government's actions on Galileo, the EU version of the Global Positioning System (GPS).

Ministers have decided to walk away from the project because Brussels says a future Britain, as a "third country" outside the EU, cannot be involved in the system's most secure elements - this despite the UK having already invested £1.5 billion in Galileo.

London says it will build its own sat-nav system instead, but Dr Marshall calls this a "pie in the sky" plan that has significant economic and security implications.

https://fudzilla.com/news/48302-brex...space-business